Dear Reader,
Medical costs seem so outrageous that no one can afford them without insurance—but what if the reason they are unaffordable is because of insurance?
The graph below shows the effect that the Affordable Care Act (ACA) has had on insurers’ profits.
It should be obvious that for low-cost services, it costs more to process the claim than to buy the service. So, “comprehensive” insurance makes no sense. Except to managed-care companies (“insurers”).
Since ACA was enacted, we have seen no reports on improved health outcomes or better access to needed care—quite the contrary.
People should be asking how much care they could buy for what they pay the insurer every month for care they don’t get. Perhaps care should be priced in fractions or multiples of monthly premiums. The price range for the same procedure is shocking—perhaps ten-fold.
Surgery Center of Oklahoma took the revolutionary step of posting prices online. If more places did that, massive cost savings could occur—at the expense of bureaucracy.
What about the poor? Medicaid is the cash cow for managed care. Are poor patients on the whole getting better care than before? Would it be better to pay for their care directly instead of through the managed-care bureaucracy?
With a change in Administration, should we be looking at giving people choices to escape or bypass ACA instead of doing more of the same?
Additional Information:
- The Role of Third-Party Payers in Medical Cost Increases
- Single Payer IQ Test – Question 6: How would the single payer control costs?
- The Medicaid Trap
- White Paper: After the Affordable Care Act: Freedom for All vs. Medicare for All
About the author: Jane Orient, M.D., Executive Director, Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, may be reached by email jane@aapsonline.org and has long shared her perspectives here on topics of medical ethics, healthy living, and, most significantly, calling to question the anti-science nonsense of COVID policy which the City of Tulsa ignored (destroying small business, closing churches, etc.) but Tulsa Today covered extensively. Not to brag, but her columns and others published here have proven more accurate that the Tulsa City/County Health Department recommendations followed by the Leftist City Council and the World Health Organization controlled by Communist China.
Just saying you are welcome.
The comment by Joe Martin below is partisan reader propaganda to defend the Democratic Party. There was health care prior to the ACA and Russia has nothing to do with this American policy debate.
The compromise of the ACA nearly 14 years ago was to give a huge profit incentive to the insurers providing the coverage. That is why it exists, or else it would return to the no medical care at all program that made no profit for insurers, providers, and lead to death and disfigurement. Literally millions of citizens have benefitted from the ACA. SADLY, the greediest have made a massive amount of money in the process. HISTORY, shows that the rapid increase in medical costs PREDATE the ACA. The author should quit spreading Russian propaganda. You are to be thanked when you quit undermining the ONLY healthcare available to millions.