undefined | Better HN

0 pointsThomPete16y ago0 comments

"Private insurance for extremely expensive drugs, experimental or high risk treatments, and life support once you are brain dead."

But isn't this exactly the problem in the model?

Most people can't afford the high risk expensive treatments so you are basically just bankrupting them.

The expensive treatment is the treatment that we "really" need, but also that which is without reach for most of us.

By keeping the expensive treatment in the public domain as long as the private sector hasn't found a way to commodify it. So that people in general have access to it, seems to be a fair way of doing it.

If only the rich can afford treatments that are expensive you could might as well keep the old system.

0 comments

1 comments · 1 top-level

Retric16y ago

It depends on what you mean by expensive. In home nursing care is horribly expensive on a benefit per dollar spent. Open heart surgery can be far cheaper relative to medical benefit.

Look at the Japan model where public money is used to drive costs down but there is a side channel for private hospital rooms, in home care, homeopathy, and other things which provide little benefit vs cost.

Basically, everyone get's the high reward treatments, but when it comes to drugs which might possibly reduce your risk for X slightly, well that's up to you.

PS: If it's cheep and does little it's still expensive relative to gain.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse