September | 2017 | Look, Listen & Think

How To Properly Solve The Health Insurance Quandary

– Mary Adele LaClair

Does our car insurance pay for oil changes, lube jobs, paint, routine repairs, changing tires? No.

Does our home owners insurance pay for re-painting the living room, porch, repair downspouts, fix leaks in the sink, replace a toilet or pave the driveway? No.

All of the above are all out-of-pocket expenses even though we pay for insurance.

Car insurance and home insurances are intended for catastrophic events, accidents, unforeseen big events like floods, if you have flood insurance, tornadoes, etc.

Health insurance should operate just the same as other insurances. Health insurance had no problems when it operated that way in the past. Problems came when some individuals were not thankful that they had no catastrophic events and wanted their money back by having insurance pay for office visits. Those with misguided compassion allowed healthy people to claim regular check-up’s, minor repairs, and office calls on insurance. This encouraged greed at the bottom level and overcrowded the system: enter idea of co-pay.

Health insurance should NOT cover routine office visits. Office visits should be no different from car and home maintenance. THIS would fix the health care system. Health insurance should cover only NEEDED surgeries and prolonged stays in recuperative care centers. Note, sex re-identification and other optional surgeries should not be covered by insurance, nor paid for by states for those incarcerated, as happened in California.

Many medical expenses necessary to a civil society could be lowered drastically. For instance, too many college professors think they are the smartest people in the world but they are NOT. Cutting college expenses and student loan debt for doctors and nurses, (well, for EVERYONE but we’re talking health care here) will enable young people to have out-of-pocket money for medical visits. We need to stop getting people so heavily indebted to government. This could be done by putting college professors on a more realistically moderate pay scale and by not making college textbooks so sinfully high priced. We need to eliminate greed in America and it needs to start at the top. Many college campuses are very high end and the youth are bearing this burden on their backs for years. This should not be. Cutting educational expenses would enable medical professionals to cut their prices to the point that patients could pay reasonable costs and not need insurance for routine maintenance. This alone will go a long way to fixing the health insurance problem. Government is not God and should stop trying to act like a god to everyone.