Doctor stops accepting insurance, posts prices online (opens in new tab)

The cost of food is very predictable and pretty flexible. Anyone who needs to can eat well on <$100/week as long as they have access to a reasonably-priced grocery store and facilities to cook and store food. (Also, note that even our barebones welfare state includes foodstamps.)

On the other hand, medical costs can vary wildly and randomly. A perfectly healthy person who's been following health best practices might suddenly develop a serious condition that is treatable, but only with five to six figures of treatment.

There are allowances for food. That's what government schemes like income support is for. That's what state pensions are for. They're there to cover the bare essentials (food, water, heating and -to a lesser degree- rent).

The problem is such schemes are abused by many individuals where parents refuse to work because they'd "earn" more money from income support and such like. Those that know how to work the system to afford luxuries instead of the money going to towards the essentials to survive. But that's a whole other topic.

Are people not using this argument for food? Almost every developed country have substantial social welfare programs to ensure that everyone can get access to food and housing.

While there may be much debate regarding who should receive them I don't think anyone in the UK is arguing that we should get rid of social benefits.

Exactly. Your country has just chosen to draw the line at a slightly different point.

I am just guessing here.. but it is much harder to manage because it would be a nightmare to distribute food for every single meal, every single day to all those who need it. Medical care is different. Most people don't have to walk into a hospital three times a day to get their daily care (hopefully)

really? As an ethnic minority, whose diseases are underresearched, and for whom drug safety and efficacy are unlikely to be statisically well-validated, I'd be paying into a system that disproportionately helps, well, to be crude, white men. That's just the way medicine is. Maybe it's just me, but I'd like to have the freedom to opt out of a system that redistributes to the already privileged.

It's not possible for any other system to be civilized?

The source is pretty clear: taxes. My guess it that ratio of tax money spent on health care vs. money spent on killing people (military) does not look nice.

You are right it's more of a "should we provide medical coverage for our citizens or continue tax cuts for the wealthy?"

Failing to wash my car or change my oil does not lead to theft or covered accidents, so the insurance company does not care.

Failing to get routine medical care, on the other hand, does increase the risk of conditions that insurance does cover. Hence, the insurance company does care about my routine medical care, and so covers it to encourage it.

This is why my health insurance company constantly sends me emails with fitness tips and other health suggestions, whereas my auto insurance company has not once sent me any tips on washing my car.

So, I'm glad you got into the subject of car washes and oil changes. We're trying to regulate car washes so that we can control that market - otherwise, let's say we succeed in a federated model where to be a car wash practitioner you must go through 14 years of very competitive school costing about $1M all told, with a car wash residency on top. This might bring car wash technique into the 21st century, it would result in amazing advances in research, everything from new detergents to car wash garage equipment that makes what we see now seem absolutely third-world. Yes, it would cost $2000-$8000 for a basic wash, but that's actually a low price to pay for clean cities and sanitation, and also it's the list price. Yes, a lot of people would stop washing their cars, that is a personal choice. For the oil changes, we're in a better position - you MUST change your oil from time to time, otherwise you will suffer catastrophic engine damage. People have very little choice. So here, we can get up into the $8000's or so, based on what happens if you don't change your oil. Again, with amazing research and so forth. How many prestigious oil change journals do you think there are today? It is just third world at the moment, this is why we need the medical model here.

Then there's the usual benefits, one of the main points of leverage employers would have over any of their employees who drive or are even thinking of driving, is that in fact en masse the employer could ensure these workers for oil changes for a tiny fraction of that list price. Maybe as low as only $500-$800 per month.

This keeps people from being "self-starters" who fail to produce value for large companies, instead they would have to negotiate with our federated program on a per-individual basis.

But there is a big problem with both of the above utopias: unlicensed practitioners. Sure, if you look at the third world where people are free to try to put whatever they want into their cars, anything from sand to little pieces of plastic toys they melt down - at great risk to all drivers on the road should the cars explode, not to mention to themselves - the oil change prices are very low. Barely the cost of oil that has next to no research into it, plus labor that is about the skill-level of a barber in the middle ages. They do not have 14 or even 12 years of schooling, nor debts even reaching $200K let alone an amount that would motivate them to keep charging the federated prices.

So the first step toward utopia is really, we have to clamp down on unlicensed car washes and oil changes. We need a board certification that includes deep understanding of all parts that make up a car, from basic metallurgy to internal combustion and battery technology chemistry. Yes, some people will wash out of metallurgy classes, or projectile calculus, but are these really the people you want taking care of your only means of transportation?

Transportation is literally one of the few things that separates us from people in the middle ages, allows us to live and work more than a few meters apart, and enables us to live meaningful lives. Without transportation, we have nothing.

So it makes sense to clamp down on the unregulated practices related to serious procedures such as oil changes as well as elective, cosmetic procedures like a car wash. Where the prices are such that certain individuals might not be able to bear the full burden, that's EXACTLY what insurance is for!

That's great for those who can afford it. Not so great when it means you skimp on doctors visits until things get serious because the choice is going to the doctor or going hungry or being unable to pay rent. And not so great for society when we get to pick up the tab anyway when people delay going to the doctor and get so seriously ill they need emergency care, because we'd rather not have people dying in the streets.

There's a reason pretty much no developed nations have opted to be without universal healthcare.

Check out HSA.

Can be used with high-deductible insurance. You can still file the claim yourself, even if you pay the doctor cash. Once you reached the deductible limit (paying with HSA), the normal insurance will kick in. With $8,000 limit that must be pretty serious stuff anyway.

You don't need to pay with insurance.