[deldelaney]

Not one person in any health insurance company has the job to help someone heal. Insurance is a clerk function, jammed in between patient and doctor. They do no service that medicare doesn't do already.

Confusing things is the ACA is cheap for people who get subsidies (if you're near poverty) but for those us self employed or make medium income, our payments to health insurance companies are $1500 or more per month. For what? We get denials at our most vulnerable moments.

Abolish insurance. Let us buy into medicare or make M4A like most other countries have. Insurance is a old sick system that way outlived it's grifting life.

[AnimalMuppet]

It's actually worse. Not only does insurance function as a clerk, but it acts as a clerk whose job is to find ways to not pay. This means that medical offices also hire clerks, whose job is to jump through all the hoops that insurance comes up with so that the medical office gets paid. You could make things much more efficient by getting rid of clerks on both sides. (I mean, you'd still need some clerks. Far fewer, though.)

[gremlinsinc]

Make your local hospital -- be your primary hospital, this is ALSO you're insurer. They tell you what doctors to go to, etc...but they pay for things when you're traveling too...so its in other hospitals' best interest to have okay rates so they all pay about the same and not crazy.

The hospital benefits because: Nearly guaranteed and predictable MRR based on monthly premiums (income based maybe 4% or something)...a lot less billers all around, etc.

[jackstraw14]

This right here. I'm happy this whole thing is prompting so much discussion, and I don't know why we weren't all saying it before.