I do not have an answer to this issue. It is not my are of expertise by any means. I have realized for a number of years, we as individuals who purchase health insurance on our own, or the numerous employers who provide health insurance as a fringe benefit cannot continue down this path of substantial increases as we have seen. Our nation has been known as a nation of innovation, while other nations are able to duplicate/copy these practices and procedures, all while performing them at much lower costs. I read an article about "medical procedure vacations" and going to foreign countries to have medical procedures, due to the cost of having them here. On another note, I priced health insurance coverage for my family of 4 in western Minnesota on the Blue Cross of Minnesota website. A single provider network had premiums totaling close to $22,000 (as I recall) for 2017 and an individual deductible of $6550 (again, as I recall). That same plan and deductible was a third less in the Twin Cities metro. I had my kids covered on an individual plan for 10 years, because the cost for their plan was so much less versus adding them at my workplace. For 2018, I added them because the premiums and deductibles increased tremendously in the last three years.
I pulled up a clip of an article in the Star Tribune about Blue Cross Blue Shield of Minnesota based upon 2015 financial results. We can rant about the compensation of their CEO all we want. His compensation was on the order of $871,000 in 2014, with a bonus of $1.3 million. That is a tremendous amount of money, and I will question who is worth that kind of compensation. I did not look into his educational or professional background, but I also recognize the gross revenues of Blue Cross at that time was around $10.6 billion. With that, what is an appropriate compensation package for the CEO of a company of that size? What would be the minimum educational and experience required to even be qualified? I don't have the answer to that question.
If our nation were to move to socialized medicine, what are the negative repercussions? What are the "tax implications" to us as taxpayers. I read an article earlier this year. Citizens from 4 or 5 foreign nations were interviewed about their health care costs in those countries. Each one talked about a "free" or "no-cost" health care system. Not a single one even hinted at their own costs for this, based upon taxes imposed to cover the cost of their health care system. As my grandfather always said, "Nothing ever is truly free. Somebody has to pay the price." I think about this when one side talks the talk about providing free health care and free college education, along with other freebies.
I have read about some form of a "hybrid" single payer system, which is somewhere in between what we have here in this country, and the system in some of the European nations. From what I recall, this might provide a clue as to the direction we as a nation may need to go. It requires a certain degree of accountability by the participants, while controlling costs and financial exposure to the service providers as well as the participants. I had always envisioned coming back to the farm and leaving my job in town. The cost of healthcare and insurance prohibits that from happening, because the premiums have grown to be far from affordable!
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Today's Featured Article - An Old-Time Tractor Demonstration - by Kim Pratt. Sam was born in rural Kansas in 1926. His dad was a hard-working farmer and the children worked hard everyday to help ends meet. In the rural area he grew up in, the highlight of the week was Saturday when many people took a break from their work to go to town. It was on one such Saturday in the early 1940's when Sam was 16 years old that he ended up in Dennison, Kansas to watch a demonstration of a new tractor being put on by a local dealer. It was an Allis-Chalmers tractor dealership,
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