Caroline Melear

The US version of health insurance isn’t “insurance.” It’s a prepaid health payment plan. Which simply makes it so routine care is paid for by third parties. Imagine if you ran all your routine home maintenance through your homeowners insurance. That leaky faucet would be five times more expensive than if you just paid cash. Why? The plumber wouldn’t just be able to charge you at the point of sale. He’d need to employ a whole billing department. Since someone else was paying, he wouldn’t even bother showing you the price. You’d shop purely on non-price factors, like show nice his website is and how shiny his truck is. So his prices would gradually creep up. Why not? Someone else is paying. Which means now you’d need prior authorization to get the faucet fixed. The plumber might try to say you need a fancy new faucet with touchless controls and a built in purifier. Insurance says you can only have one of those old turn handle ones where hot and cold have separate nozzles. They only care about cost and not quality (except it being good enough to avoid an other leaky faucet soon). You care about quality but not cost. Just getting a leaky faucet repaired has now become an expensive, bureaucratic nightmare. Of course, if you suggest people pay cash for leaky faucets there will be wailing and gnashing of teeth. “Do you even know how much a plumber is these days? A leaky faucet costs $300,000!“ And, obviously, someone would bring up the fact that you can’t negotiate with a plumber if there is a burst pipe at 2am on christmas day and your house is being flooded. So how could you ever expect people to shop for plumbers. Thats just ridiculous. Also, if you dont make someone else pay to have that leaky faucet fixed, there might be water damage in the future and it will cost MORE to fix. So we should just fund all plumbers through the government. Running water is a right, after all. There certainly won’t be any difficulty getting a plumber once they all have to get government approval to do anything to fix your house, right? Anyone will be able to get a plumber at any time and they’ll do all the things necessary to keep your house working perfectly. If it sounds stupid for plumbers it sounds stupid for doctors, too.