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After thinking about this a long time, and doing a lot of reading on the subject, here is my solution to American healthcare and perhaps in other countries with collapsing healthcare like the UK and Canada: Most medical interventions, even ones that are serious like hip replacements, can be scheduled. It’s annoying while you are waiting, but it’s the rare case where emergency medical attention must be applied immediately. All hospital systems should be deregulated - no more “certificates of need” and monopolist hospitals that can veto additional competition. If any entrepreneur wants to open a facility with licensed medical doctors, they should be able to service any and all ailments. Finally, there will only be 2 official options for payment - retail and single payer. Single payer will kick in whenever bills go above $X, call it $50k. Retail will be out of pocket for anything lower, and people will shop for their own solutions. They can always buy additional insurance, and fund tax advantaged health savings account, but the single payer will not kick in until a catastrophic amount is reached. The nightmare of medicine stems from the desire of doctors to be paid what they are worth, and the desire of government to cover everyone for “free” but never having enough money. We need to unshackle the market to let doctors get what they are worth, but drastically increase competition and the entrepreneurial animal instincts to destroy the bureaucratic mess that has bogged everything down. |