jedrider wrote:Coronavirus Could Cause Health Premiums to Skyrocket, New Study Findshttps://www.motherjones.com/coronavirus-updates/2020/03/coronavirus-could-cause-health-premiums-to-skyrocket-new-study-finds/When this 'stiumulus' was proposed and passed, it made me a bit depressed and I still don't want to see the details.
Obvioulsy, this is the primo time to start nationalizing healthcare. I don't think ANYONE but the taxpayer should be on the hook for funding this response to Coronavirus. However, the government is firmly on the side of handouts to the private sector as opposed to direct execution, such is our collective instilled fear of 'gobermint'.
Anyway, there will be a haphazard ripple effect on pricing. Seems similar to how the federal government hands out 'money' in every disaster without really managing the outcome.
You don't need to nationalize healthcare to make it affordable.
It is enough to ban *all* insurance companies from it entirely, so people
must pay out of pocket and also make doctors immune to lawsuits except of extreme incompetence (eg accept that occasionally doctor may make mistake very much like car mechanic can) or alternatively set a value (quantum) of maximum claim for medical error at rather low level.
In addition to it reduce length of patent protection for drugs to not more than 5 years beginning with first sale and disband all red tape preventing cheap imports of generics.
Forcefully, by means of legislation, lower all sort of "standards" which are adding a lot to price but next to nothing to quality of care.
For example chemical compound, eg drug produced according to GMP requirements will cost about 10 times as much (if not more) as identical chemical compound produced to normal industrial standards.
Analysis will show them to be equivalent in terms of purity, contaminants profiles etc.
It is a final specification what is important, not a tedious procedural process which is only making manufacturing much more expensive and prevents imports of generics which were made without following these procedures but otherwise are "as good".
Nationalized healthcare has its own ills, in Britain for example these are expressed as a famous "NHS waiting list".