Can I be the first non-US citizen in this thread express my incredulity that anything less than universal health care is tolerated? "Barbaric" is the term that seems to strike me whenever I hear of it, hyperbolic though it may be.
> They also enter a social contract that promises to provide them affordable coverage when they’re older and no longer healthy, as a form of back payment for cross-subsidizing today’s aged and ill.<p>This is only true if the law requires younger people to pay more than their cohort consumes on an average basis, so as to transfer even more wealth from the working young to the retired, wealthy elderly.<p>Hmmm <a href="http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisconover/2012/11/27/young-people-under-obamacare-cash-cow-for-older-workers/" rel="nofollow">http://www.forbes.com/sites/chrisconover/2012/11/27/young-pe...</a>
I'm sure this has been pointed out many times when these posts pop up, but what is shocking to me is that we tolerate $200k medical bills for this sort of emergency care, as long as we aren't the ones paying for them ourselves.<p>The healthcare industry needs a lot more transparency. Every hospital should be required (if they choose to accept Medicare/Medicaid patients) to publish prices in an easily comparable format tied to standard medical codes for every service/procedure they provide, and should be required to charge individuals without insurance no more than the government or other large insurer pays. This would seem pretty simple to implement and would, over time, help keep prices lower simply by making them public and allowing people to compare them. The information asymmetry in the industry has created a situation where people are powerless to help themselves and make smart choices with regard to getting healthcare, and has led to the creation of another expensive program that we can't afford.<p>Sadly, we have a system in which the industries being regulated control the dialog, and they are all too happy to tiptoe past prices and on to who is footing the bill.
Seems to me the author is conflating the principle of insurance with Obamacare.<p>Or in other words, it's not because the general concept of insurance <i>can</i> be wise that every implementations are interesting.
> But there’s no equity, dividend or residual value in a splenectomy.<p>I'm gonna go ahead and disagree with that. The residual value is every day afterwards that you get to live. (not that I disagree with the sentiment, just sayin)