We find a raft of articles suggesting that the effort is stalling amid dissension in Washington and beyond.
Of course. The best way to maintain status quo is a democracy.
An even better way to maintain status quo is to have the government start screwing around with $2.5 trillion dollars. Just sit back and watch the lobbyists and executive vultures from the most profitable and fastest growing industry swarm in on Washington and confuse all those poor congresspeople so that they all get caught up in bickering about details rather than fundamental fatal flaw in how healthcare is provided and paid for in America.
It’s very simple people. In our healthcare system, supply creates demand. When there is a bottomless pot of money to be spent on healthcare, the suppliers will create an endless variety of services and then create demand for those services because they are the ones ordering those services.
Fix that Washington!!!!
If Obama could do anything for healthcare in America, he should relax regulations that prevent healthcare startups from trying to deliver care at half the cost of the big guys. We spend about $7500 per person on healthcare in the US. We know that other countries with much higher functioning systems and higher quality can deliver healthcare at half that cost. The only difference is those other countries have a fixed budget for healthcare, and therefore, rationing. Ours is not a fixed budget. In the US, we spend what we deliver. And we sure can deliver a shitload of bad, profitable healthcare only to receive the trophy for 37th place in the world.
There’s no way around this given the current setup of supply creating demand. A startup will come out of the woodwork and start delivering higher quality healthcare at half the cost. Once employers see that they can get higher quality care for half of what they’re paying today, things will start to change. However, the Feds and States have those startups hands tied by the regulations that prevent this from happening. For example, the Feds dictate how insurance companies pay providers for the delivery of healthcare via Medicare policies. Private insurers simply follow suit and implement many of the same policies. Therefore, a startup cannot innovate how they deliver healthcare for half the cost by taking health insurance money for doing so. They simply wouldn’t get paid for half of their work. Hence, the only way Hello Health can survive and truly innovate is to take cash for everyday healthcare…or encourage people to purchase high deductible plans and pay cash until you spend your entire deductible.
It’s tragic…so many people ask us, “Do you take insurance?” When we say we can’t we’re often written off (however, half of our patients have health insurance). It’s going to take a partnership between innovators and patients to change things from the ground up. Washington won’t do it. The industry isn’t going to sacrifice their revenues. The only way to change things is to partner together…doctors and patients…to build something of higher quality and higher value. We need to disrupt this Sickness Industry and create a health industry designed to take care of your health, not profit off your sickness.