The fact that this is even a thing is mind boggling.
It was private healthcare that backed public law forcing minimum coverage. Why? Because their pool was shrinking. They were getting sick people who needed care, but with premiums skyrocketing, what benefit is there for healthy people to buy in?
But I agree that the private for profit health care system is an abomination only made much worse by making it public law requiring we buy into it. Instead of Medicare for all.
That’s one of many many examples.
Note: I happen to have private healthcare with Cigna in a country with a reasonably good public health system (Spain, though it varies between different autonomous communities), happy to pay the taxes and will defend that public health systems are a staple of any modern country.
To be clear, we are talking about benefit to the patient; there's lots of reasons concierge doctors may not be the best benefit for society at large. But that's immaterial because this is just one example; if we hadn't gone for the worst possible way to scale private medicine, then there could be better examples.
But the point is that you can't seriously look at concierge doctors and say that public healthcare would be better for those patients! And therefore this refutes any claim that public healthcare is the best system overall.
Can you explain to me how the government telling you "you must do business with one of these insurers or else" is in any way a free market?
Not private hospitals/drug manufacturers - those are arguable - just insurance. What do they contribute?
They got bailed out in Covid, they take money out of the system in good times, they deny you care in the bad times.
Best I can tell they serve no usefull function
Dont exaggerate. I've lived in 3 European countries and Australia. My American healthcare is easily better than those. Sure I'm lucky to have a good job that pays for it, but you can't say its terrible without looking at how those public systems are really struggling right now.
Some Americans do get excellent care with a minimum of grief. Others think their insurance is fine while they're healthy and only discover later that it doesn't really cover what they imagine it does. And the difference is entirely arbitrary.
The fundamental problem of health insurance is that you cannot know what you will need, and there is no way to make an informed consumer choice, but your need when you have it is absolute. It's pathologically pessimal as a free market. And you usually don't know until it's too late.
Actuaries know, in aggregate, what specific demographics will need. Insurance companies use those statistics to make profit. The view that consumers cannot make informed choices on healthcare needs is incompatible with the fact that risks are not perfectly and uniformly random. Unless, by “informed choice”, you mean one that is correct in hindsight, in which case, I agree.
The UK was amazing - no questions asked care for my health was a massive improvement over what I had in the US. Free access to a doctor at any time is more life changing that you can think - every health issue I had I could talk to a medical professional and get guidance. Even free mental health care.
Moved to Ireland last year, with a mixed public/private system, and my health is now slipping a bit. Going to a GP, trying to file for reimbursements, and knowing that every time I have a health concern, it will cost me money, is a powerful suppressing force. I miss the NHS.
If we divide up people into percentiles based on wealth, 25, 50, 75, 95, how do you think people fare in the different countries? How do you think they the median experience is in America?
That is not where you are lucky.
You are lucky to be healthy enough that you can hold on to that job. Once your health takes a bad turn, and you are unable to work, when you really need your healthcare, that's when you are better positioned to judge the quality of healthcare.
Regardless of our personal experiences, the US spends so an enormous amount on healthcare and gets very little in return by basically all international measurements. Americans who think American healthcare seem to me too insecure to accept that their system is just plain bad. But yes Americans with a lot of money have access to better healthcare than average Americans. That said, this is essentially true in all countries so it's not that relevant really.
If that's whats necessary to get decent health care in this country, then something isn't right.
Everything is fine everyone, no need to worry.
Doesn't help if you are stuck in the hospital. But, it's an option otherwise.
Don't get one in the hospital if you can help it. They charge 1-2k because they have a full set of people who can't go anywhere else.
Not sure what is holding you back, but health should be a priority!
If this is the case, then it is no wonder the insurer has no particular care for them. It is the power of the consumer to change provider which gives them influence over the provider.
My opinion is that providing healthcare as a benefit should be banned. Employees who have healthcare today should be provided the amount the employer would have spent on health care in wages/salary. The fine details are hard to work out, but I think it is a good starting point.
No matter what society you live, the advice is the same: try not to get sick.
Health Care in the U.S. isn't just bad, its outright fucking brutal. An elderly friend of mine recently fell and went to an urgent care where they couldn't get him into the x-ray machine. They told him to go to an emergency room where he waited for _13_ fucking hours with a broken pelvis. I'm basically 100% sure that such emergency room bullshit literally kills people from stress or exposing them to other sick people. You can't even wait in your damn car and just have them text you - they just force you to sit in this horrible room with a ton of sick people for hours on end.
The U.S. Health Care system absolutely fucking blows.
You realize we're discussing the US which has all this?
> beauracracy.
It's funny you mention this, because the US spends vastly more on bureaucracy in its health systems than other developed nations.
those are all there because the people that created the system did not think paying for it was good enough. it doesn't have to be that way. and even with wait times being long you still eventually get it. in the privatized system if you are poor and have bad health care you don't get it at all.
As if Medicare didn't reject millions of claims too.
A number of physicians just don't accept Medicare because it's subpar.
Heh.