30
Aug
2016
Two Things From Tom and Me
First, hear us tackle Krugman’s excuses for ObamaCare. (He says it’s the fault of obstinate Republicans and health insurers with ulterior motives. You know, Aetna is losing hundreds of millions of dollars on purpose because they don’t like Obama.)
Second, doesn’t the below look fun? Well guess what, that’s the ship hosting the Contra Cruise!
You still have time. Put off your kid’s braces and sign up today for the Contra Cruise.
Bob,
I’ve been mulling this over in my head and would love your feedback.
Is it possible that Obamacare is actually bringing us closer to free market medicine? Consider that it has wrecked the insurance industry so much that more and more people are facing rising premiums for plans that have really high deductibles, high co-pays, high co-insurance, etc. Consider also that the standard libertarian explanation for rising health care prices was that we had this crazy insurance system where people pay a flat rate fee to their insurance company and then don’t care what the price for any particular service is, so the producers are incentivized to constantly raise prices.
If you have a plan where you have to pay out of pocket for the first $1500 and 10% of everything thereafter, all of a sudden you become a price conscious consumer. And if we suddenly have a whole lot of price conscious consumers in the market, producers will be forced to begin competing on price as well.
The types of plans that Obamacare is forcing people into (high deductible, high co-pay) are the ACTUAL type of insurance that we’ve always claimed health insurance SHOULD be – designed to cover you in the case of some sort of unforseen catastrophe, but virtually useless for routine, day-to-day expenses.
Does any of this make sense? Or am I just seeing what I want to see?
http://tomwoods.com/podcast/ep-481-how-capitalism-can-fix-health-care/
Dr. Josh Umbehr explains his system using a constant maintenance fee which goes direct to the medical provider (similar to a gym membership which gives you access to a bunch of basic services), plus discounts on regular expenses like medicine, plus using a high-deductible catastrophic insurance plan (just in case). His argument is that the bureaucratic payment system in the USA is ridiculous, so there’s a strong incentive for doctors to drop out of the government system because direct flat-fee payments from customer to doctor are just easier and staggeringly more efficient.
Near the end (approx 27:40), Woods asks how Obamacare will effect them and Umbehr says that the more broken the government system gets, the bigger the advantage of doing it his way.