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Medical Insurance
Issue
Medical costs have dramatically increased over the years with insurance premiums becoming excessive for the average person to afford in America.
Near Death Evaluation
One manner of reducing medical costs is to possibly deny treatment during the final days of a patient's life. On average, nearly 70% of a person’s lifetime medical expenses occurs during the final two days of their life. Providing medical treatment to patients who are going to die within a day or two is a rather unjustifiable medical expense that should be avoided if possible.
The situation may be improved upon if physicians were to follow a mandatory procedure that determines the survival status of a given patient before administrating treatment. If the survival prospects are low, then care will only be administered to ease the patient’s suffering, rather than treating 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 a significant improvement just by itself.
Ban Insurance
The most effective manner of reducing medical costs, however, is to ban health insurance in its entirety since insurance is the primary reason of why medical costs have risen excessively over the years.
All insurance policies are pyramid schemes by their very nature of where a large number of contributors are expected to pay, while only a few at the top may receive benefits. Relying on a fraudulent system like this is unwise since at some point, greater payments are needed to enter into the system in order to support it over an extended period of time.
This is the very reason why medical costs have risen over the years because it allows the medical industry to take advantage of the situation and increase fees higher than what an ordinary person may afford. On the other hand, if insurance was banned then the entire situation will be able to correct itself of where the medical industry would be forced to reduce costs in order to remain in business (e.g., make things too expensive, then no one will pay for their services).
In addition to banning insurance, the Department of Health may also need to maintain a universal charge list for all medical costs throughout the country. This will establish a maximum limit on how much medical products and services may charge patients and will be necessary to reduce the over-inflated costs of the current health care system.
Sample Numbers
The average salary in America is approximately $50,000 and this could be used as a guide to estimate
the affordability of health care if 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 costs for their services to be within this range in order to be affordable for the average patient:
$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. This means that the medical industry will have to reduce their expenses to fit within $2,500 per year for a 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.
Which means that the medical industry (or the Dept. of Health's universal charge list mentioned above) will need to cut costs in every aspect in order to accommodate this average estimate.
Consider the following example 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 this (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 normalized levels.
Pharmaceuticals, who have mentioned that the high cost of prescription drugs is due to the additional cost of failed drug trials, will have to reduce the cost of a given drug to only consist of the manufacturing cost of
the drug itself. Under this plan, the additional cost of research for developing new drugs 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 (or forced by the Health Dept.'s universal charge list) to be more accommodating to the national salary average, adequate medical care may be provided without bankrupting the average citizen.
Since the health 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 health care saving accounts.
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