From the May 2017 issue of HealthCare Business News magazine
Unfortunately, all of these scenarios are commonplace in medicine. Over 60 percent of personal bankruptcies in the U.S. are due to medical bills. They are, however, not due to a lack of having health insurance, as many would assume. In most cases, they are filed by people who thought they would be covered by their insurance, but were unexpectedly presented with a grossly inflated bill that was denied coverage by their insurance carrier. I can attest that such a scenario is now seemingly commonplace with the patients thinking they were covered, but the insurance company refuses payment, often with little logic or explanation of the denial of payment.
The only way to successfully reform health care in the U.S. is to transform the bureaucratic, corrupt system of payment for health care goods and services with a free-market system that provides universal coverage. To achieve this, a successful plan will require five fundamental components that drive down the cost of health care:
• There must be free-market, consistent pricing regardless of method of payment with no penalty (or discount) for payment at the time of service (the insurance system will only be for emergencies).
• Put an end to corporate monopolies and corruption.
• The consumer must have knowledge of the pricing and have an incentive to get the product or service at the lower price by being able to compare pricing of different providers, empowering and allowing patients to decide how best to use their health care dollars.
• Bureaucrats must stop thinking that increasing patients’ options of third-party payers is a free-market solution and stop believing that more choices of insurance carriers will significantly lower long-term health care costs.
• Routine care will be covered by HSAs so patients can shop for the best prices. This should not be difficult, as shortly after such a requirement is in place, many websites will certainly compile the prices and help consumers compare prices to make the best decisions when spending their health care dollars.
The overall cost savings would be more than enough to allow the government to provide universal health care. A further benefit, however, is that many of those without any form of insurance in the proposed system would actually be better off than those currently with some of the best insurance plans because the free-market price for products and services will frequently be less than the total amount of out-of-pocket money, including co-pays, deductibles and expense sharing, that is typically required with current health care plans.
