Let’s face it, the price of health care in the United States is immoral. I’m not even exaggerating when I say that, the whole point of the US medical system is to milk as much money as possible from every citizen. It’s comical that US citizens still think of their country as the “Land of Opportunity.” Sure, there’s opportunity there, as long as you accept the fact that sooner or later either you or somebody you know is going to get sick and then you and everyone you know is going to have to pay institutionalized medicine the sum total of everything you’ve earned in your whole life. There is an escape however, you can elect to seek medical treatment abroad!
One of the big flaws with Obamacare was that it sought to pay for everyone’s inflated health care prices rather than bring the prices down in the first place. I’ve already discussed how the US has an illegal monopoly on health care. Every time a politician says that he or she is a champion of “Free Market Capitalism” they need to be round house kicked to the face. When they wake up ask them, if they’re a champion of the free market, how can a guy raise the price on Epi pens to 800 dollars a unit? In a free market, prices are reasonable because if you try to gouge people for profit, the competitors eat you up. If you have no competitors you have a monopoly, which is illegal, and not free market. However, for some reason, politicians turn a blind eye to this. They’re too busy frothing at the mouth about people kneeling for the anthem or other distractions.
It’s been postulated that the government could provide single payer health coverage to the entire country for around 800 billion dollars. Although that’s a lot, it’s actually a 200 billion dollar savings over what the government already pays for just Medicare. How could it be so much cheaper to cover everybody you might ask? Exactly because of what I said before. If you’re only dealing with a single buyer of medical product, you have a monopoly, but one on our side for a change. The government could knock off this price fixing that goes on with the pharmaceuticals and whatnot. Oh, and private citizens would also not have to pay the 2.2 trillion they spend on their terrible health insurance.
For all those defenders of insurance, I have a scenario for you. Let’s say you do everything “right.” You get a job, you get insurance, all is going well. Then, let’s say you get sick, and it’s one of those things that the treatment is like two million a year because our health care pricing is fixed (should be illegal). Let’s say it’s one of those illnesses that keeps you from working for a year or two. Ok, what happens when your money runs out and you can’t pay for your insurance anymore? I guess you’re out of luck aren’t you? Now, that whole scenario is improbable, but it’s not “asteroid strikes the Earth and wipes out all life” improbable. My guess is that this kind of thing happens a couple dozen times a year. It’s a pretty big flaw in the system to have a scenario where a completely compliant person is left totally out to dry like that.
Oh, and if you think the whole concept of getting prices down is ridiculous then just buy a plane ticket to literally anywhere in the world. Go to a pharmacy abroad and see what your medications cost. My go to example is my Albuterol inhaler that I use for Asthma. In the US I pay $25 for this thing, in Peru it’s $6, oh, and I also have to pay my inflated ten grand a year for the family’s health insurance, so it’s just a joke.
My solution these days is to just refuse to patronize the American medical institution. We go to Peru yearly, and that means it’s time for our dental visits. If anyone in my family got diagnosed with cancer, it’d be off to Peru for treatments. Health care is better in Peru anyway. How many people would really have to start leaving the US for their health care treatments before the institution started to feel it? Probably a lot since prices are so fixed, but they’d have to start noticing eventually. But honestly, going abroad for treatment is something you have to set up a plan for since otherwise, you simply risk losing everything you’ve ever worked for in your life. Hey, you write a will for disbursement of your assets in case something happens right? Why is it ridiculous to have a plan to avoid the price gouging vultures who start circling overhead the second you develop a cough?
And don’t believe the hype that health care abroad is “inferior.” That’s just marketing designed to terrify you into turning over all your assets to some jerk in the US. Your default thinking can’t be that the US health system is flawless, medical malpractice in Pittsburgh is a thing, and the only thing worse than buying a bad product is when you also had to pay top dollar for it. Hey, the fact is, they’re overcharging in the US and they’re not doing a good job anyway. Go abroad for medical treatment, at least you get the free vacation.
