I think Ann Coulter is on to something.
Right now, there’s no free market because insurance is insanely regulated not only by Obamacare, but also by the most corrupt organizations in America: state insurance commissions. (I’m talking to you, New York!)
Federal and state laws make it illegal to sell health insurance that doesn’t cover a laughable array of supposedly vital services based on bureaucrats’ medical opinions of which providers have the best lobbyists.
As a result, it’s illegal to sell health insurance that covers any of the medical problems I’d like to insure against. Why can’t the GOP keep Obamacare for the greedy — but make it legal for Ann to buy health insurance?
This is how it works today:
ME: I’m perfectly healthy, but I’d like to buy health insurance for heart disease, broken bones, cancer, and everything else that a normal person would ever need, but no more.
INSURANCE COMPANY: That will be $700 a month, the deductible is $35,000, no decent hospital will take it, and you have to pay for doctor’s visits yourself. But your plan covers shrinks, infertility treatments, sex change operations, autism spectrum disorder treatment, drug rehab and 67 other things you will never need.
INSURANCE COMPANY UNDER ANN’S PLAN: That will be $50 a month, the deductible is $1,000, you can see any doctor you’d like, and you have full coverage for any important medical problems you could conceivably have in a million years.
Mine is a two-step plan (and you don’t have to do the second step, so it’s really a one-step plan).
STEP 1: Congress doesn’t repeal Obamacare! Instead, Congress passes a law, pursuant to its constitutional power to regulate interstate commerce, that says: “In America, it shall be legal to sell health insurance on the free market. This law supersedes all other laws, taxes, mandates, coverage requirements, regulations or prohibitions, state or federal.”
The end. Love, Ann.
There’s much more at the link. Recommended reading.
That makes an awful lot of sense . . . which is why it’s unlikely to be passed by the politicians – not enough opportunities for graft, corruption and “election campaign contributions” from the healthcare industry. Nevertheless, that’s what health insurance is supposed to be – insurance against unexpected problems. It was never intended to pay for routine, foreseeable care that anyone and everyone should be budgeting for as part of their monthly financial routine!
Peter
While I'm not a big fan of Ann Coulter, when she's right she's right, and I think this time she's right.
Yes, I want something I can pick coverage options for, that is portable, that doesn't make me pay for things I don't need (like… male-specific, or inherited conditions), that is portable, that lets me see any physician I need to (no restricted lists), and that is portable.
LittleRed1
Yup, I've been looking for this plan all my life. I can pay out of pocket for checkups, or even something as major as stitches or resetting a broken bone… I just don't want to lose my house if I have a heart attack and need bypass surgery.
Only thing I'd add would be "Any individual, organization or entity engaged in the delivery of medical services shall have a prominently posted list of charges, in U.S. dollars and printed in English, for every service or procedure offered, such charges to be consistently applied regardless of payment method, and to include line item breakdown of sub-charges where applicable and be made available prior to any engagement of services."
Crazy Jake
You Americans make me laugh. You never want to pay for anything that is part of the common good, probably explains the mess in Iraq and Afghanistan. The simple fact is that in a country as wealthy as yours you should not have people with cancerous growths having to wait until they are a certain size before they are treated, at which point they are terminal anyway. You shouldn't have 18yr old kids who have type 1 diabetes that when they leave home or come of their parents healthcare can not afford to pay for the insulin and can't get health cover for it.
i accept the NHS is not perfect mainly because we only pay 11% of GDP rather than the 13% to 15% that is the norm in Germany and France. But the US spends nearly 25% of its income on Health Care. You get no better service than Germany were treatment and recovery rates are a lot higher, so someone is ripping you off. The simple answer is Doctors/nurses and big Pharma who basically earn enormous profits out of the system. A general doctor earning $250,000 would just be unheard of in Europe. The insurance companies are not to blame, they have restricted lists etc to try and contain costs to try and make health care affordable, look at their profit margins they are very very thin. This article aims the blame at the wrong people insurance companies and the alleged feckless. When in reality the profiteers are the Medical profession and the victims are those with life long conditions through no fault of their own condemned to death because they are not rich enough at 18 to pay for their own private healthcare, because as a community the USA doesn't care about anybody.
Sorry guys but this is just plain wrong, I think you need to look at the problem from another perspective not just one of being a ripped of consumer.
To Anonymous at 4:28:
You sanctimonious Europeans make me angry. First, your questionable "data" undermines your whole opinion posting. Second, your sarcastic allusions to world conditions and the role of America in the world is a red herring: we may not have perfect solutions to every international kerfuffle, but we've bailed out your sorry socialist asses every time you've needed it. While our social attitude varies over time, the most common downward trends seem to come when we try to imitate European attitudes. Always, we must backtrack from those deviant actions and adopt more American values to undo the damage wrought by the Lefties.
So retreat into your cloud of smug swamp and keep your laughter to yourself.
Good Day, Sir.
I used to purchase something very similar to Ann's policy in MA before the 1997 "reforms" there made the individual insurance market plans there unaffordable to me — and to the majority of those in the same situation, judging from the historical data. The (intentional?) failure of those reforms is part of what begat Romneycare.
I've lived & had treatment under 4 different "National Health" type systems outside of the USA, and if the US was to use any of them as a model, I would vote for Germany's.
The first time I heard a physician say something like"this needs urgent specialist treatment, if it is not treated right away you risk permanent disability, so we have scheduled you for the first available appointment with an NHS specialist which is 12 weeks from now. Try not to stand or walk until then" I thought they were joking, but sadly that sort of delay in care is all too common in UK NHS and Canadian provincial care, and it is reflected in outcomes when one does apples-to-apples comparisons. A controversy the year I left Canada was a study showing that in one province only 19% of cancer patients needing post-op chemotherapy got it within a reasonable time.
Thus when my friends from those countries extoll the virtues of their vaunted NHS etc; they aren't comparing outcome statistics, but access, and their US data for comparison comes from some imaginary nightmare USA where EMTALA, Medicaid, and Medicare don't exist and where walk-in clinics and A&E departments won't take cash or credit-card payments from "voluntarily" uninsured customers with means to pay.
Dear Europeans, here's a fact your (and our) MSM neglect: In a multiracial society, some groups have more children, more STDs, commit more crimes, suffer (and dish out) more gunshot wounds, and use more welfare per capita. Nice systems like the German one were created during and work just fine for homogeneous societies. Forcing single payer on America will exterminate the middle class and enslave the entire society to a communist system.
Forcing a 'smooth running' system on a society you don't understand is autistic and a guarantee for civil war. Imagine you're a young White working class man with no perspective, and you see your taxes paying for minorities and illegals with anchor babies who will replace you. Just imagine what this is doing to social cohesion.