Fediverse memes

25 years ago, health care used to be more affordable. That was before the insurance companies paid for everything, and before hospitals were privatized and consolidated. Doctors could not charge a lot because people paid cash, and people would choose doctors with affordable rates. But now with copays, people think that the doctor costs $30. So the doctors charge hundreds of dollars to the insurance companies, knowing that if the patients paid cash themselves, they would refuse to pay such high charges. These higher fees just get passed back to the patient in the form of higher insurance premiums. So insurance is inflationary. The cost of healthcare is pushed up.

Government insurance tries to handle this by putting caps on what providers can charge, but you still have the problem of rationing of healthcare based on available funds, and it also gives bureaucrats control over your healthcare. It has all of the same problems as private health insurance, except it is run by the government. And if it is centralized, you can't go anywhere else for a second opinion. If they say no, you are screwed. So that is not ideal either.

If you abolish all private healthcare, then you only have government clinics, and the problem with that is that they can deny you care if they don't like you (a political dissident) or if they don't have the budget to pay for everyone's care.

Instead of any of those, you need some kind of system that is not inflationary, is affordable, and that gives people choices in their care. If one provider says no, they can go to another. The current system is really bad, but most of the alternatives that people suggest are just as bad or worse. If you want a better system, it must include patient choice.