Brendon Whateley
Jul 10, 2017 · 2 min read

I honestly think that American’s want affordable health care, not choice per-se. Our current system is centered around the insurance industry which effectively controls costs and care. Simple economic principles make it obvious that they make the most money when they can charge high premiums and deny coverage, or at least suppress prices. Doctors are legally prevented (by anti-trust laws) from engaging in group negotiating or bargaining. So pricing power is completely under insurance industry control with some limits on policies imposed by insurance commissions.

All the current health plans try to work around the aforementioned structural issue. Often, as in recent proposals, by segregating risk pools and hoping that economic forces won’t make policies unaffordable for sick people. The dodge to avoid addressing that is to claim that those sick people may voluntarily exercise the hard won freedom to go without coverage — instead of admitting that when your premium + deductible will make you homeless, it may not really be a choice after all.

When we look at all the single payer systems in the world, almost all of them have better health outcomes AND lower healthcare expenditure than we have. To me that sounds like a win-win. And as a startup business founder, I can attest that we would have more people trying to start businesses if your decisions did not need to be dominated by health care choices. It’s not about how much taxes may increase… at least not without looking at how much would be saved in time and expenses that would no longer be required in the system.

    Brendon Whateley

    Written by

    Founder Kugadi Inc. Mobile Workforce Empowerment.

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