eye3md wrote:
That's not entirely true. I've never turned anyone away for not having insurance. When I worked in emergency rooms, we never turned anyone away there either. Even now, if I have a patient without insurance, I can often find ways to get them free drugs or other treatments. I have turned people away, once under my care, who refuse to purchase their meds, or make any reasonable payment to my practice, but willingly spend their money on the newest iPhone or cigarettes. Not saying you do, but plenty people make choices in their lives what they will spend money on or not. I had a patient fuss at me because I would not give him a drug sample (I did not have any) but instead insisted he buy a medication from WalMart's $4 formulary. He had a pack of cigarettes in his shirt pocket so I asked him "you'll spend X dollars for these cigarettes, probably multiple times per day, but you won't spend $4 to take care of yourself?". He got mad and walked out.OK, so there are some out there who have screwed up priorities in their lives. What about the rest?
The "nobody gets turned away at the ER" line is a bit of a red herring. Yes, you can treated for free* when they bring you in after a heart attack, but you can't just walk in to the ER and request a colonoscopy or have them take a look at a suspicious mole you noticed, or get your cholesterol checked. Waiting for a problem to show up, or get worse (whether its from screwed up priorities or an actual lack of ability to pay) and going to the ER for "free" treatment generally results in higher costs and worse outcomes. So a system that at least guarantees a minimum level of preventative care would go a long way towards moving us up the ranking in care/outcome.
*But its never actually "free". You still get billed, if you don't pay your credit gets trashed, and in the meantime your costs just get passed on to everyone else, raising costs across the board.
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With that being said, I do agree with your premise about the expense of healthcare. It is very very expensive, and much of the costs are ridiculous. Unfortunately, in the US, administrative costs contribute to about 1/3 of the total costs of healthcare. So, every time a person pays for their healthcare, 1/3 of that is going toward our bloated bureaucracy.And another large chunk of that goes towards executive salaries and shareholder dividends. All of which means we get less healthcare per dollar than another system which has a leaner bureaucracy and not-for-profit healthcare...
"I'm thinking of a number between 1 and 10, and I don't know why!"