What's Wrong With Our Healthcare System?

More people come to us for assistance than we can possibly provide for - and it is a statistical certainty that we don't hear from as many as 1 out of 10,000 of the people who need help. When it comes to healthcare, what is it that we (i.e. us, virtually everyone who lives in our great country) want?

We want the healthcare goods and services we need to stay healthy and regain our health when it breaks down - as it will at some time in the near or distant future for virtually everyone. This is not rocket science. It's so simple.

And, by the way, healthy people are good for the economy and our National Security. In fact we are the reason it is important to have a strong economy and protect our nation.

But we are not getting what we want.

So, what's going on?

This is what's going on.

We, the current and future consumers of healthcare goods and services, pay, and always have paid, every dime that has ever been spent on healthcare. Nevertheless, we have allowed our healthcare system to be stolen by middlemen who provide not a single bandage, eye exam, medicine, hospital room, wheel chair or any other healthcare good or service. They simply take our money and give a little back to pay providers to give us far less than we could buy if we all joined in one or more large groups and bought it directly.

Who are these middlemen?

The most destructive are the insurance companies. They are in business to make profit. That is neither bad nor good. It is just what is. And, if they were clean as the driven snow, totally transparent, and honest to a fault, they would still have no place in a rational healthcare market. And the reality is much worse. They drain 30-50% of every dollar we already pay to get the healthcare we want - and the bad ones corrupt everyone else in the system. That last part is the dirty little secret that we, at JustHealth, have been forced to see while assisting so many different people over so many years.

Get rid of the insurance companies, reclaim the money they are draining from the system, that we are already paying in, and there is more than enough money - now - to provide healthcare to everyone that is equal to or better than what they currently get - and we can more easily clean up the other things that need cleaning in our healthcare system. And there are plenty of other things that need cleaning.

Second are employers. Employers are not bad. They just have no rational place in the healthcare market. They are simply unnecessary middlemen.

Largely as a result of wage and price controls that were imposed during World War II, instead of paying higher wages, employers figured out that, by providing healthcare, which was not included in the wage caps, they could attract and keep the workers they needed. The fact is that "healthcare benefits" was just another name for the "wages" they couldn't call "wages". Once it gained momentum, this pretense developed a life of its own and continues today, long after the wage and price controls ended.

Let employers put the money they are already paying for "healthcare benefits", i.e. "wages" into a common pool to let us (i.e. the consumers) buy directly from providers and, BINGO, we save the sums they waste as middlemen and they are happier because they can concentrate on building and selling widgets again, instead of "healthcare benefits".

Disputes over "healthcare benefits" have been the leading issue in labor disputes for more than a decade - and it's gonna get worse. What sane employer wants this?

There's much more that needs fixing, but eliminating these two middlemen will create a relative paradise compared to the death-spiraling healthcare system we have now.