The people buying the insurance cannot do that math, or evaluate the product they are purchasing.
The person buying insurance doesn't need to '
do the math'; someone else has '
done the math' and is selling that service as part of the insurance. People buying health insurance most certainly CAN evaluate the product they are purchasing.
People don't just *poof* magically appear out of no where, with little to no idea about anything health related. Further, if they needed additional advice they can pay for that advice, not to mention they have a physician who can suggest insurance that would suite them (unless now you're going to say the physician ALSO is clueless about health and health insurance); further they have had PE (a mandatory part of their insurance plan) their entire lives. Thus, they WILL be able to buy the insurance that they feel comfortable buying no different than buying any other insurance, a house, a car, etc...
AND in a free society - healthcare would be CHEAP. 1/100th of what it is now. Or less.
The people paying for the health care are not receiving it, and in most cases do not know (or care) what it is they are paying for.
Yes, it is up to people to think before they buy. That's called being an 'adult'. If they don't feel comfortable - they can *gasp* pay a professional who can give them the advice they need. These same breeders will spend ALL god damn Saturday investigating exactly which iPad they want - they most certainly CAN evaluate an insurance plan with the help of a professional with access to their healthcare records and in consultation with their primary caregiver for Christ's sake. You make it seem as if adults are little babies who need their NaNa to wipe their arse for them.
Believe it or not iceaura, some people do manage to take a poop without tossing their civil liberties out the window. America NEVER HAD a healthcare problem for over a century - until the Government stepped in and 'fixed' it - just like it 'fixes' everything else it touches.
Even your trivial side point there is wrong: Car insurance, for example, differs greatly in the actual mathematics: there is a book value for the car, and the insurance company has the option of totaling it - a fixed upper bound, under control of both buyer and seller. It does not usually cover maintenance and breakdown (the buyer of normal car insurance does not have to pay for fixing his neighbor's car when it breaks down), so it is much simpler to evaluate and most people can do it. It is normally purchased by the one receiving the benefits, whatever they may be. Subsequent technological advances do not add to the cost of a given car's risk, which declines rather than increases over time, and do not have to be figured in. And so forth.
Stawman much? I didn't say they were the exactly the same. Health insurance providers are more than capable of developing in-house mathematical models to provide fair value for price health insurance to their customers within a free-market with competition. The problem isn't insurance algorithms, the problem is the US government and the regulations it imposes all across the healthcare industry including, but in no way limited to, health insurance.
Healthcare insurance is sold in the airport (I recently bought some for my family on a trip). It's relatively straightforward. I've personally known people who got into a mess while overseas and that insurance saved their arse. BUT, I also know people who didn't bother buying any at the airport or with their travel agent - myself included at times when I was young and backpacking in Vietnam. I hurt my knee. I paid out of pocket. Done and done. See how it works? It's called taking responsibility for your actions.
You assume that freeloaders are innocent. I think freeloaders are initiators of force, same as any other thief.
Depends on the freeloader. If you are willing to voluntarily pay them, then it's not 'theft' as you volunteered to give your money to someone. You 'bought' yourself a smug attitude for the day/week/life-time. Don't want freeloaders - then don't pay for freeloaders. It's pretty simple. Use the free-market to develop a society where it's extremely difficult to BE a freeloaders - AND then you won't have to use force against innocent people while at the same time cutting down on the freeloaders in society. Of course, this will mean privatizing all the roads, healthcare, education, money, sewers - everything. Which would of course be the ideal prosperous society. Right now, in this unfree Fascist State we call society, the USSA - the richest 10% own over 80% of ALL the assets. They use the State to steal from the poor and give to themselves. They use patent law, copywrite, thousands of regulations - all to keep the middle class from competing and they buy votes off the poor to maintain the statuesque.
But, don't worry - it'll take 3-5 more generations, then we're start to see equality again as we privatize everything OUT of the top 10%'s hands back to the people. I suspect we'll see a big War along the way, which is sad, but, that's what you people love. Blood. If you're not selling off your children's future labor, you're sending them to die in a War that started when they were 6 years old and have no clue what the hell 9/11 means (most Afghans have never heard of 911).
No. I am continuing to point out that no free market is possible in some arenas, First World level health care is one of them, and pretending otherwise not only opens the door to piracy and tyranny but costs a lot of money most people can't afford. That leads to non-existence of service - the current state of affairs in the US.
Why don't you tell me this iceaura. Suppose you pay a 2.5% levy on your yearly income (which is $50K) towards Public Healthcare. This amounts to $1250 a year. You like to drink beer and smoke and eat fast food and are a walking heart-attack. You have multiple AMI at a cost anywhere between $20,000 - $350,000 - $800,000 depending on the problem. Suppose most people in society are obese and there's millions of cardiovascular patients, a tsunami of fat-clogged arteries and defunct livers and failing hearts. More than the pathetic levy is going to cover. Not to mention many of the welfare queens and the ungoodly amount they suck out of society.
So?
WHO PAYS?
The young healthy person who did the right thing and ate sensibly and exercises? Or the fat slob who sits on the couch and lives off welfare?
What's the fair amount per person?
You know how we find out? A
FREE MARKET with sound money, law and private property rights. Then we allow insurance companies, healthcare providers, goods and service providers to compete in the free-market. A price is arrived at. THAT is the amount. This is called a 'free' society. It works in the most efficient manner to provide prosperity to the most people.
They did not, as a glance at the mortality stats (compare rich and poor, look at child mortality) will easily demonstrate. Notice who died from abscessed teeth, say.
At the turn of the century, the average cost of "lodge practice" to an individual member was between one and two dollars a year. A day's wage would pay for a year's worth of medical care. By contrast, the average cost of medical service on the regular market was between one and two dollars per visit. Yet licensed physicians, particularly those who did not come from "big name" medical schools, competed vigorously for lodge contracts, perhaps because of the security they offered; and this competition continued to keep costs low.
Eighty years ago, Americans were also told that their nation was facing a health care crisis. Then, however, the complaint was that medical costs were too low, and that health insurance was too accessible. But in that era, too, government stepped forward to solve the problem. And boy, did it solve it!
Blame the Government, not the free-market. We do not live in a free-market. We live in a highly-regulated Fascist State. We use fiat-currency that's continuously being debased. ALL markets are regulated by the State. AND of course, the rich therefor are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. Again, the top 10% just used the State's Authoritarian Party to redistribute enough wealth to themselves, right here in front of the Tax Cattle's glazed over eyes and now own >80% of all financial assets in the USSA.
The State DESTROYS society. It's that simple. You're not going to rape your way to a free poop. It's not going to happen. We are, right now, tax cattle for the 1%. We were born in debt, we will die in debt - less prosperous as each year passes.
It's not a hospital, it's a surgery center specializing in certain procedures.
It's a private hospital and the costs are affordable - and you know HOW we know? If not, they'd be bust! But they're not bust, they have people want to model their businesses after this one in other cities. The problem is MANY CITIES make it ILLEGAL to open these hospitals in the good ole' "Capitalistic" USSA - Why? Because healthcare competition will drive down the price of surgeries at the city hospital in the USSA. That's bad in Amerikkka. Prices must forever go up in good ole' fiat-currency USSA. If you think the State is going to bring down healthcare costs - you are nuts. It's going to go through the roof as the quality drops through the floor. And you will be scared shitless to attend a public hospital in 25 years time - it'll be like being Forced to live in a Public Housing slum. You'd rather take your chances in a tent in the woods or your van then live in a Public Housing project. You'd rather take your chances with your mate and hot knife rather than go into a Public Hospital (which are already needlessly killing a couple jumbo-jet loads worth of people per week; 1 in 5 are misdiagnosed. 1 in 12 are seriously injured. AND that's NOW. Just wait for the work-place quotas - got to do something with the functionally illiterate; just wait for the 13th month Public Sector Unions - HAA!!!)
Do you understand what a free-market even is? I don't think so. Do you understand why it's important to RETAIN our civil liberties NOT LOSE THEM? Prosperity is not attained by losing civil liberties.
How do we know the prices are reasonable at a private hospital? Because people want to go there and do business and it makes a profit. Profit is a virtue. In a free market it signals - HEY! These people over here are doing something right. If single payer Public Healthcare is cheaper compared to the FREE-MARKET then this simply means money is taken from somewhere and used to distort the healthcare market by artificially altering prices so that they no longer reflect a true value - as in the REAL world, where resources are limited. Thus people behave in ways that consume MORE of a limited resource than they otherwise would. They don't diet. Don't stop smoking. Don't stop drinking. Etc...
What happens in the end? To PAY for all your FREE healthcare and other "Government Services", mothers no longer have the luxury to remain at home with their children during their formative years, those children in turn are put into day supervision factories from 6 weeks of age where they develop anxiety and personality disorders. Later they are diagnosed with ADHD et.al. and put on various psychotropic pills and shoveled into public schools where they graduate as a functional illiterates and are easily manipulated by the various demagogues who vie for their votes by offering them 'FREE' bullshit like ObamaCare. And society dies a slow death as these stressed out children stop procreating as life is too uncertain and they see no way forward in a highly regulated Statheist's wet-dream. Society literally implodes in on itself.
Now, don't worry, you'll get your ObamaCare - but you won't get good healthcare. You won't get to keep your civil liberties. The society you leave your children - will be much poorer and less free. BUT, again, you do get to low quality overly expensive ObamaCrap. As I said, let's get this ship pointed towards the iceberg and sink this f*cker. Full steam ahead.
