re: Facts on Health Care

Too many holes to even know where to begin.

I have never met someone that chose to get cancer, have a genetic heart condition, or get hit by a bus. The basic premise alone is problematic, which frames health care mostly as a choice and talks about problems mainly through that prism. Which very often it is not. You do not get to choose your genetics or when you become the victim of an accident. Get to chose that you were born in an area where a factory polluted the air and gave you health problems but the systems that be were unable to adequately deliver compensation to cover the costs.

Basically the guy wants to make illegal PPO/HMO's and force insurance to be nothing but indemnity where it is allowed to exist. While not allowing discrimination except for age and gender. Which would inevitably increase the "p" in his simplified calculation. Reading his policy pages he leaves a lot unclear and just says shite without explaining, like this will destroy employer insurance for good!

To more specific issues though:

Insurers are risk averse, one of the problems that led to Medicare, Medicaid, high risk government pools, and the ACA came about specifically because the private insurers refuse to insure high risk people. That is setting aside the piece constantly contradicts itself with saying one moment in supplemental pieces that insurers can't discriminate on risk factors and then encouraging it and setting up an entire market around it.

Just because a person's probability to get any one type of disease is low, the combined probability of any sort of catastrophe or health problem is much higher. Furthermore, for the vast majority of health issues, a person can not predict what he will or will not acquire. My father for instance, with no family history was driving to a clients house when his eye went nearly blind. Turns out he had Lattice Retinal Degeneration. He ended up driving himself to the ER. This has now led to multiple surgeries, specialty visits and on-going maintenance and treatment. Speaking of eyes, one of the leading causes of blindness the world over is iritis, a condition of eye pressure and the cause and predictability of getting it is almost still unknown. But millions will get it in this country.

The author cherry picks the entry level prices from a primary physician only business in Michigan. while ignoring the entire dynamic of how pricing in healthcare(or any market) works(and the fact the website markets their cheapest price and clouds the rest). Prices are largely dependent on local market dynamics and the monopoly power in an area. There is this under current that I guess by some magic, if we get rid of most insurance and government spending on healthcare and force all care providers to provide care at the same rates, with no downward control pressures like other countries, that magically rural Alaska will be able to charge the same price for care as one place in Michigan, or that all prices will look like that cherry picked price list.

The concept of membership offices for primary care itself is an intriguing one, and is actually a very old idea that started at the heart of insurance in this country when hospitals charged membership dues, but this is a concept built around primary care services. Your annual check-ups, physicals, bloodwork and basic tests. And the author very much abuses this data and runs with it. There are worthwhile ideas in what is a growing trend in healthcare with membership businesses, but there is a reckless use of this to get to his points. This is also a market that is popping up because most of these people have some other insurance and this serves as a supplement, even the website speaks to this.

Toward the end things really go off the rails. I am not sure how he does his math but he seems to just make up numbers of what his sunshine and unicorn rare disease(I.E. high-risk pools) insurance would cost. All while earlier rightfully acknowledging just how expensive high-risk pools are and have become.


This reads like when the left or the right offer up these faux reform ideas that fall apart when you actually have to fill in the numbers on things and get it analyzed by actual number crunchers I.E. Bernie and his Medicare for all and Republicans with the AHCA after promising everyone everything for 7 years.