Was just thinking that there should be doctor clubs, where a bunch of people pool their money to hire a dedicated general physician. Or to have a shared tailor, or group cafeteria, or whatever.
The ratio of people covered to specialists would probably determine whether it’s feasible. You’d want the specialist to still get paid a healthy (and guaranteed) salary and to have a more satisfying relationship with customers. And the members of the club to get better service / product than they would otherwise with middlemen taking a cut.
That’s where it gets complicated. Your employer pays a lot more than $100. Your taxes would go up and your employer could be mandated to pass the healthcare savings on to you to largely offset your tax increase. The Wyden-Bennet plan predated the Affordable Care Act and would have mandated that. Obama’s healthcare people were concerned that would be very complex and would go back on his promise to allow people to keep their current doctors and insurance. So we ended up with a huge expansion in Medicaid instead (which was great but didn’t give us the systemic change we really needed).
Or the employer would have to pay more to balance the system.
All the plans show a large tax increase which I am fine with if we keep a stable system. Doctors have to be paid, along with nurses and that isn’t cheap.
I think employer insurance is an odd system but I get why it happened. I just think it is time for it to die.
Yeah they were trying to keep it cost neutral. Bennett was a conservative republican.
Employer based insurance is possibly one of the worst systems we could have come up with if we were designing it from scratch.
I think we have to accept everyone will pay more in taxes but there will be surprise bills if there is an emergency, no delayed care while you switch jobs or the plethora of stupid issues that come up when it’s tied to an employer. People need to stop thinking it will cost less. It won’t and that’s Ok.