Just give everyone a voucher and let them buy their own health insurance using it.
The amount of paperwork, and details to keep track of and calculate was absolutely unreal. I have BOXES full of paper from medicare, there was so much I could barely keep up.
The worst was the arcane and utterly confusing rules on eligibility: if this, or if that, or you live here, or there, for these dates, and that deadline. I felt like I needed an AI just to figure it all out (and in hindsight my understanding was completely wrong, and I chose the wrong option).
Sounds like you need a better system in the US. Maybe not so many different stakeholders in the system?
They have to compete with each other, if they were confusing no one would sign up.
> Sounds like you need a better system in the US.
It does work for most people, it's the edge cases that fail.
> Maybe not so many different stakeholders in the system?
Making medicare normal would require much higher taxes (medicare/medicaid hospital payments are below costs and are subsidized by commercial plans). People would then save money on commercial plans.
Net dollars would not change, or maybe go down, but the distribution would change, some winners, some losers.
- Banking regulations
- government backed healthcare
- gun control
- education system
They outspend nearly everyone on public health and education and yet still have outcomes in the lower half of the developed world for what those programs are supposed to address. And instead of actually owning up to the poor outcomes and trying to fix them they just blame blacks and latinos for pulling down the average.
That might be a good idea. In fact, it is very likely a good idea, for some global notion of 'good.' But people on Medicare would be, shall we say, vocal in their complaint.
If we stopped doing that hospitals could publish actual prices for procedures - same price for everybody, insurance or not. Then people could actually shop around and healthcare costs would drop.
But today prices have to be secret and impossible to understand or the way commercial plans fund medicare would collapse.
Handing out "free" money has worked so well for higher education. How will vouchers solve the problem of skyrocketing health care costs?
And parent even used the sarcasm tag. :-) Parent doesn't need it explained, but some American citizens apparently do: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/prescription...
