Hidden Secrets of the Uninsured | Shaun Young | TEDxNewAlbany

FROM A PLAN SPONSOR: This is the essence of what I think both you and I have been preaching for many years.  You don’t spend money efficiently when it’s someone else’s money.

This guy is absolutely right.  It’s an issue of teaching people how to shop for a service rather than just giving them free stuff.  Where this falls down, however, is in the case of catastrophic care.  It’s hard to shop for catastrophic care in the current health care environment.  Just as car insurance in there for an unforeseen accident that will wipe you out financially, that’s what health insurance should be for.  That’s what it used to be for until we evolved to what is in effect a payment transfer system with a lot of bureaucracy to manage it now.  We spend a huge amount of the health care dollar on first dollar coverage b/c our population has come to expect first dollar coverage.  It doesn’t leave enough to deal with the catastrophic stuff.

First dollar coverage is BS.  We need to go back to high deductible plans (Obamacare actually did this), and figure out a way to subsidize lower income people to assist (not cover 100%) with their deductibles.  There needs to be a co-pay also, no matter what subsidy is offered.  People have to have skin in the game, no matter how poor you are.

It will never happen, however.  Once you give people free stuff, you can never take it away.  And, unfortunately, the democrats will ensure you never take free stuff away from people b/c they have a genetic particle in their brains that just won’t allow it.

You can preach it as Mr. Young has done, but it’s not going to change.  Actually, Obamacare may not have been such a bad plan, other than it was designed to eventually evolve to a single payer system.  It really did eliminate most first dollar coverage, except for some necessary co-pays.