At what point does subsidizing other people's outlier events become unacceptable? I will never have kids (biological issues). I will likely die from a one off critical heart failure (also genetic in my family) rather than anything that will cost me significant amounts of money. I do not drive, leave the house much, or do any risky activities, yet as the parent said, I pay _hilarious_ amounts of money each year for insurance.
And the real kicker for me, I've developed some conditions related to stress-side effects, sedentary behavior, and joint issues because of my work. So the insurance money would be BETTER SERVED being reinvested so I could stop working in such a way that damages my body.
Now, you can say this is selfish, but as I said, I'm taking an intentionally selfish point of view for this argument. At what point do we draw the line of "I need this money for me now" or "someone else needs the net effect of re-balancing costs across a society?"
I will openly admit that as I've gone through a decent chunk of my career without incurring any major events, but while incurring major costs, where I sit on being OK with the current arrangement has shifted.
At what point do we stop holding up infant mortality as the gold standard of medical care? Spending untold resources on keeping alive infants who would otherwise die is inherently dysgenic, and allowing whatever conflagration of genetic anomalies that contribute to the necessity of postpartum care will inevitably lead to higher incidences of these cases in the future, as these genes are allowed to propagate into future generations.
Infant mortality is emotionally devastating, but preventing it will almost certainly increase our society's long-term medical costs.
Finland which is number one, "used the least resources and attained average results, making Finland the most efficient public sector health service producer according to the study's authors"
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/09/29/our-i...
Granted it's way better than many other countries, but still we shouldn't be so off.
https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/...
Just look at the established tradeoff our species makes- our children are born helpless. Isn't caring for them dysgenic? But, being able to care for & protect them enables significant brain development to happen outside the womb.
Swaddling, clearing a wrapped umbilical cord, suctioning the nose & mouth... there are lots of things we do that improve mortality that are trivial.
That said: most of the improvement is through public health measures (clean drinking water, sewerage systems, municipal waste collection) and nutrition. Heroic measures are very much the outlier. That may be an even stronger argument against them -- other than as a learning experience, the resources they consume relative to providing much more basic, and effective, outcomes interventions is difficult to defend.
From the CDC: Infant mortality in the US <1 year was "up to" 30% in 1900. Maternal mortality was around 0.8% in 1900.
> Spending untold resources on keeping alive infants who would otherwise die is inherently dysgenic, and allowing whatever conflagration of genetic anomalies that contribute to the necessity of postpartum care will inevitably lead to higher incidences of these cases in the future, as these genes are allowed to propagate into future generations.
The closest thing I have to an answer for you is single-payer like the rest of the developed world, where they pay substantially lower medical costs for similar health outcomes.
I do hope to see our society mature a bit on end-of-life care. Dying is disproportionately expensive (http://time.com/money/2793643/cutting-the-high-cost-of-end-o...) and that money often results in little benefit to the patient (and at times, probably causes active harm).
It looks like many countries are moving that way in the past 20 years: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Legality_of_euthanasia
Patients who'd like to undertake euthanasia and can't would get a DNR order. Medicare isn't spending massive billions on folks with DNRs - it's the folks that won't accept a terminal cancer diagnosis and put grandma through intensive chemo instead of prioritizing quality of life that costs.
But health "insurance" has crept into regular health maintenance. But that's not really insurance; that's more like an extended warranty for your life.
[1] And certainly things like dental insurance are pretty much just "extended warranties" rather than insurance against catastrophic expenses.
Well, it's insurance. It's there so if you have twins in the NICU for two months because they were born in the second trimester (like I did) you don't wind up with a multi-million dollar bill to pay. Most people will incur more premiums than benefits. That's normal.