Hybrid Healthcare

Suppose that we have a nation (let's called it A) with very simple diseases and very simple health care needs. The only disease that they can get is lung cancer, and a person's probability of getting that disorder is directly proportional to how much they smoke. So if someone smokes their entire life, they have a 90% chance of getting lung cancer. If they never smoke, they will never get lung cancer.

In country A, the insurance system more or less works perfectly. The free market provides an accurate incentive for people to stop smoking. Yet a person can choose to smoke if they want to - they'll just pay the price in the form of higher insurance premiums. The system maximizes freedom and economic utility. Universal healthcare would only subsidize the habits of the irresponsible in country A's situation.

Now let's suppose that there is another country B, in which the only disease that people can suffer is cancer. A person has no capacity to control whether or not they get cancer. Likewise eating healthy or exercising has no effect. However, the cancer can be treated much better and more cheaply if it is caught early. Here, universal health care is an ideal system because there is no reason not to take advantage of free preventive medicine.

So to me it seems like we live in a world that is somewhere in between country A and country B, so we ought to have a medical system that is somewhere between that of countries A and B. Perhaps we could make it so that preventative care, vaccines, and medicine are all universal, while advanced treatment is done by insurance (and I think it would make sense to make it illegal to have employers provide health insurance, because that sort of defeats the pricing mechanism). In effect it would be a hybrid system, half socialized - half privatized.

So what do you think?

Comments

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Christopherr 2009-02-18 23:52:10

That's basically how the system is currently. Government versus private insurance plans run about 50-50, last I checked.

The government also is fucking its half up. I say that government intervention must come from a different direction, because the government cannot be trusted with money. My proposed plan is in my sig (too long to retype :b).

Christopherr 2009-02-18 23:56:31

"I remember reading this a while ago, and I wondered why someone couldn't just go to a 5 year medical school program right out of high school, where the first year is just the core biology and chemistry that one would normally get from an undergraduate degree. It seems like that would be a lot cheaper and more efficient."
Not enough people know that they want to be doctors right out of high school. If they did that, we'd see a sharp decrease in med school application.

AKACCMIOF 2009-03-04 15:32:00

Hmmmmmmm.... the free market wouldnt work perfectly in country A because you take away all other incentives and factors of worth.

For example (and a bad one, but you give a simplistic example): I go to a bar 7 nights a week. Each drink costs one dollar. I always have two drinks. If I smoke, my friends buy me one drink because they feel I'm one of them, and they have too much cash to care about insurance. So thats three hundred and sentey five dollars off of the insurance bill. Then theres my job: lets say that if I smoke with my boss regularly I can get a two dollar raise on my five dollar an hour job. I work the nine to five, five days a week with no holiday. thats five hundred dollars off of my insurance bill. And so on: not all things are as they seem. More comprehensive would be awareness campaigns etc., making my friends not just wanna smoke for kicks, or my boss wanna see smoking as sociable. Its a bad example, but you do need interventionism.

hansari 2009-03-06 00:35:06

Or rather, why not have two different systems. People would have to pay for two healthcare plans.

Healthcare A would be dependant on watching what they eat and drink as this system is privatized, and their premiums are dependant on what they do with their bodies.

Healthcare B would cover the unexpected/uncontrollable aspects of our life, such as say brain cancer... this would be socialized and controlled by the government...

why not?

physicsman09 2009-03-07 22:02:38

Nuclear power ftw.

Der-Lowe 2009-03-10 06:44:51

The advantages of each system are not the ones you have listed (moral hazard and prevention). Countries with Universal Health care show lower self-inflicted medical problems, and the US has a better survival rate for cancer than those that use UHC.
The problem with Universal Health care is its capability of treating complex cases, caused by under-funding, and that of Private medicine is equality of treatment and efficiency.

Al6200 2009-03-10 06:44:51

"The advantages of each system are not the ones you have listed (moral hazard and prevention). Countries with Universal Health care show lower self-inflicted medical problems"

Exactly, because people have access to preventive medicine.

"and the US has a better survival rate for cancer than those that use UHC."

Right.

"The problem with Universal Health care is its capability of treating complex cases, caused by under-funding, and that of Private medicine is equality of treatment and efficiency."

Well, that's another advantage.

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