Reduce parallel play to provide decent health care for all

I have been doing health care research and advocacy for over 20 years. I’ve seen a lot of passion, anger, and rhetoric around the issues. The health care crisis is simple in that everyone needs health care. The question is what to do about it and who should pay for it. It’s not an easy answer. For starters, we have turned into a culture of entitlement. This includes health care. It might be a “right,” but someone has to pay for it. And we want to pretend that it’s someone else’s responsibility. Recently, I was reading comments following an article on an online news outlet. I was struck by how little understanding there is about how health care and insurance work. For example, going to the emergency room because one does not have health care, is not free. The desire to not pay for insurance, as a “right to choose” gives the rest of us the “right” to pay for that unpaid bill. The hospitals, by law, have to take everyone who comes, regardless of whether or not they can pay. Therefore, the hospitals treat that patient, in the emergency room or in another part of the hospital, which means the rest of us pay that bill via our tax dollars. It’s all about risk pools and how it all works. I’m not really sure how anyone would gain this understanding. For a long period of time for many people, insurance just paid. We paid our premiums, or those premiums were paid by our employer or a government program, and most of our bills we...
Source: Kevin, M.D. - Medical Weblog - Category: General Medicine Authors: Tags: Policy Psychiatry Public Health & Washington Watch Source Type: blogs