Where is this "Affordable Health Care"?

The one I had, had a ridiculous monthly premium and an outrageous deductible that I needed to pay first, before the insurance would kick in.

That old ObamaCare plan did not work, do not force me to take it.

Do not penalize me for not wanting to participate in a failed and EXPENSIVE health care plan.

The ACA and the AHCA which modifies it ensure rising costs. I posted this last fall on FB, re-sharing it here since I actually did some research before opening my mouth.

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My Facebook feed is full of despair over the AHCA passing the House, rightfully so, the AHCA is bad bill. It's most of the ACA with some window dressing around the edges to allow various opt-outs. I don't want to rehash the thing here, since you can find tons of synopses online. I thought the ACA was a bad idea, and the AHCA makes it worse. I would like to see affordable, quality health care in the US, that's why I dislike both bills.

Whether or not the AHCA passes, we have a big health care problem in this country, and that's of rising costs. Last year, health care was about 1/6 of our GDP. Government takes in about 1/5 of GDP as taxes. If we were to socialize these costs, as most of my FB friends propose, we'd have to double taxes to pay for it, which would kill the economy, or we cut way back on government to pay for healthcare instead, which is politically impossible.

Costs are rising because the health care industry has worked for decades to prevent competition, and we no longer have a health care "market", but more of a health care extortion racket. Market competition sucks for providers, since they have to keep undercutting the competition, or improving services, otherwise, people will buy from someone better or cheaper. In a healthy market, companies churn, going in and out of business all the time. It's hard work, but it's good for consumers. It's a lot easier to lobby Congress for exceptions to anti-trust laws, for protection from competition, for importation bans, and any other means of stifling this competition. Google "certificate of need" for an example; before opening an MRI facility, you have to ask your potential competitors for permission to do it. Think you'll get that permission? There are countless examples of these anti-competitive measures, such as the AMA limiting the number of licensed MD's and fighting nurse practitioners taking over MD work, device manufacturers preventing importation of effective, cheaper devices from abroad, the FDA being funded by US drug companies creating a massive conflict of interest, etc.

When we pay ten or a thousand times more for a medical service than someone in another country, where does this money go? It doesn't go to some doctor or drug company, it gets spread out among many hands in the giant medical cartel we've grown in the US. It goes to the insurance bureaucrat who makes you spend hours justifying the procedure, it goes to pay for the lobbyists who make sure cheaper alternatives aren't available, it goes to the middleman who marks it up because the law requires the middleman. Some of it goes to the doctor, the pharmacist, and the drug manufacturer, and a bunch goes to various investors who demand these companies maximize their shareholder returns. You're paying for all that with your high costs and high insurance premiums!

Fighting this inefficiency means fighting all the millions of people who make money off it. Winning this fight, means that millions of people will lose their livelihoods, which is a good thing in my book, since these are counterproductive jobs. We need to roll back decades of anti-competitive measures, which all the people I mentioned will fight tooth and nail. We need rampant supply-side competition.

Once you have a competitive supply, then you can start thinking about how to provide this service to people who still can't afford it, but it becomes a much easier problem since it's more affordable.

On the upside, there are people who are fighting this inefficiency. Google "surgery center of Oklahoma" for an example; some great surgeons opened a surgery center which has a price list, doesn't do funny billing to extort money, and accepts patients from anywhere, the catch, they don't deal with insurance. On the upside, their all-in cost is usually less than your copay with insurance in other places! We need more suppliers like these. The surgery center of Oklahoma has proven that hospitals can charge ~15% of what they charge now for the same procedures. That's a huge cost saving.

So, please, if you're going to fight for healthcare changes, fight the corruption which makes it expensive, don't try to figure out ways to socialize the costs of corruption, because it will breed even more corruption and few people will be able to afford health care at all.