Accessing Health Care Without Paying?

Accessing Health Care Without Paying?

Rick Olson
April 2, 2025

 On April 23, 2022 I published a post entitled Solutions for Rapidly Rising Healthcare Costs. 

As dramatic as Obamacare has been in getting more people insured for healthcare, it has done little, if any, to actually reduce the cost of health care. It merely shifted the costs of the "third party payer" system to someone else (and frequently to the taxpayer).

If we wish to reduce costs, it seems logical to look where the costs are and focus on reducing those costs. With over 30% of the cost of health care in the United States being administrative costs caused by the complexity and volume of the insurance billing process, we need to look at reducing those costs which do not help anyone needing health care. With the administrative costs of Medicare estimated to be 6 - 7%, that looks more attractive. I now think we need to at least take a strong look at Medicare for All, or perhaps named "Americare for All". 

While there is little if any chance that anything like this will be looked at at the federal level in the next four years, might there be an experiment at the state level? Senator John Marty's 2016 book "Healing Health Care - the Case for a Commonsense Universal Health System" goes well beyond my 2022 thinking and encourages me to work to push for at least an intense study of what this would take to accomplish.

Imagine:

  • How would your life change if you could go to the doctor of your choice and not have to worry about either paying for the visit or working with your health insurance company?
  • What if you never needed to worry again about your deductible, your co-pay or out of pocket maximum for the year?
  • and what if this all would not cost any more than our health care system is currently costing taxpayers in Minnesota?

Stay tuned!

Prepared and paid for by Olson Senate Committee, P.O. Box 15, Prior Lake, MN 55372

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