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Health Care
May. 6th, 2009 11:42 amRand Simberg is in full libertarian mode today, but one of his posts, on health care, is extra-special. It's also something I wanted to comment on for a while, so here is my response to his "pay out-of-pocket or use the emergency room" ideas on health care:
I have an HSA, so I saw my real bills. A simple stage 1 skin cancer cost $5,000, and a gallbladder removal (outpatient) cost $6,000. Out-of-pocket is out of reach for most people. Nor are either of those ailments easily preventable. They can happen to anybody.
Saying “they can use emergency rooms” is true, but lousy policy. In no particular order:
1) Emergency rooms are not free. The cost of running the facility is baked into everybody else’s health care.
2) Emergency rooms are the most expensive form of health care, so we (AKA “you and me”) pay more than if they had a regular doctor.
3) Certain conditions, such as diabetes, can be easily and cheaply managed. But emergency rooms aren’t set up to do that, so you get folks showing up with complications in ambulances.
4) Other conditions, for example many cancers, are stealth diseases. By the time you feel sick enough to go to an emergency room, the prognosis is grim and the follow-on treatment costly.
In short, we want everybody to have some health insurance, in order to reduce everybody’s cost.
I have an HSA, so I saw my real bills. A simple stage 1 skin cancer cost $5,000, and a gallbladder removal (outpatient) cost $6,000. Out-of-pocket is out of reach for most people. Nor are either of those ailments easily preventable. They can happen to anybody.
Saying “they can use emergency rooms” is true, but lousy policy. In no particular order:
1) Emergency rooms are not free. The cost of running the facility is baked into everybody else’s health care.
2) Emergency rooms are the most expensive form of health care, so we (AKA “you and me”) pay more than if they had a regular doctor.
3) Certain conditions, such as diabetes, can be easily and cheaply managed. But emergency rooms aren’t set up to do that, so you get folks showing up with complications in ambulances.
4) Other conditions, for example many cancers, are stealth diseases. By the time you feel sick enough to go to an emergency room, the prognosis is grim and the follow-on treatment costly.
In short, we want everybody to have some health insurance, in order to reduce everybody’s cost.
