So they only cover severe problems? Like... broken arm to organ transplant? But they don't cover a cold?
Well, I think it makes sense that a person who has a disease should pay more. I see the problem is that it's too costly to have healthy people in the same pot as severely sick people. I wanted a system that would work forever, and be affordable.

Well, in my opinion, if you're going to make a base minimum insurance, it should be an insurance that covers the minimum of what anyone needs... the severe problems. I guess it depends on how you define your minimum and what it should be. I think the very point of insurance is to cover yourself from severe and unforeseeable events, not for the little crap you can take care of on your own through your local pharmacy.

I thought that was the very purpose of having insurance... such that the cost of being sick is spread among the healthy. The reason "healthy" people participate in this socialized system is because they never know if that sick person could be or become them. If you want to separate the sick from the healthy, why have insurance at all? Everyone can just pay for themselves.

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I agree with JeffLV. When you speak of minimal health care coverage, it should be for those items you could not pay for out-of-pocket. These are the more serious and chronic illnesses. I would have a much harder time paying for multiple surgeries and hospital stays if I were in a serious accident than if I went to the emergency room for a cold. The danger insurance should protect you from is getting into major debt or going bankrupt due to medical care.

In fact, I don't think a common cold should be covered by insurance at all. As it stands, I have never been to the emergency room for a cold. Most people I know don't go to the emergency room with a cold, and that is a good thing. We do not need to bog down our hospitals with trivial illnesses, as this will lead to poorer care for those with more serious problems. But, if our health insurance covers such things we would be more apt to go to the hospital with a cold just becasue we are covered. The only drawback to this is that people may not seek medical attention soon enough or at all when they really need it for fear it might not be covered.

So, the minimal insurance should cover the major medical procedures. However, I do not think this minimal insurance should be managed by the government, but rather by private companies. Large governmental social programs like this are basically a monopoly and therefore have little ability, desire or motivation to improve their efficiencies. Perhaps a new type of insurance company can be set up with tight government restrictions. One of those restrictions could be that the company can not be for-profit. In my opinion, for-profit insurance companies have an inherent conflict of interest. This way, many companies (instead of one large government program) could compete against each other and the best practices could then be implemented. If I didn't like the company I was with, I could change to another one, rather than be stuck in the governments. It will let the better ones grow and the worse ones fail. Another restriciton may be that they can't refuse coverage due to pre-existing conditions.

Of course, for this to work the government would have to require people carry this minimal coverage. This isn't anthing new. It is already done with car insurance. There is a minimal amount of car insurance everyone must have, but you can opt to increase your coverage by paying higher premiums. Enforcement for health insurance may be a little more difficult, but something could be worked out. We can't refuse treating people who require medical care, but the level of care doesn't need to be top-notch for everyone.

I don't think the government should run an insurance company. I do believe there could be more clinic type care centers with loads of P.A. and N.P. who handle some smaller cases like colds and cuts etc. but charge allot less, once we say ya we have gov. health care it will overwhelmed with many minor issues

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I'm beginning to change my mind. If the government were to run a tax funded insurance company that only covered accidents ranging in price from $15,000 and above, and privet insurance companies should take everyone else and be expected to pay the $15,000, too. So, for example, a man needed a new heart. The insurance company will pay for $15,000 of it, but the government will pay the rest of the bill. This way the costs of health insurance are much lower, but people who are sick will still need to pay more (more trips = more money spent on them), but they should not be excluded entirely - if they are willing to pay the companies price, but even if they needed to pay for it the price would peak at $15,000 dollars.

However, the $15,000 limit has to be for a one trip type of thing, it cannot be chronic. In other words people cannot receive cancer treatment twice a week for $300 each time for a year and expect to get money from the government.

Also it would need to be constantly adjusted for inflation.

The down side to this is that there would be more incentive to raise the costs of surgery for surgeries that cost more than $15,000 because the government is going to pay for it.

I like this better than your original post. But I am still concerned with letting the government run the program. There is no competition and there is nothing better than competition to develop best practices. If you don't like the way the government handles your claim, you have no option to go to someone else. Additionally, the tendency of the federal government is to expand the original scope of their social policies (social security is the one foremost in my mind) and I would prefer not to take the first step on that slippery slope.

I do agree that those that use the system more should pay higher premiums. Just like with auto insurance where the more moving violations and accidents you are in the more you pay in premiums.

I don't like the slippery slope either. They could always reimburse insurance companies after the fact, but he problem with that is that there is no way of checking their records... perhaps the IRS could audit insurance companies more often? I'm suggesting that they file that every claim is over 15k, even though it's really only 8k.

Ah, yes. Fraud and corruption are nasty evils. But you will find them even if the insurance was government based. I occasionally hear of cases where doctors file false claims to Medicaid and Medicare. The punishment should be severe, such as fines, jail time and lose of license (either as a doctor or a medical insurance agent/agency, depending on who committed the fraud). If it is in a government agency, all you can really do is clean house, which will detract from the level of service they can provide their insured. If it is in the private sector, even the loss of one company could still be dealt with, as others would be willing to take up the slack.

And the companies books should be audited regularly. This fits in well with my belief that government should act more like a referee than a player.

Well, the thing is, if there are a lot of people with out health insurance because of the cost, something has to be done.

I am not fully sure that the cost is what's keeping people out of it though. I think part of it is people's negligence. I think more could be done in education and more could be done with PSAs.

If they spent the money on PSAs and education, I think they could only cover $50,000 and above and see the same results because more people would buy insurance - thus it would be cheaper. There would also be less auditing work to take care of because less things cost 50k.

All good points. The more people that enter the health insurance industry, the more the cost of the health insurance will go down. This is because health care costs themselves will decrease as more and more bills are paid and the prices charged no longer have to make up for so many un-collectibles. Another reason medical bills are so high is to cover the cost of malpractice insurance, which is high due to very large malpractice judgments. Maybe something could be done about this as well.

Education is the key. I feel these things should be a required class in high school. Money management is very, very important to one's success as an adult. Our education system should prepare people for that. Think of how the current housing crises could have been lessened if more people realized the risk they were taking on.

Auditing doesn't necessary need to be done by a government agency, either. The government could set the standards for the health insurance companies to meet and the companies themselves can hire independent auditors to certify them to those standards. This is how ISO9000 works, if you are familiar with that.