Our Great Helath Care System

[Jenny A]

The best appears to be a combination of private and government.

That's what we had. 46% government and another 40% mandated insurance. Now we have 46% government and 54% mandated insurance.

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1) We most certainly do have a private health care system. The 50 employees is only recently and isn't a burden on the company. Nor did the government require any company to provide health care before. It was voluntary because they wanted to attract good employees.

Medicare is far cheaper than private healthcare and so is Medicaid.

Indeed, because the government demands to be paid at a discount. That's why private payments are so high, to make the discount affordable to hospitals and doctors.

2)It isn't the hospitals that don't get paid, it is the patient that doesn't get treated or ends up paying themselves.

Emergency wards are required to treat whether they get paid or not.

3) We most certainly do have a market based healthcare system. It is the doctors and insurance company's that determine the price.

If the government foots 46% of the bill, how is that private? And the government is heavily involved in the price of that 46%.

4) Bad idea. It is only in large numbers that we can influence price. If an individual was to go looking for insurance they would pay out the ears for it because they aren't able to scale prices by bringing in a large group. If we were actually shopping doctors for price then we would really be screwed because we wouldn't be able to negotiate lower prices as the insurance company's do.

I don't want individuals to go shopping for insurance prices. I want them to go shopping for procedure prices.
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There are two areas of health care not much covered by insurance where the patient has to pay more or less directly most of the time: dental care and eye care. Guess which areas don't have such rapidly rising prices?