[redpoint5]

US healthcare has the worst aspects of both free markets and socialism. The most expensive place to be seen is the emergency room, yet our laws say that anyone visiting an ER cannot be turned away. That means everyone without health insurance visits the ER for minor things. Something like 5% of ER visits are appropriate for the ER.

We don't have enough skin in the game. We want insurance to pay 100% of everything. Insurance is meant to keep you from lifelong financial ruin, not to cover a $200 office visit for the sniffles. Every visit should carry a copay requirement so that people have some skin in the game. There should be incentives to shop for healthcare too. In the US, you literally can't get a quote for anything health related. I've spoken to the billing dept of clinics to ask how much a standard office visit with a doctor is, and they couldn't tell me, and they couldn't even tell me what the average cost is.

Finally, why is insurance tied to a particular employer? My health insurance has absolutely nothing to do with the business I work for. It should be illegal for health insurance to be part of a "benefits" package. The benefit should be that they pay for the work I do, and it's up to me to find health insurance appropriate to me as an individual. Group insurance is insane because we aren't groups, we're individuals.

The US healthcare system should be burned to the ground. Absolutely anything would be better than the system we have.

Obamacare wasn't a disaster because it did too much, it was a disaster because it didn't do enough. My wife's catastrophic coverage went from $200/mo (which is still too much for a healthy young woman), to $400. It doubled in cost and provided no extra benefit to us. It doesn't matter that previously uninsured people got "free" healthcare. Those idiots were going to the ER before they had insurance, and they continued to visit the ER after they got insurance (actually they increased their use of the ER).