With the healthcare bill, the charge at the Dr.'s office will be like the rest of us because
there is a outlet for people who need medical attention to recieve it. One emergency room does not fit all and is mostly overkill. THis is where the healthcare bill levels off the charges,
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So the healthcare bill is as it should be… for all to recieve medical attention when it is required. Share the love and know who is doing what to whom.
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Is there? What’s different in the health care bill than now? People can still go to a doctor’s office and still will if they are responsible. Why would you incur the expense to yourself of going to an emergency room if you can go to a doctor’s office and be charged $50-$150 for the visit, instead of 3-10 times that at an emergency room? You can do this right now.
Since losing employer coverage and taking out just an emergency coverage plan (no copay benefits for doctor’s visits), I very easily found (first place I looked) a doctor’s office nearby where they charge $50 a visit, flat fee. Done. That’s barely more than standard $20-30 copays for expensive plans. It’s cheaper to save $100 a month by not paying for the expensive copay and drug coverage plans (that’s $1200 a year), b/c I’m probably going to only visit the doctor a few times a year, if that, and get some moderate prescriptions, if any. Most likely not $1200 worth. For more serious things I’ve got the affordable high deductible coverage.
This would apply to ANYONE. Do the same thing–go to a doctor’s office, Minute Clinic, or urgent care facility and pay straight up, and you’re likely to be spending less, anyway, than paying for health insurance with copays and prescription drug coverage. If you have an emergency, that’s what the emergency room is for, whether you have high deductible insurance or not.
Problem is, it seems the people we’re talking about (who are abusing the emergency room) just aren’t bothering to be responsible. They’re apparently not taking the time or just not caring to investigate their other options. Do you really think Obamacare will change that behavior?
Even if it does, all Obamacare is likely to do is encourage more people to use (demand) more of a limited resource. The biggest problem here is the whole economic law of supply and demand. If health care services were in sufficient or excessive supply of the demand, prices would not be rising–they would be falling. We have a crisis in availability of nurses and doctors because our supply is already insufficient for the demand, thus the rapidly rising prices.
What do you think will happen when we suddenly try to vastly increase the demand without doing anything to increase the supply? Economic law is quite clear on this: price will go up (probably dramatically!). So if it does work in getting more people to use services, then it will only make the problem much worse.
The only way to control prices when demand keeps outstripping supply is to
ration service (forced reduction of demand). And since Obamacare is also trying to fix prices by paying doctors less for the same services, it is likely to reduce the supply of health services even more because fewer people will work or will be able to operate a practice that does anything but lose money. Thus more hospitals and private practices will close.
This will increase the pressure even more to ration health care. It’s simply inescapable. This is why you can’t try to force the free market by chaining it to government bureaucracy. If you take away people’s free choice to purchase or not to purchase various goods and services, you destroy the market entirely, and any good the free market was able to provide in terms of increasing supply and lowering price and innovating will all disappear.
Whenever you can reasonably predict the consequences of an action, taking an action that causes more harm than good is immoral, especially if the matter is serious–like health care. Thus, since this bill will so obviously, because of simple economic laws, lead to higher prices OR rationed care,
it is surely immoral.
