Originally posted by: MaxFlavor
Absolutely!
The reason I like the French model, and it seems you didn't like this part, is that everyone gets basic health insurance, and the folks who can pay more can buy more. It's not single payer that makes sure everyone has complete coverage, but people can go out on the open market and buy the additional coverage they want. Benefit? Potentially less costly for a basic provided benefit compared to the coverages offered now from employers.
My current health insurance plan, from a publicly traded billion-dollar company, costs $10,258.08 per year. I pay $69.78 per pay period, and the company pays $296.58. Seems like a corporate tax, doesn't it?
Remember when you recently said this?
"Originally posted by: tom
Right in line with what I was paying yearly for coverage from my wife's employer. Seems reasonable.
For 2 people that would be $23,000."
Like I said right in line, WITHOUT employer subsidies.
How would I handle it? As a quasi-government insurance company, similar to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. In Colorado, Pinnacle Insurance handles workers' comp insurance as a quasi-government insurance company overseen by a board appointed by the governor.
Set up an insurance company, run by insurance people as a non-profit, have a board that oversees it, and offer basic medical coverage. Well visits, birth control, ER visits, Urgent care visits, minor specialist, etc. Then a base percentage coverage for major medical, specialist, and long-term hospital stays.
At this point have an open national market from private/public health insurance companies that can provide additional benefits to anyone who can afford to buy them.
How to pay for the basic coverage? Glad you asked, the same companies are paying, in my case, $8,304.24 per year to subsidize mine. The national coverage offered would be less than my current coverage and, hopefully, benefit from the "Law of large numbers", to bring the annual cost per person down.
Not to be pedantic, but what you're describing is "economies of scale." The idea that the more units are produced, the more customers served, etc , the lower the marginal cost: that of the next unit produced or customer served. So adding more customers/making more widgets lowers the prices consumers pay.
The above is one of the strongest arguments extant for one single coordinated healthcare system.
The Law of Large Numbers is a probability concept that states that as more individual results accumulate, the overall result will converge on expectation--but the absolute difference between result and expectation will, somewhat counteruntuitively, grow larger. The practical application of this concept is that "it'll all even out in the long run" is a fallacy.
