>>But I believe it ends up being more expensive to choose not to cover things like checkups.
No it would probably cost more. Preventive care doesn't save money, it adds to costs. Which doesn't mean its a bad thing, it can improve results, but that's a different point. And increasing third party payment for it, increases costs even more.
Also where not dealing with the poor who can't afford checkups. They are currently covered in other ways which, unless there was additional changes, they would retain instead of, or in addition to, this catastrophic plan idea.<<
I'm not sure why you say preventive care doesn't save money. You state that as if it is an established fact.
Let's examine one case, chosen at random from among a sample of one. If my cancer had been caught earlier, my care over the past three years may well have cost a tenth of what it has. I could easily have had only one surgery instead of four. I could have avoided months of chemotherapy and radiation. These treatments are not cheap. We're talking about saving $900,000 or more for just one patient. It would take a lot of checkups for a lot of people to equal that amount.
And let's get serious, here. It's not just the poor, who are covered by Medicaid, who avoid seeing the doctor for checkups or what seem like minor things if they have to pay out of pocket. There are a lot of middle class families in this country that are just barely making it. |
