Interesting. One could put it another way.
1. The individual mandate lowers hidden costs in the premiums of those who actually pay the premiums. Those hidden costs are of the uninsured availing themselves of the healthcare system without the ability to pay. Those hidden costs get passed on in the form of higher premiums.
2. If we charge the sick more money for their premiums, what do we do with them when they no longer can afford the higher premiums and join the ranks of the uninsured? Raise the premiums to cover the hidden costs….but more people drop out because of the higher premiums…then raise the premiums some more because now even MORE people are uninsured adding more hidden costs….then EVEN MORE people drop out because premiums rise again to cover the additional uninsured.….How long can this go on before the pool of paying people gets so small that the system collapses under the weight of the uninsured trying every means possible to get care but are unable to pay for it? The US is at about 50 million uninsured and counting.
3. The great irony in this debate? The individual mandate protects the entire for-profit system from collapsing. Although some would like to see that happen. Then conditions would be ideal for ushering in a single-payer system. The individual mandate actually keeps the for-profit model of delivering healthcare solvent. What a gift to the insurance companies. (You won’t hear them complaining about the individual mandate. They want some consumer protections gutted to maximize profits) If the general public really understood this, they’d keep their fingers crossed behind their backs to nullify anything out of their mouths having to do with the US Supreme Court striking down Obamacare. If Obamacare is shot down it is just a matter of time until our current for-profit system collapses. (See #2.)
4. The way to control costs without an individual mandate? Let’s admit that we as a country do not want to pay for the uninsured and don’t want to find a way for the uninsured to pay for themselves i.e. individual mandate. Let’s admit that we’re OK with the policy NO INSURANCE, NO SERVICE. And let’s be honest and admit that we’re fine with the body counts of those trying to access healthcare.
A proffered response is often “I’m not against reform, just Obamacare.” Health savings accounts as a keystone of alternative solutions cannot not do the heavy lifting required to get everyone access to healthcare — a subject for another blog.
Anonymous,
Yes, Dr. Jim Yong Kim is awesome. Hope you got to see his interview on Charlie Rose. http://www.charlierose.com/view/interview/11929
Also posted a link to his page on Facebook pages, No Politics, Lets Get Real and the Art As Social Inquiry fan page. Please pass along info about other visionaries in the field.
T
Dear Anonymous,
Thank you for your wonderful post. I will check out Dr. Kim. I spend many hours a day reading up on what’s happening in addition to the hours I spend interviewing people. As an artist/lay person (and very much an outsider to the healthhcare industry and politics before this project) I am flabbergasted by what one small person like myself could uncover just because I decided to look. The health industry $ in politics rules. What you might characterize as negative, I see as positive. Before we can reset the broken leg of our healthcare system, we need to identify where the break is. There are those like Dr. Kim who are crafting solutions and people like me who are x-raying the problem. I welcome the day when my jaw no longer drops because of what I am learning about the healthcare industry. I meet many people who don’t even know that Obamacare IS the Affordable Care Act. This tells me there is still much to talk about. I would refer you to my article about exactly what I have learned after 2 1/2 years interviewing subjects. http://artassocialinquiry.org/2011/10/31/an-artist%E2%80%99s-call-to-action-art-as-social-inquiry/
Thanks again for your comment.
Kind regards,
T
Perhaps you should check into what Jim Yong Kim, president of Dartmouth, is doing with his recently launched Center for Health Care Delivery Science. While you seem to provide only critique and no solutions, Dr.Kim is working offer a “fundamental revolution n the way we think abut health care” by having 4 dozen of the best minds in management & systems engineering, economics, insurance, medicine, and health policy, both researchers and practitioners, work to develop a system that will ultimately do healthcare better. Rather than reward practitioners based on number of procedures done on a patient, we should reward based on quality of care, which is verifiable by the empirical data of “are they sick, or are they well; are they dead or are they alive?” And how we can get the most bang for our healthcare buck. Dr. Kim has worked in clinics in developing countries that must deliver good care for much, much less money–and it is possible.