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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Wheel Gun" data-source="post: 2146165" data-attributes="member: 19286">To fully understand this mess, you have to understand some history here.  You have to understand the difference between health insurance and health financing.  Health insurance started during the depression.  FDR had put in wage controls and business was not allowed to pay higher salaries to attract top people.  So, they started looking for perks that might substitute for that inability to pay people what they were worth.  Health insurance existed somewhat before that, but very few had it.  Suddenly, a really good job would come with some kind of health insurance.Insurance.  The only way that health (or life or car) insurance works is by lumping a big collection of people into a group of their peers.  To keep premiums low, that group must be healthy (and young and not auto accident prone).  Then, when people are unexpectedly sick (or croak young or crash their car), the big group of their peers pay out a few pennies each and everyone is happy.Financing.  When you step into the sphere of government health insurance, there is no insurance.  This is healthcare financing.  There is no way for the government to exclude people or be selective.  Today, our poorest citizens also tend to be old, very overweight and live unhealthy lives.  So, with this group, it's not rare to need a payout--it's constant and pervasive.The cost of healthcare financing for America was reasonable and relatively small until the late 60's.  When Medicaid and Medicare came in, government health spending started pushing costs up.  Government's adverse impact on private health insurance was one of those unintended consequences.  A hospital would find itself required to provide a long list of services for the poor, but were only reimbursed for a fraction of that.  Prices raised then for everyone, to make up the difference.  Since then, government's intrusion into our healthcare system has been, not linear, but logrithmic.  If you look at the nation's overall increase in spending on healthcare, it matches the increase in the government's role.The bad thing is that there's no way to fix this.  (And, I'm paid to find ways to do so.)  For forty years now, Americans have been told that healthcare should be free and limitless.  Everyone is now convinced.  The only way to right this ship is to spend another 40 years convincing people that they need to pay their own way.  And, no one is even hinting at that message.  But, that's the only thing that will start to bring prices down.  When Uncle Sam starts throwing taxpayers' money around, prices go up.</blockquote>

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