Friday, June 12, 2009

health insurance

The hot topic presented lately by pres. Obama. The debate started on it is excellent. However, the variables are numerous, as well as the parties involved. On one hand, you have the consumer, the patient, who wants access to quality medical services. It's not like anybody in the US loves to go see doctors, spend time in hospitals and so on. So it is clear that there are the necessary medical services, non-elective, where people need to have access.
On the other hand, there are the medical services providers who want, evidently, more and more money, more liberty in selecting the insurers they want to work with and liberty in price formulation.
And, of course, the part blamed by most, the insurance companies, who would prefer to insure just healthy people and drop them at the first sign of sickness.
If this government is going to be able to solve 2 basic issues, access to emergency (or rather urgent, acute, indispensable) health services for everybody and solving the problem many people have with being dropped for previous medical problems. No pain, no gain. And no necessity to go to the doctor.
This legislation should consider all parties involved and put them together in the negotiation. There is never gonna be a win-win in this case, but, as the lawyers can do pro bono work, so would the doctors be able to work with a basic public insurance plan for a small part of their patients.
Looking over the ensemble situation, it is very simple. Exactly as with profit taxes, you can't expect all your patients to pay the same amount, but the final amount gets compensated overall. And exactly like this, the insurance companies cannot expect to only have healthy patients. Assume the responsibility not only for your billions gained, but also for people's lives, for costly treatments, such as cancer, and so on.

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