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Medical Insurance
Issue
Medical costs have risen over the years with insurance premiums becoming too excessive for the average person to afford in America. Health-related costs are also the primary reason for causing personal bankruptcies in this country.
Near-Death Evaluation
One manner of reducing medical costs is to deny treatment during the final days of a patient's life. On average, nearly 70% of a person’s lifetime medical expenses occur during the last two days of their life. Providing medical treatment to patients who are about to die within a day or two is a rather unjustifiable medical expense that should be avoided if possible.
The situation may be improved if physicians were to follow a procedure that determines the survival status of a given patient before administering treatment. If the survival prospects are low, then care will only be administered to ease the patient’s suffering rather than treat the medical condition itself.
Even though denying adequate care for life-threatening conditions may become unpopular and difficult for physicians to follow, the new policy has the potential of reducing medical costs by a fairly large amount (e.g., 50% or greater), which is significant just by itself.
Ban Insurance
Another possible manner of reducing medical costs is to ban health insurance. All insurance policies are pyramid schemes by their very nature where a large number of contributors pay into the system, while a few at the top receive benefits.
The problem that insurance causes is that by allowing many to pay for a single patient, the medical industry is allowed to increase their fees higher than what a solitary person may afford. If insurance was banned then the entire situation would correct itself where the medical industry would be required to reduce costs in order to remain in business.
An additional measure to improve the situation is if the Department of Health maintained a universal charge list at the federal level to restrict medical costs. This will establish a maximum limit on how much the medical industry may charge their patients for their products/services as a matter of price control.
Sample Numbers
If the average salary in America is $50,000, this amount could be used as a guide to estimate the affordability of health care if medical insurance was banned.
In this example, 5% of gross salary should be considered for building a personal health expense account that will pay for a lifetime of medical costs. The medical industry will have to reduce their costs in order to fit within this limit to be affordable for the average person:
$50,000 gross salary
15% total tax of skeleton gov't. (federal, state, city combined) 35% housing/rent
25% living expenses (food, clothing, entertainment, etc.)
10% large purchases (accumulate multiple years for new car or appliances)
10% savings/investments
5% health care
The above assumes that voters will approve of the proposed skeleton government (max 15% total tax), and does not include anything extra like paying off the national debt or Social Security. This means that the medical industry will have to reduce their expenses to fit within $2,500 per year for a given patient. A 40-year period, from ages 20-60, results in a total of $100,000 being available for a lifetime's worth of medical expenses.
This means that the medical industry (or Dept. of Health's universal charge list mentioned above) will need to cut costs in every aspect in order to accommodate this estimate.
For example, consider the following regarding the cost of surgery. The average salary for general surgeons is $450,000 and registered nurses $70,000. If five surgeries are performed each week (which is below the national average so it's easier on the medical staff), that results in $3,461 for two surgeons and $1,076 for four nurses, or $4,537 total for six medical personnel per procedure (including pre-/post-care).
Add the expense for medical instruments, supplies, and the use of a sanitized room, the average surgical procedure should be approx. $5,000-$10,000, which is affordable with the above estimate. However, the medical industry charges a great deal higher than that (e.g., coronary bypass costs up to $200,000).
After years of relying on the "blank check" aspect of insurance where the medical industry overcharged patients excessively, medical costs under the new policy will need to adjust to a world where patients pay for the procedure themselves, which will bring costs down to more normalized levels.
Pharmaceuticals, who have stated that the high cost of prescription drugs is due to the additional cost of failed drug trials, will have to limit expenses to consist only of the manufacturing cost itself. The additional cost of having multiple drug trials during research and development will be primarily funded through donations and charitable organizations, rather than passed along to the consumer.
If enough cuts are made by the medical industry to be accommodating to the national salary estimate, adequate medical care may be provided without bankrupting the average citizen.
Since the medical insurance industry will be dismantled by this new policy, their stockpile of funds from collecting premiums over the years should be returned to the original payer as a lump sum to give patients an initial boost to their personal healthcare savings accounts.
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