Who Should Pay for the CORVID 19 Test?
There appears to be a huge amount of bickering about who should pay for the Coronavirus test kits.
The answer to this question resolves if one asks the question about the nature of tests and who benefits from the test.
For example, I as a healthy individual, wouldn't benefit much from a test.
Think about it! If I paid for a test today; the test wouldn't prevent me from getting the virus tomorrow. Who knows? I might contract the virus while going to the testing center. The knowledge that I would gleen from the test at this point is relatively minor.
In contrast the information that the health care system is receiving from tests at the moment is extremely valuable. The tests help track and slow down the spread of the disease.
At this point in the outbreak, the health care system is the primary beneficiary of the tests. Consequently, the health care system should be the primary buyer of the test kits.
As the disease spreads and it becomes part of seasonal flu cycles, then needs will change.
If I were sick and went the the hospital; I wouldn't want my health care provider to simply test for coronavirus. I would want the doctor to do a full diagnosis to figure out what was wrong with me.
If we had a system that said that the CORVID19 tests are free and other tests full price; the doctor might waste resources on the CORVID19 test when I am actually showing symptoms of food poisoning and another test would be more applicable.
The question of who should pay for the coronavirus test seems to be answered by first examining who is benefitting from the tests. The primary beneficiary of the test in the first months of the outbreak is the health care system itself.
This dynamics will change at a later point in course of the disease. At this later point the coronavirus test will be just one of many tests that people might take as they diagnosis illnesses.
As there is no upper bounds on the different tests that people can take. At this later point it is better for patients to pay for the tests so that individual people can determine the best use of their resources.
Anyway. I really dislike the people who are pointing at the spread of the virus and demanding socialized medicine.
Yes, there are a few times when society at large is the primary beneficiary of a given action. But for the most part that is not the case.
The best political solution is to have a system based on free market principles but that is dynamic enough to handle the few cases that arise where the system is the primary beneficiary of a given action.
In a free market the entity that is the primary beneficiary of the test should be the entity that pays for the test. (This type of behavior tends to happen naturally in a free market.)
In a socialized system, health care forms to social crises. Since the care was formed around social crisis, it fails to adapt to individual needs when the system normalizes.
Things change. Free markets tend to out perform socialized markets because they can better adapt to change.
There are some dimensions that I did not put in the post.
Imagine workers at a hospital that suffers a COVID19 . The hospital might have the workers take multiple tests. In this case the tests are part of the overall care given by the hospital and not for the benefit of the workers.
Low cost healthcare is possible in america but not with the current federal government. If the federal government was profitable and not running a deficit, along with state, and local governments then it wouldn't be a big deal to build a really great and virtually free to the consumer healthcare system.
My hope is that people will think about this outbreak in detail and realize that big socialized medicine doesn't serve the people well.
The media reports I've heard seem to push the message that we must have socialized medicine to combat contagious diseases like coronavirus.
A campaign slogan is that corona virus test kits should be free. This blanket statement is stupid.
This statement is foolish. The test should be paid for by the entity that benefits from the test.
Imagine that your employer wants to have daily testing of employees. The employer is the beneficiary of the tests; therefore the employer should be the entity that pays for the test.
The Federal government is charged with protecting borders. As such the Federal Government should be paying for tests that are used for the purpose of protecting the border.
Health organizations need to track the spread of the disease. In this case the health organizations should be subsidizing the tests they need.
The current system that we have is not working optimally because politicians have built monolithic health care structures which are not responding adequately to the needs of the people.
Unfortunately, politicians are skilled at using the failure of centralized systems to demand greater centralization.
I belief that the best way to fight sloganeering is to get people to look at different cases. If they discuss different cases then they will realized that while socialized care might be good in a few cases, it fails in most cases.
The media reports I've encountered about the
imagine clinging to "free market" conspiracy theories when a pandemic is killing thousands of people a day.
psychopathic, bizarre, and delusional.
The National Health System of Britain approached CORVID 19 with a grand socialist plan called "herd immunity."
The idea behind socialism is that the group matters more than the individual.
Socialists support the idea of herd immunity because they believe that allowing the deaths of tens of thousands of people would ultimately make the herd strong.
Imagine letting thousands of people to die to exercise some misguided socialist ideal is both bizarre and delusional.
BTW, you clearly misunderstood my post.
In a properly functioning market system, the costs get born by the entities that receive the most benefit from the cost.
The post states that individuals receive relatively little benefit from a CORVID 19 test; therefore, we should not look to making individuals the source for funding the tests.
The health care system itself is the primary beneficiary of the test. Since the system is the primary beneficiary of the test, it should be the primary source for the funds for testing.
Imagine a patient in a nursing home. A single CORVID19 test for this patient would be of little value.
In contrast the nursing home (which is selling health care as a product) would see a great benefit in setting up a system that tests and monitors CORVID19 (and other pathogens) in the facility.
A properly functioning market system wouldn't charge individuals for the tests because the individual is not the beneficiary of the test. We don't have a properly functioning market system in health care. We have a politically driven health care system that is run by people like Bernie Sanders of the world.
Regardless. The grand response of the socialist National Health Care system is to let people die needless so that the country builds up herd immunity. Socialists have a long history of letting people die by the millions because the underlying foundation of this system is a belief that the herd is more important than the group.
absolutely bizarre conspiracy theory you're cooking up here. Literally name one socialist who says this.