Psst...Here’s the truth to the notion of providing umbrella health insurance coverage to every child in America, it’s wasteful and fattens the wallets of the insurance carriers and HMO’s more than it benefits us tax payers. While it’s a noble endeavor, it’s not cost effective. At first blush, it would seem to be a grandly benovelent idea to require health insurance across the board for all children. You can hear the leftists’ outcries, can’t ya? “But, but, but...it’s for our babies! We are the wealthiest nation in the world...and we can’t provide healthcare for our children?...”
Problem is, it’s a gargantuanly expensive endeavour that does not provide the biggest bang for the bucks and makes no economical sense. Fact is, the overwhelming majority of kids do not get severely sick and have no need for expansive health insurance coverage. Sure they’ll get the routine common colds, snotty nose, cough, sore throat and the sniffles. But for the most part, the majority of kids are healthy and are not afflicted with serious illnesses. Therefore, mandating health insurance coverage across the board for every kid in America is wasteful and serves the health insurance industry more than it does the kids. As a physician, I would love nothing more than seeing a well insured kid for a routine viral snot nose and sniffle in my ER. Quick 5 minute exam...Easy Chaching! But as a responsible taxpayer I see it as nothing but wasteful drain on our collective wallets. Day after day on duty I see hoards of medicaid covered kids rushed to my ER, sometimes even by ambulance, for routine snot noses and sorethroats. Sadly less than 10% of all the kids I see in my ER have a true medical emergency. Medicaid abuse is sickeningly rampant.
Instead, for kids and healthy young adults, a catastrophic insurance policy makes more sense and is more cost effective, because these policies are much cheaper and are applicable in instances of unexpected calamity such as injuries after a motor vehicle accident, sudden illnesses requiring extensive/prolonged healthcare (meninigitis, appendicitis, new onset diabetes, broken bones ect...).
This his how it is at Hazleton General Hospital. Kids that are running around and eating out of the snack machine are there to been seen by a Dr. in the emergency room. I spent 6 hours in the emergency room last month waiting for my 12 year old to be examined and have a cat scan. She hit her head on a overhang from the ceiling.
I’ve spent the last five years advocating exactly the points you mentioned. The issue that has the broadest possible support is preventing families from being wiped out financially by a serious illness. That also happens to be the cheapest one to solve by whatever means politicians want to use.
It’s funny to me that the left is constantly griping about administrative costs for health insurers, yet the programs they keep pushing involve massive numbers of forty dollar claims, which are the very thing that jacks up the administrative costs.
Protect against catastrophies, let people make their own deals for runny nose calls is the solution that has the widest possible support, so, obviously, it’ll be the solution that never gets implemented.