Surprisingly, the savings seem to come from eliminating uncertainty in all its forms. It is all managed away from government and that could go for the regulatory aspect as well. From what i do know it seems to work fine. Canada did choose to use government pay, but with the added twist of laying off management to the provinces who do regulate hard.
There is thus little problem in creating a system that works well enough and as the Europeans have shown it is possible to have doctors outside the system charging more as well. Canada has not done that but i do see it as possible. The original opposition came from the die hard socialists and that no longer has much traction.
Do notice that the worse your problem, the better your coverage and all that makes great sense. This drives you to pay attention to solving your own minor issues. Think back problems in particular. working your way through the options of alternate therapy is way superior to risking a wheelchair with surgery which can cut a key nerve.
Look at that card. Looks very easy to me.
.
Why Europeans Don’t Get Huge Medical Bills
Americans don’t seem to like insurance companies much, even if they’re happy with their health coverage itself. Several Democratic health-care proposals would end private health insurance entirely, an idea that some Americans seem to applaud, until you tell them that it would entail higher taxes and a government-run system. And then they sometimes, but not always, become less sanguine.
One reason insurance companies get a bad rap is that they’re associated with “surprise medical bills.” These billing nightmares occur when insured patients go to a hospital they thought was in-network, but then—sometimes inadvertently—see a doctor who is out-of-network while they’re there. (This is on top of the exorbitantly high medical bills that many uninsured people receive, no matter what doctor or hospital they go to.)
When stories come out about surprise medical bills, people tend to blame insurance companies right away. They should have covered that MRI! They should be less greedy! (Until they learn that insurers’ profit margins aren’t that stellar, and that doctors often make the call about whether to be in-network.)
When I described surprise medical bills to experts who focus on different western-European countries’ health systems, they had no idea what I was talking about. “What is a surprise medical bill?” said Sophia Schlette, a public-health expert and a former senior adviser at Berlin’s National Association of Statutory Health Insurance Physicians. “Seriously, they don’t happen here.”
Almost all Germans are covered by a variety of health insurance, such as “sickness funds,” which are financed through taxes. Almost all doctors and hospitals accept these plans. About 90 percent of Germans never see a bill for their doctor visits, and the rest are covered by private insurance, which usually reimburses whatever they get charged. According to the researchers Roosa Tikkanen and Robin Osborn at the Commonwealth Fund, there’s a flat co-pay for people who are hospitalized, capped at a maximum of 280 euros—or about $315—for a 28-day stay. And doctors, too, are not allowed to charge more than the payment rates that are negotiated between the sickness funds and the doctors’ associations. A very small number of the country’s physicians are private and don’t accept the sickness funds, but they have to tell patients how much they’ll charge before a patient is treated, removing the surprise element.
Some French doctors choose to bill above the government-mandated amount, and this can indeed lead to extra medical bills, Tikkanen and Osborn told me. But 95 percent of the French population also has private secondary insurance—often included in an employer’s benefit package—that helps cover the doctors who “extra bill.” Doctors have to post their fees on their walls, and you can ask how much the visit will be before you book an appointment. In the United States, it’s easier to find out how much it costs to park at a hospital than to get an electrocardiogram there.
In France, the general rule is “the sicker you are, the better your coverage,” Dutton says. If you get hit by a car, the public health insurer picks up more of your tab than, say, if you’re getting acne treatment.
There are still some downsides to the health-care systems of these countries, but they are generally considered better than
that of the United States. And yet, unlike the United Kingdom or
Canada, where health care is government-paid, these countries achieved
this while relying primarily on health insurers. In doing so, they
provide a potential path forward for Americans who would like to see an
end to medical-billing horror stories without doing away with the health
insurance they’ve come to know and love—or at least know and fear the
absence of.
If you like your plan, in other words, you can keep it. You might just have to regulate it more aggressively.
No comments:
Post a Comment