Conscious Conservative Health Care

Before health insurance was linked to employment, there was another insurance model. People like Dr. Ron Paul have called it “health insurance like car insurance” to make it easier to understand. These policies were usually called “major medical” or “hospitalization” policies. Some of them were specific, like “cancer” policies, although those were often inferior products.

Health insurance should go away in it s current form. Health insurance currently shifts the cost of healthcare from consumers to employers and the government. That creates an image of a never ending deep pocket that increases the prices charged incredibly. If people had to pay for their own services, the prices of those services who go to what regular people, not a mega-corporation or government agency, can afford.

With a major medical policy, people pay for their own regular visits to the doctor an tests. This sounds horrible because of the inflated pricing, but it wasn’t. Going to a doctor used to cost about $10 ($60-$70 in today’s money) and tests were only a couple of dollars ($10-$15 in today’s money). We were starting to have a comeback of that in our area with $35 medical clinics, until the ACA shut all of them down. What the major medical paid was emergencies that cost more than a preset amount and hospital stays. Another thing with major medical is that they didn’t care about pre-existing conditions, unless it was so far advanced that a person would end up in the hospital soon. There was not an extra cost to insure people with pre-existing conditions, because the insurance company was not on the hook for every doctor’s visit, test, etc.

A couple of government reforms may help facilitate this. One is making medical services and insurance tax deductible for individuals. It is for employers and that is one of the things that supports the employer based health care system. The other is requiring upfront pricing for health care services. Health care is the only service of which I am aware that sends you a bill for thousands of dollars a year after you have agreed upon the price and received the service.  This could simply be abolished by a law rendering these bills void.