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Comment by rixrax | Hacker News Reader

I’d like to throw something out here as maybe a starting point for a discussion: we should immediately make it illegal to have medical insurance in the US. Everything should be out of pocket. Period.

After initial chaos, misery and death, we would have no choice but to restructure healthcare system in a manner that its costs are in line with what people can afford to pay with their salaries.

Ok, that was pretty radical. :)

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I wouldn’t make insurance illegal, but as a thought experiment I think if you banned employers from providing health benefits then you’d find a sudden huge pressure for change. If the wealthy class in the US had to deal with what the self-pay / self-insured deal with, there’d be hell to pay.

I'm completely on boar with preventing employers from providing it as a benefit, but I think you may be overestimated how much the wealthy class will give a shit. They can foot the bill for their care.

>Ok, that was pretty radical. :)

It's not radical, it's an old enough form of cruel indifference that it was mocked by Dickens and Swift.

It makes sense to insure against events that can wipe you out financially. Don't insure your car against theft, if you can easily afford to replace it. But unless you have north of about $5,000,000 that you don't really need, and you live in the US, you need health insurance. I've had a single operation for which the "chargemaster" cost was over $800,000 .

You propose that sick people just die?

No. I’m suggesting we fix our healthcare system so that fewer people die, and no one is driven into financial ruin because they need to see a doctor, and that it’s available to every citizen of these United States regardless of their financial status.

And worry not - those with deep pockets can always pay extra for premium treatments, but some baseline should exist.

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