Private health insurance is something that people spend thousands on. It’s also something many of us cannot live without. But, is it really necessary? If we’re paying that much, is there a better way of going about it?
Before I answer that, I first need to look into how effective U.S. healthcare is. From what I’ve read, there’s a lot of room for improvement. In fact, in a study of eleven countries all with relatively similar economic and social climates, the U.S. ranked last in overall quality of healthcare.
The study cites various factors, but the two that jumped out at me were the lack of universal healthcare and that the U.S. spends less on social programs, like paid time off and child care, than its counterparts.
The U.S. seems almost exclusively to associate healthcare with physical well-being. This isn’t the norm for wealthy countries. Even something like paid time off, and getting a genuine break from work, is appalling in the U.S. compared to other countries. While the U.S. averages at about 10 days per year, Iran makes that number look miniscule compared to the average of 53 days. The U.S. actually has the third lowest number of annual PTO in the entire study.
In other words, even if you do get sick in America, a lot of the time you have to figure out the cost of healthcare as well as try to not be sick too many days, as the time off often won’t be covered, leaving you losing more money each day you’re bedridden.
So, if we spend nearly twice as much money for a lower life expectancy compared to other wealthy nations, perhaps it’s time for a new system. But what would that look like?
A good idea is to begin implementing value-based care, where you pay for the quality of care you receive. It is based on life expectancy, meaning that living a long life based on the care received is the doctor’s number one concern.
While this isn’t a perfect solution, it would be a better way of ensuring that the money we spend on healthcare would be better utilized. By creating this kind of system, people would receive higher quality care while spending the same amount.
This would also drastically decrease the amount of discrimination that surrounds healthcare because people would be paying for the quality of care they receive and that implies that they would be listened to and treated with respect regardless of identity. So, by paying for quality care, we would limit the racial and gender based judgements that accompany healthcare too often.
There is no easy fix to America’s health insurance problem, but there are improvements that can be made that may lead to a better system; a system where everyone feels safe and listened to in a doctor’s office is something that everyone should want.
If you have been discriminated against in a healthcare setting, help is available:
