Just had a call from a phonebot (apparently a meatbot, not the silicon type) wanting to talk at me about the new "health care reform..."
Hold it right there.
It's not reform, goddammit!
The purpose of the ACPA is to prevent reform, and to lock everyone into the crooked third-party payment system while breaking it still further.
You want health-care payment reform? Here are some ideas:
- Require that the amount actually paid by a third-party payer, plus the amount paid by the patient, add up to the amount billed by the provider (so long as the amount billed does not exceed a published limit for the service in question).
- Start enforcing the laws against price-fixing, conspiracy in restraint of trade, and so on. If these laws have exemptions for "insurance" companies, fix them.
- Include government-run third party payers (e.g., Medicare) in both of the above.
- Allow formation of group health plans / insurance pools for groups other than companies with full-time employees.
- In general, remove the special tax and legal status of employer-provided health plans.
Those are just a few of the obvious ones.
Alas, the Stupid Party will never promote these, as it's almost as locked to Big Finance as the Evil Party.
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