How would you fix the healthcare system in the US?

32 comments

1. Require hospitals post their costs online for easy comparison.
   Allow insurances to compete across state lines.
   Remove the government from it outside of setting some regulations such as. “Insurance can compete across state lines”

2. This was literally asked within the past 48 hours

3. Make myself the CEO of all health, raise everyone’s rates 10x, and put the profits all into my bonus.

4. [deleted]

5. I would make it better

6. Scrap the whole thing and rebuild it from the ground up

7. To copy my answer from when this was asked two days ago:

   > Bring the hammer down on insurance companies inflating costs left and right, which likely would involve the steps already discussed here.

   > As for a different answer than the choir? More EMS bikes/cars, for situations not requiring a full ambulance.

8. We Need less government involvement and more competition amongst hospitals and private practices. This would lower costs and increase quality of care.

9. I’d cut and paste Singapore’s healthcare system to the US.

10. Universal Healthcare for all, like the rest of the world. Edit: (whine) “But I don’t want my taxes to go up.” Yeah? But you have a medical crisis and need to beg for money instead?! (gofundme).

11. Multipayer like Germany has might work. Tax monies pay insurance companies and everyone is covered regardless of employment status.

    Also, yes. Price transparency and negotiations (whether between employers and government or employers and labor unions) are absolutely necessary.

    In any case, affordable access to healthcare should never ever **ever** be tied to employment. That’s what killing us as much as illness, age, or injury. Nobody should stay sick or hurt or die from lack of funds for meds or treatment.

12. Private insurance cost should be based on a percentage rather than a fixed rate. Instead of let’s say $200 a month it would be 3% of your pay.

13. Introduce M4A but I admit I’m not really on expert on these kinds of things.

14. Everyone joins the Medicare/Medicaid system. Insurance can still be purchased, but because the insurance companies would lose almost all of their customer base, their lobbying power would significantly decrease. Also, since the government would be paying all costs, hospitals wouldn’t be able to jack up the costs of everything.

15. Insurance companies have something called minimum loss ratios, meaning that for every dollar they get in revenue a certain percentage (usually around 85%) of that has to be spent on medical care and the remaining 15% is for administrative expenses and profit. I think we should be applying similar rules and reporting requirements to healthcare providers.

    For what it’s worth I work for a health insurer, and while we are a middleman the profit margins on the plans I work with are razor thin and the inflation in health are cost is happening at the hospital whose operating expenses are a black box.

    Price transparency in general would be great. You can never get a straight answer from a healthcare provider on how much they’re going to bill since every plan has different negotiated rates for different services, plus they’re always upcoding the work they did to try and squeeze out more revenue, then the insurer starts to refute bogus billed charges, every encounter is a brawl and waste of administrative expenses.

16. M4A.

    If I can’t have that, more clarity. The system is designed to be confusing on purpose. The price is never the price, and every test and procedure I have involves hours of frustrating, confusing phone calls with tons of babbled jargon.

    The idea is to make me give up so I’ll just pay whatever ridiculous, inaccurate bill lands in my mailbox.

    It’s bad enough to be disabled, but what really keeps me out of the labor market is chasing my own tail all the time. It’s a time and energy suck.

17. We’re too far down the path to go back and do this, but health insurance should be more like home insurance or car insurance.

    Pay the medical providers directly for most visits and procedures. If there was no middleman, regular checkups and even minor surgeries would be far less expensive and healthcare providers wouldn’t be able to get away with changing $40 for an aspirin. Insurance should only be used for catastrophic events.

18. Healthcare should not be a for profit industry.

19. You walk out of treatment with a bill knowing exactly how much you owe.

    Like literally every other product or service you buy.

    Insurance is fined 100x whatever difference they’re supposed to cover but don’t.

    Start with that, see how things go. It would also be nice to switch to preventative care rather than treating once people get bad, but that would be difficult to change mindsets on. Also, ban advertising and lobbying for pharma and insurance companies.

20. Not trying to turn healthcare into the DMV would be a start. I personally have great healthcare so I’m in no hurry to let the government ruin it.

21. Aside from all the other good answers everyone else has, I would like if insurance companies were able to adjust rates based on BMI or body fat percentage of the insured. It’s a fact that Americans are dramatically more unhealthy then most of the countries mostly due to obesity problems. Not only will healthy individuals not have to subsidize the poor health decisions of others as much, it would provide a financial incentive for people to get to a healthier weight.

22. Nationalize it and [redacted] every healthcare profiteer who made money off the suffering of the poor and sick.

23. Remove the profit motive.

24. National system where everyone gets the same coverage. No more competing insurance companies where a normal person can’t figure out the difference in offerings from different companies or plans. All this nonsense does is add stress in most difficult times.

    It’s also weird to me that some medicines could be cheaper with different insurance companies or that you have to figure out what type of plan you want in November for the following year.

    Yes, I expect to need emergency surgery next august. Better sign up for this plan.

25. The root cause is excessive salaries of doctors and related medical personnel. If in the end the doctor’s salary doesn’t change somehow some way you going to pay for it the same cost as today.

    Whether you fix that through private or governmental action I don’t know but that’s what has to be fixed.

26. Price transparency would be a good start

27. For drugs, regulations that say that other countries pay the same as the US if the drug company wants to sell in the US/abroad. This should drop prices of medications. Other than that harsh penalties on insurance companies and hospitals if they refuse to cover conditions/billing mistakes. Maybe encourage more private insurance companies to form to increase competition and drop prices. Scrutiny on hospital consolidation.

    I’m looking at options within the current system with the exception of the drug prices point

28. I would divorce health insurance from employment, and let people shop for health insurance the way they do car insurance. I’d also like to let people cross state lines for insurance, but I don’t think that’s realistic, given the different laws and regulations between states.

29. Dump it for universal healthcare paid for by tax dollars

30. Everybody has to be friends with a doctor then you pay them in White-claws and rides to the airport if you want healthcare.

31. Separate it from employment

32. Free pony rides at every urgent care clinic.