A possible consideration for health care.
A company provides health insurance for their employees (imagine if the government provided this).
The deductible is high (like $5000 per year). It is designed to cover major catastrophic illness or accident.
The employees are given a tax-credit equal to the amount of the deductible for health care but of course it can only be used for medical purposes.
Therefore because the employees have a medical budget… they shop around for the best health care at the best prices.
The things I found most interesting was that most Doctor’s offices cannot tell their patients what the cost of their services are… those that do are more willing to negotiate their prices to win a client. The competition for clients keeps prices reasonable… consumers are making a more informed choice and much of the burden is lifted from insurance companies.
Imagine what would happen if that were done nation wide…
Imagine using a different product just for the sake of comparison. Imagine groceries for example. If we had “grocery insurance” for example and it covered all of your food. Imagine not knowing the price of the products you were buying and the store not keeping track until the “grocery insurance” company was billed… How would that effect your grocery shopping habits? How much food would you waste? We all need groceries. Why don’t we provide this? Because it would bankrupt the “grocery insurance” companies and stores would ultimately fail.
Anyway… just thinking out loud.
blog Project 365-09 #259
Just thinking out loud.