Originally Posted by woj

I agree, that key is lowering costs...

but I'm not sure I agree about requiring insurance... insurance is just another player in the whole game, sucking out $$$ without really providing any useful service...

it raises costs because of "moral hazard", i.e. insurance pays for all the costs, so there is no reason not to overuse it.. (like many people have been doing with ObamaCare)...

related to that, it also makes people indifferent about price, i.e. if people actually had to pay 100% out of their own pocket, for simple problems they would go to a nurse practitioner or less experienced doctor and pay $50, instead of more experienced doctor and pay $200, or even just wait it out... there is zero reason to go to a doctor with a flu, like ton of idiots are doing, etc... but insurance company pays for it all, so who cares how much it costs?

it makes fraud much easier, with health insurance it's relatively easy to bill insurance company for procedures that weren't actually performed... i.e. "Patient complained his ass hurt, colonoscopy was performed.. +$500... chi-ching!"

the fact that insurance company employs countless number of people = added cost, + they need to turn a profit on top of that... so even more added cost..

... etc

there are ton of problems with insurance, I would even argue that it's actually one of the main reasons why healthcare costs got out of hand... imagine that no one has health insurance, wouldn't doctors/hospitals/etc be forced to lower prices to make their services more affordable? that's actually how it was in the past, widespread use of health insurance is relatively recent, before that doctors and healthcare existed and people were doing fine...