Reply to how much are you paying for health insurance (not employer sponsored) per year?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]You’d almost think the Affordable Care Act wasn’t affordable.[/quote]

Wasn't meant to be. It was a payback for big corporate insurance companies for their lobbying efforts. Was designed to drive up prices.

[b]The only solution [/b]is to deregulate insurance scam and allow more competition and a free market.

Also support more "cash-only" doctors and clinics, who are required to post prices for everything online and at their business locations so patients know in advance what everything costs, with no hidden fees. 
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But that still wouldn’t solve the problem.

First of all, even if doctors and clinics were somehow transparent about pricing, that still leaves hospitals (the source of crippling debt) opaque.  They can charge as much as they want because it’s literally life and death.

Secondly, even if you completely abolished the ACA (which I don’t think you should do), prices would remain artificially inflated because we would still be subsidizing Medicare and Medicaid patients.  According to market forces, companies will charge the highest prices people will pay.  Less customers at astronomical prices is more profitable than more customers at reasonable prices, so that’s what we’ve got.

Personally, I think we need universal coverage, transparent pricing, AND heavy regulation of the industry.  Break up the monopolies and shut down private equity.  Private companies should be able to make a REASONABLE profit, but this price gouging is inexcusable.  There is no reason American drug companies should charge Americans more for medicine.  I realize research is expensive, but when it is funded by the government, there should be some sort of financial relief, maybe a reduced patent period.  The fact is that neither the Republican approach (the government should get out of the way of industry and let it do whatever it wants) nor the Democratic approach (the government should pay industry whatever it wants) is a workable solution.  Ultimately, the only winner in either scheme is private industry, who has no doubt spent millions, if not billions, of our money to lobby both sides for that outcome.

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