Anyways, health insurance against catastrophe would involve only a small expense and a huge potential benefit. The insurance company still makes its profit, but each person risks far less money than they risk in our current system (for those who say we don’t risk much when the employer pays for it, you are ignoring the fact that wages would go up significantly without health insurance).

By the way, there is one thing that tends to get lost in the health insurance debate, which is the issue of where we got the precedent of employers paying for health insurance. The answer to that question is that employer-based health insurance came about as a result of FDR’s wage freezes; providing health insurance as a fringe benefit was one of the ways employers provided employees with raises and bonuses, or competed with other employers for employees. So the entire health insurance debacle is yet another thing that can be placed squarely on the shoulders of the worst President in US history.

In any event, the fact is that the government run systems that have succeeded are, in fact, more market-based than our current system. However, the single-payer systems have paid a tremendous price in terms of reduced quality of care. Indeed, the only reason why the US ever ranks low (and, for that matter, why Cuba ranks high) in the UN rankings is because of: 1. cost, and 2. the UN’s extremely subjective “fairness” ranking. The latter is an automatic bonus based on the degree of socialism present in the system.

Logic has long since left the health care debate, though. People don’t seem to realize that in the majority of cases, they are better off having either no insurance or only extremely high deductible insurance. Otherwise, you are paying more into the system than you’re getting back.

Health insurance companies wouldn’t exist if there wasn’t a profit to be made (similarly, of course, there would be a lot fewer doctors if they couldn’t set their own fees). Therefore, when you are relying on your insurance to pay for all/most of your healthcare, you are essentially paying two fees: the doctor’s regular fee, and the insurance company’s service charge (which varies of course depending on how expensive your doctor’s fees are). To be sure, there are some people who get more health care than they pay into insurance, but the vast majority of people would actually spend less on health care if they did not have medical coverage.

This doesn’t make insurance companies evil – without profits, they don’t exist at all. It just means that the concept that health insurance is a “right” is utterly foolish.

Insurance is supposed to be a way of pooling risk in order to prevent any one person from having to pay catastrophic costs. In effect, insurance of any sort is a gamble that has a sizable house edge just like any casino game. The more you bet on the insurance, the more you are likely to lose. When you are only wagering on catastrophic medical expenses, you are only putting down a small amount of money

Their local governments decide on the eventual price agreed to by the insurer and health care provider. But insurers are also able to sell any combination of plans, leaving it up to the consumer to choose what’s best for them. Problem.

The Swiss are now getting more disatisfied because the system is more confusing and a lot less transparent. That’s the road to the U.S. health care debacle we have now. Another words, their health care system is morphing into the profit driven system America wants to change, forcing people to buy a plan with little coverage or transparency. A have and have not system.

The inconvienant detail is that the Swiss health care system is now the most expensive plan in Europe, second in cost to the U.S.

In the past it was 4th or 5th. Costs are going up there. That’s why free market conservatives(it really isn’t, read-”Free Lunch” David Kay Johnston) like the Swiss, because it’s an incremental change.

Note: I didn’t mean the conservative frame of “government run” in my previous post. A single payer system, where the government provides monetary support for the private insurers and doctors. Like Norway and France.

it’s either socialized or it’s free market.

That’s not entirely true…there are varying degrees of managed care, where both government and the private sector take responsibility. The more government is involved, however, usually the worse the quality of care. This happens because government has to run by regulation and the more regulation is involved the less the system is able to respond to dynamic conditions…also because the closer healthcare gets to being “free” the more encouragement for people to overuse and abuse it. That’s why libertarians advocate free market solutions to health care issues…government solutions often don’t work and tend to degrade the quality of care over time.

Also, Switzerland is not homogenous…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Switzerland

but it’s whatever Brad. this isn’t a terribly important argument here, i just think you guys were envisioning things for a second without considering other factors than govt system that make the system viable.

Who says we have to “make an America a Switzerland” in order to learn some lessons from their health care industry.

As Mark pointed out, their health care industry is probably more influenced by free-market forces than our own. The main difference? They don’t link employment and health care, so insurers have to satisfy the end user (i.e. the patient) rather than a corporate HR penny-pincher.

Their health care system is run almost entirely by the private sector; the main socialist element of it is their mandate. IIRC almost everything else is paid directly by the consumer to the health care company, and there are pretty easily met requirements for what constitutes adequate health care. Which means the consumer winds up with an incredible array of health care options.

I would point out that IF America were to tread the socialized-medicine path, the model we should follow would be Switzerland. I would hate to use a term like “market socialism”, but theirs has far more beneficial market incentives than even our current US system has.