2023-06-19 10:00:07
What matters is universal coverage, not how that coverage is provided, whether it is a Social Security system, a modified single payer model, regulated non-profit insurance, or medical savings account plans. Every country I have visited has some kind of mechanism that provides coverage to the whole world, in a uniform and easy to explain way. This allows them to focus on other, more important aspects of healthcare.
But America can’t settle for universal coverage, and that doesn’t just leave too many people uninsured or underinsured; it also distracts us from doing anything else. We have all kinds of coverage plans, from Veterans Affairs to Medicare, and from Obamacare exchanges to job-related insurance, and when you put it all together, it doesn’t work well. They are all too complicated and inefficient, and fail to achieve the goal of universal coverage. Our complexity, and the administrative inefficiency that this entails, is weighing us down.
When I was younger, I was more of a single payer supporter, until I realized how many systems work better than the one in Canada. More recently, I turned to the highly regulated and completely private Swiss insurance system because it works exceptionally well with a private model that seemed more acceptable to many Americans. Today, on the other hand, I don’t care how we get to universal coverage.
If we might agree on a simpler plan—any one of them—we might start to focus on what matters: health care delivery.
Public delivery systems are essential, but so are private options
What distinguishes the countries I traveled to from the United States is that they are highly dependent on public services. Most people receive hospital care in a center run by the State. However, each country also has a private system that serves as a decompression valve. If people don’t like the public system, they can choose to pay more, either directly or indirectly through private and voluntary health insurance, to receive care in a different system.
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#healthcare #system #broken #improve
