Health Care Reform: Real Change

Being bombarded constantly with the health care reform or more aptly - health insurance reform - I can't help but voice my frustration. Perhaps it will help me feel better. Now I am a bit of a radical and the change I propose would be real change. People are advocating for single payer insurance (where there is only one large insurance entity thus only one entity that pays health care bills) or continuing with the current multi-payer system. The real problem here is that both of those systems are still third party payer systems. In other words the person seeking health care is not the one paying for the service.

This is the root of the problem and we are not even looking in that direction! Believe me you do not want someone else paying for your health care. A third party by nature has in their main interest controlling cost. Health care providers like doctors are then put in the position of having to satisfy the requirements of the third party provider rather than the patient.

Why not set up health insurance just like any other insurance like life insurance where you can purchase fixed amounts of coverage based on what illness you might contract? Should you develop some illness you would receive a lump some payment to help pay for the costs of curing your illness. This would have a couple of effects: First it places a much greater focus on coming up with cures for illnesses rather than treatments. A patient would not be limited in any sense to where they seek treatment and payments to doctors would come in cash from the patient. This would save a ton of money in administrative costs. It also now makes the healthcare industry compete for payments from the party most interested in getting cured - the patient. Insurance companies can also manage their exposure to risk better - they will always know their exposure when someone gets an illness - which will help them offer better plans.

The last thing we want is the government to become the single payer for health care. Why? Because the government has the power by law to force us to pay for things we may not want. It is the only set up where healthcare costs can continue to explode and we would have to pay for it by law! Is that really a situation you want to be in? Factually it is "more of the same" of the system we already have in place.

So lets bring about real change for our health care system - don't bring about single payer or stay with any variation of third party payer like employer based group healthcare plans. ce.