INSURANCE COVERAGE (Part II of III)

What does a person do who chooses not to have insurance? First of all, he has to understand that he will be charged medical fees that are based on the ability of insurance companies to pay, not on individual free market factors. If insurance was outlawed, medical fees would necessarily plummet because there would only be a few people who could come close to paying the cost of major medical care today. Of course, insurance won’t be outlawed so we will have to rely on bureaucrats and insurance clerks to help keep costs down, not free market forces. How do bureaucrats and insurance clerks keep costs down? They deny services to us and cut doctor fees.

You see, the insurance companies have gotten to where they can’t afford medical care either. They no longer can make up medical costs by increasing the number of people they insure. Most people now have coverage. Their chief way now of covering costs is through insurance premiums. Thus, insurance companies have two main ways of cutting their medical costs. They deny services… which leave us with more to pay, and they increase premiums… which leave us with more to pay. It would have been a lot cheaper if we would have never socialized our medical coverage. Now we’re at the breaking point of medical services being cut, medical fees being cut, and insurance premiums being unaffordable.

I mentioned yesterday that everything associated with medical care has increased its fees. StudentDoc Online reports: “In a recent study by the Association of American Medical Colleges the cost of private medical schools has risen 165% and the cost of public medical schools has gone up 312% over the last 20 years. A similar study by the AMA found that medical school costs have increased substantially more than the Consumer Price Index (inflation). The average medical student graduates with nearly $100,000 in student loan debt.” Doctors who go on to specialize incur even more debt. Combining student loan debt with the high costs of medical practice, beginning doctors say they can’t afford to have their fees cut. Yet, once they get out of debt, doctors make a very generous living. In fact, doctors who are rather young have lived very expensive lifestyles via this pool of socialized money. Even so, doctor’s fees are only going to be cut a certain amount or doctors, especially the new ones, won’t be able to afford to practice. When insurance companies can’t cut fees, they cut services.

Although cutting services excludes some doctors from doing what they deem is medically necessary, cutting services shift more of the artificially inflated medical costs to the patient. So, we are at a crisis point in this social experiment with healthcare dollars. We’ve reached the point in which the goose laying the golden eggs is sick. It (insurance companies) can’t afford to pay the socialized artificially inflated medical costs anymore; the doctors can’t afford to have their fees cut anymore; patients can’t afford to pay for non-covered medical care; companies can’t afford to pay the outlandish insurance premiums, and patients can’t afford to pay the eccentric insurance premiums either. So, what has evolved? It’s the call for universal insurance.

What about our fella who decided not to get healthcare coverage? He’s typically young and has little need for major medical care. He doesn’t want to pay high insurance premiums to help prop the rest of us up when he is unlikely to use it. But if he does need it and can’t afford it, then we all pay for it through our taxes (Medicaid) and/or increased health premiums to offset his cost.