Ah, now I understand why you are confused. No, most people with health problems in the U.S. are paying, at most, only a copay for a visit. They are getting medical treatment at no cost to them directly. It is paid for by an insurer or the state or Federal government.
This moral hazard is fundamental to our problem and why many have problems regulating their consumption.
Except this simply DOESN’T HAPPEN in the most famous free healthcare system on Earth, so clearly it can’t be a moral hazard.
I also know for a fact these people aren’t getting this for “free.” I just checked and copay is subject to the deductible. Also, I seriously doubt insurance companies aren’t ramping up premiums on these people once they get a chance.
Are these people seriously going “well it’s only $26 a pop so I may as well.” Do you think the (apparently) low price is what’s causing this?
I believe that you have strong opinions of the system with which I have too much experience.
Many of these people are, in the case of pain clinics, getting their pills paid for by workers’ compensation carriers.
That the UK has avoided some moral hazards does mean that they cannot exist elsewhere. Maybe the UK doesn’t incentivize doctors to hand out more pills.
No, I have a strong opinion that the moral hazard of affordable healthcare doesn’t exist based on the lack of evidence. Americans (and the hard right of British politics) are the only group that even consider such an argument.
If there were a moral hazard to affordable healthcare, I posit that you’d see lots of it in a system where healthcare is mostly free at the point of use (prescriptions aside). The fact that obesity and opioid addiction happen in the USA at far higher rates than in the UK points to a strong indicator that this moral hazard simply does not exist. The fact is that the only examples you can give point to issues unrelated to “moral hazard.”
You have failed to point to a systemic pattern of risk-taking behaviour that is higher in a system with socialised healthcare than in privatised systems to convince me otherwise. You cannot because it doesn’t happen. Human beings, on the whole, do not engage in obviously dangerous behaviour more if it’s free to get treatment because we’re simply not that stupid.
Now I don’t know if you’re just deliberately misreading my comments. At no point do I say “people don’t engage in dangerous behaviour,” I merely point out such behaviour is UNRELATED to the cost of healthcare. You’ve yet to show me any data that shows a link between affordable healthcare and moral hazard.
On the contrary, your only examples come from within a system famed for being the opposite.
I never claimed that there is a link between affordable healthcare and moral hazard. I argued only with two of your assertions which I have found to be unfortunately untrue, in my experience with the U.S. healthcare industry.
> I was similarly convinced that moral hazard in healthcare was not a problem because consumers don't get more healthcare than they need. I know now that this is not the case.
That’s the “moral hazard” in healthcare that’s used against affordable healthcare. It’s the only context it’s used in.
Obesity and opioid addiction aren’t “moral hazards” in healthcare, they’re literally things healthcare and society need to deal with. We’re far off the topic of insurance and I don’t even understand what you took issue with apart from nitpicking a sentence at this point.
Moral hazard has a well understood meaning outside of affordability. I would very much like to see the system in the U.S. make more sense. Any time spent in an emergency room or waiting room in the U.S. makes the moral hazard obvious.
This moral hazard is fundamental to our problem and why many have problems regulating their consumption.