Its amazing, the same arguments that applied in 1961 apply today. Government control leads to coercion, corruption, waste, and a loss of freedom for individuals. Freedom is choice, government involvement reduces choices. Always.
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- "People should not fear the government, government should fear the people." - V
3 comments:
The US should have a system like Taiwan
Under this model, citizens have free range to choose hospitals and physicians without using a gatekeepers, Working people do not have to worry about losing their jobs or changing jobs because they will not lose their insurance.
Most preventive services are free such as annual checkups and maternal and child care. Regular office visits have co-payments as low as US $5 per visit. Co-payments are fixed and unvaried by the person’s income.
Every enrollee has a Health IC smart card. This credit-card-size card only contains a kilobyte of memory that includes provider and patient profiles to identify and reduce Insurance Fraud, overcharges, duplication of services and tests. The physician puts the card into a reader and the patient’s medical history and prescriptions come up on a computer screen. The insurer is billed the medical bill and it is automatically paid.
Patients and doctors alike are very satisfied with NHI. Satisfaction has been in the 70 percent range. However, at the beginning of 2006, satisfaction decreased to the mid-60 percent range because the program needed more money to cover its services. Since then, satisfaction has gone back to the 70 percent range.
Taiwan has the lowest administration cost in the world of 2 percent
Taiwan spends a little over 6 percent in GDP and less than US $900 per person...less than half what the US spends
One problem that Taiwan faces is rising health care costs. Taiwanese don't bring in enough money to pay for all the services they offer. But Taiwan's politicians are reluctant to increase premiums: they're afraid the voters will punish them.
What they need to do is to increase their spending from 6 percent to , say, 8 percent. A modest increase and Still a far cry from the 15-16% here in the US
The US model is unsustainable. The US spends more than twice what other countries spend on health care per citizen. 15% of gdp. That is way too much to be spending on health care. And year after year the cost of healthcare far outstrips the rate of inflation.
Either we make changes now....or else and enraged consumers will force more drastic changes down the road.
For me, I say let the US system keep going down the road it is going...to the point where we are paying 3 or 4 times what the rest of the world is paying and healthcare costs are eating up 20-25% of gdp.
At that point you won't have too many Americans left won't be looking at the health care system other countries like Taiwan with envy.
Thank you for your horribly weak argument in favour of central planning.
The "U.S. model" that we call capitalism could be improved, but no one can prove that it is "unsustainable". It seems to be sustaining just fine. As far as 15% of GDP being "too much" to spend on health care - based on what? Because it is more than the rest of the world spends? Since when do we set our standards on what the rest of the world does? We spend more on health care because we demand quality, and that is a very capitalist thing to do.
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