Quote:
Originally Posted by belcherboy
If we are going to UHC (and I think we are), I'd like to see a plan where people have to pay for anything under a couple of hundred dollars, or maybe pay a $50 fee every time they see a doctor (maybe give them 2-3 free visits a year per person). Those who are at the poverty line or below could get a special exemption/more free visits, and you could cap what anyone pays at $1500 a person or $3000 a family (maybe even exempt kids from it). I'm just throwing numbers out there, but I know my insurance is much cheaper because I have co-pays.
I know when I worked with the homeless, one of my jobs was to keep them from going to the ER because they would have something trivial wrong with them (a cough, a runny nose, an aching joint, etc). Under UHC, I would hate to see a large chunk of people swamping the ER or Urgent Care, because it is free. If you put a minimum fee on it, I think it would deter that behavior.
|
Yeah my biggest concern with this is people will treat it as a free hand out, see the doc more and more, and send costs soaring even more. It's human nature, when my employer was providing this kick-awesome plan, I went to the doc for a checkup or two just so I wouldn't feel like I was wasting the perks. Now that I buy my own, where I buy the cheapest policy possible and basically have to pay to see a doc, I haven't even thought about going for many years. But I'd really hate a system that drives taxes up so unhealthy, stupid, smoking people can suck up all the resources. Of course, I'm doing that already with private insurance. It's pretty much a money sink by definition for young/healthy people.
At any rate, for a gov't plan, I'd have guidelines that are even stricter than yours. 1 free scheduled check up a year/every other year per adult, and have clinics set up for aches and pains and colds and whatever else. Obviously, if you have symptoms that seem to be more serious, that's a different story.