Tornado Alley (PROG)

[F6]

loophole73 -- largely agree (hope you were sitting down)

though I'd frame/discuss it a bit differently

re pricing, have long held that, at least apart from legitimate charitable/pro bono work (which wouldn't be necessary with a real systemic solution, more below) the costs of which are not then charged on to others, it should be just flatly illegal for any health care provider to charge or collect from/on behalf of different patients different prices for the same thing or service -- no matter what else is going on in health care/health insurance

and one (rather significant) factual nit -- it's one thing to negotiate with a willing provider who knows you can and will pay -- most uninsured by far are charged far more than insured, in particular by hospitals -- get charged the full grossed-up 'list' price and don't get the often well over 50% 'discount' then applied via the insureds' insurances -- before the ACA, I hadn't had real health insurance, you know, which actually covered anything, for many years -- had and kept paying for a policy which literally covered nothing but 80% of my scrip costs and cost me over $10,000/year (which I'd gotten way back when under COBRA) because and only because that way if I had a major hospital expense at least I'd get the damned discount (where, through that period, thanks to a pre-existing condition I could not buy any other real health insurance for any price -- I tried, regularly)

you're absolutely correct that all should be in the same pool -- at least apart from e.g. the segmentation by age in the context of a system with Medicare for the older (something which itself should/would go away under a real overall solution), the cherry-picking of pools and the like should also be flatly illegal

the solution on the insurance side, of course, is simple, long since again and again demonstrated and proven efficient/effective elsewhere -- some version of a single-payer system which covers all, able to negotiate group pricing for all, financed via a progressive income tax (or practically similar to equivalent means-based/adjusted premiums) (and with whatever bells/whistles/certain things optional/kept apart from the system which folks may want or demand but which do not obviate the overall single-payer structure for the range of primary medical needs/services) -- and to emphasize (for any who might miss the point, strongly suspect you wouldn't), that doesn't and wouldn't mean the government owning or taking over or otherwise running or controlling actual health care providers/suppliers

for-profit private insurance providers/industry, properly and reasonably regulated, for other things (life, auto, home, whatever) are fine -- but there is no possible value added by or other good reason for any profit motive or market segmentation in the provision of health insurance, at the least when it comes to primary medical needs/services

so -- make discriminatory/inconsistent pricing illegal, shit-can the entire private health insurance industry at least for the range of primary medical needs/services, go to some variant of single-payer we can all live with (Medicare for all would be at least a good first approximation) -- which I'd suggest isn't at all far from what you were getting at