The USA lost its way on healthcare, largely due to greed from corporate executives. I was a director for Blue Cross, the president was making $450,000 per year plus nice perks, but the guy across the street running a steel company was making $2.5 million. He resented it.
The guy that was in his position just a few years later was making $5 million per year. Blue Cross got started with legislation from Congress in the 1930s with the intent to provide high quality health care at a modest cost. No profit, just quality service for the money. It was then a brilliant concept, noble in fact, that was ruined with greed.
So, let's reinvent the wheel. HELL NO!!! But the greed of health insurance executives have a huge say at the table. So too do physicians, and pharma companies and on and on. NOTHING the government has a hand in today will be done well or in the best interest of the people of America. NOTHING!!! So, what is the answer?
I spent 20 years inn healthcare, with a focus much of the time on lowering cost. You want a quality healthcare program at a reasonable cost, you need someone with my background to head up the effort, and NOT answer to anyone representing the major stakeholders. The moment the person leading the group begins kissing the posterior of any stakeholder, the mission for quality healthcare at optimum cost goes right out the window.
Someone close to me got five liver transplants, each over $1 million in cost, the first was over $2 million in cost, and that was 25 years ago. What are the costs now? Double? Triple? Quadruple! ...most likely. And the funny part, he was not technically eligible for any single one, for he had Hepatitis B. Back then, the average person extended their life seven years with a liver transplant. So, Medicaid paid $6 million plus to extend the life of one patient exactly seven years, for he died seven years after the first transplant. And this is the case of most transplants, where huge sums are spent to provide a few years of life to a very few. Meanwhile, we provide zero healthcare to 30-35 million people before Obamacare (one of the prime reasons for its being legislated), to what is reported to be 70 million people today without healthcare. This makes no sense to me.
Given the power, I could construct a healthcare system that covers everyone with basic care, and provides optional programs for additional coverage through insurance companies. The cost of the program would be a fraction of what it is today. And the quality would be back to higher levels. And the fraud would be a fraction, which is huge right now.
The Dems are too dumb to come up with a working sound system, and the Republicans, they are owned by the insurance companies. With our current form of government, there is no hope of quality healthcare. NONE!!!
