Hurray! Waiting for hours! Problems! Snags!
As a sign-up deadline approached, Obamacare administrators heralded the long lines people endured to apply for a permitted insurance policy. The lines supposedly proved Obamacare’s invulnerable popularity.
Had officials not been told about the new penalties for taxpayers who lack insurance? That millions have lost policies thanks to Obamacare and see no alternative but to wait in Obamacare lines? That sometimes people procrastinate … especially about doing things they dislike?
Do the persons foisting Obamacare on us not see, at least, that it reduces the alternatives of persons who don’t want it?
There’s a better way, and the evidence is not only historical.
Despite the accelerating decline of medical freedom, private initiatives that sweep aside bureaucratic status quos are still possible. One example is what Carmine Gallo calls “The Hospital Steve Jobs Would Have Built.” This is the Walnut Hill Medical Center’s reimagining of “health care and the patient experience.”
The vision for the Dallas center was inspired by Gallo’s book on how Apple builds customer loyalty — despite lacking power to financially penalize non-buyers of Apple products. Everything from what kind of person Walnut Hill hires and how new hires are trained to floor plans and decor is designed to make patients feel the opposite of being stuck in a veterans hospital or in an Obamacare waiting list.
What achievements and alternatives in medical care will we never see because of the choices and resources being destroyed by Obamacare?
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
7 replies on “Marketcare versus Obamacare”
Do you realize that Steve Jobs would have made healthcare efficient in every aspect? That means whacking the cost side as well as appealing to the consumer-note: we don’t make iphones in the US. Hospitals and healthcare don’t really have a revenue problem. They have a cost problem. Doctors, being very smart people, over the decades have convinced insurance companies and the government that their services are quite expensive. So insurance companies and government went along. Now, the government wants to fix the fixes without really tackling the out of whack cost side. Nurses making $80k/yr are a dime a dozen. Surgeons making multiple millions/year are a dime a dozen.
What would a free market support in terms of compensation? That is the real question. All ACA has done is shift the power to insurance companies, not the free market.
Go to youtube and watch Milton address the AMA and tell them he would actually eliminate medical licenses because they create monopolies in care, He would let the free market decide who gives good medical care, not the government.
Rick, part of the problem IS THE INSURANCE COMPANIES AND THE GOVERNMENT.
Consider, there are now (I think the number is 50,000+ —I am not sure, but a lot) of codes, for services. A few years ago, a WSJ blog about this showed how ridiculous some of this was. There were, for example, if someone had a broken thumb, different codes if the right or left thumb, how it might have been broken, etc.
A doctor I know (a specialist) spent somewhere in the low to mid 5 digits (no cents- all dollars) for a new program, for the new codes.
And, the government spent several years devising this.
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As for my own experience with insurance companies in 2 states- I think that they hire mentally challenged people, or, if not, people whose sole job is to deny, deny, deny. Probably the latter.
My views and 5 cents worth
Love the designation Marketcare. Almost as much as I love to refer to ACA as Gulagacare.
Jay,
The problem is the providers. My grandaughter went to the local er a few weeks ago. My son was just billed $9500 for an MRI!!!! +$2400 for the 4 hours stay in the ER!!!
ACA will BREAK the middle class when they start getting the bills. I was actually for ACA because it is the beginning of the END of medical care providers holding a gun to your head to demand the deed to your house for needing their services for 36 hours. But alas it will take a few years and 100s of 1000s of bankruptcies to end it.
Rick, the problem isn’t the providers. All the corporations, associations, non-profits, and hospitals have gotten in bed with government, to get government favors (limiting competition, government payments for care they provide, approval to put a health insurance on the Obamcare exchange, government approval for new drugs/procedures, etc.) at our expense.
If the government didn’t have the power to intervene in the medical care marketplace, then they wouldn’t be able to sell favors. If the politicians chose to not sell favors, then we wouldn’t have the problem either.
The problem is the government intervention in the medical marketplace. That a provided billed you a lot, just occurs because the government doesn’t allow the competition to advertise and bill you less.
You may do better not using medical insurance given the messed up incentives government has created. One guy was quoted a price of $20,000 for a hernia operation thru his insurance, but he got the operation done for $3000 paying out of pocket. http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424127887324139404579017113415486176
Medical must be the only product that requires you to buy before they give you the price. I had a test (the technology is decades old) done by a technician and the cost was $900. More than four times what I pay for an hour in a dentist’s chair. By the time I paid the bill (after finding a job) the bill had dropped by more than two thirds.
There should be an ability to shop for prices of tests and go to labs or testing facilities which cater to the customer.
The problem now is that insurance companies (and the Feds, thanks to Medicare and Medicaid) are the customer.
There is no competition. ACA did nothing to fix this problem. It only made it worse.
Regarding the hospital “Steve Jobs would have built”, how many people could afford it? The personal care they are giving is reflected in the cost. Most people don’t stay at five-star hotels when the three-star meets their needs. For many, the five-star is an unnecessary indulgence. If we’ve done our homework, we also know before we check in what the price will be. Retailers post their prices. That is not something that most hospitals will divulge. In an emergency, it’s all moot anyway.