HughJimBissel brought up an excellent, larger point about healthcare, and I think it’s a point worthy of discussion. Here goes…
I have VA healthcare for my serviced-induced problems, and Tricare military health insurance for everything else. It’s good enough insurance that I generally don’t consider the cost of healthcare when deciding whether or not to see a doctor. This means I have the ability to get health problems addressed while they’re still relatively manageable and inexpensive. My healthcare is also portable—meaning it isn’t tied to my employer. Thus I can take jobs without considering health benefits, which is better for me and for my employer.
I often hear people defend military healthcare with “they earned better healthcare”. This argument implies that insurance companies have some form of right to decide how much each of us gets fleeced, and do so based on weird criteria like whether or not we served in the military, got elected to Congress, work for a Fortune 500 company, etc. None of that has squat to do with how much risk each of us presents to the health insurance pool.
That’s stupid.
Further, linking health insurance quality to employment guarantees those of us who consume healthcare do so in fragmented little insurance pools. This adds unnecessary overhead and prevents us from bargaining effectively with our insurers and providers.
This is stupid and wasteful.
What we need is a single, massive insurance pool that minimizes overhead, maximizes dollars available for healthcare, and wipes a lot of no-value-added cost centers completely out of existence. All of us should be spreading risk and sharing expenses across the same pool. Spread risk is what insurance companies are supposed to do.
A common argument against socialized healthcare is that “we’ll have rationing because people will overuse it”. Bullshit. I have essentially free healthcare and I’ve lived with minor health problems simply because I couldn’t be bothered to go to the doctor for flu symptoms. My family and I, and all of the military people I know, don’t clog military hospital waiting rooms just because we have cheap access to healthcare. I didn’t get my wife or kids from Planet Stoic, and I’m sure as hell not the vision of superior health. We’re normal people who use healthcare normally. Babies and vasectomies and flu shots and stuff.
I could rattle on, but the bottom line is that our current healthcare system isn’t good for us, isn’t good for business, and isn’t an efficient use of resources.