>> I think it's a fallacy to attribute it to profit. You need to change the payment schedule to correct that. (Also need to change the law that encourages defensive medicine and the screening protocols, both reasons for excessive tests.) It is possible (although not necessarily preferable) to do so within a for-profit framework.
There may be a case to be made for taking the profit out but you need more than what you offered to make it.<<
I'm not going to try to make a complete case for that in an SI post. But I have some comments.
There is profit at every level, for every service that is provided, throughout the healthcare system, from the insurer to the doctors and hospitals, the testing centers, the medical equipment suppliers, and the pharmaceutical companies. I don't think that every bit of that profit can be removed, but it seems clear that some of it could come out with the result that overall healthcare costs would be lower.
Of course, other factors such as high malpractice insurance costs contribute as well.
The insurance companies, to my mind, contribute very little value while adding costs. When every private doctor has to hire two or three extra people just to keep up with meeting the different billing requirements of the various insurance companies, something is wrong.
People (not you, I don't think) have suggested that allowing insurance companies to compete across state lines would reduce costs. I, for one, don't see how. Currently, the different states all have different regulations that govern what kinds of plans can be offered, etc. How are those differences going to be resolved if plans are offered across state lines? Too, there are only so many different insurance companies, so I don't really see that there will be that much more competition.
I realize that last paragraph was tangential to what you and I were talking about. I only included it because I've been thinking about it. |
