Everyone here is talking about healthcare reform. Now that is definitely a discussion to be had, but so far I am not seeing any principles nor solutions coming forward, and given the scale and complexity of the problem, any sort of healthcare reform isn't going to be quick, simple nor cheap.
So a few principles that I can think of:
- Prevention of illness is cheaper than a cure.
- The best people to decide on the level of care are the individual and their doctor.
- The market, when the incentives are correct, is the best way to allocate healthcare resources.
So an example of one of these solutions is to amend the labor legislation to allow employees two of their allocated sick days a year to go for a bi-annual health checkup at their GP and a dental checkup at their dentist. Once they finish their checkups they get the rest of the day off provided they provide proof of the checkups to their employers.
This has the following positive effects:
- Individuals are incentivized by half a day of leave if they go to the doctor and dentist. This means that any healthcare or dental issues they have can be picked up and treated much earlier.
- Employers are not loosing out as they are already legally mandated to give sick leave. In fact they would most likely benefit on average by having healthier employees.
- Doctors are able to get a healthy baseline for their patients, such that they know what is normal and what is not.
The negative effects:
- More paperwork for employers to work with.
- Deceit on the part of employees in faking their doctors visits.
- Employers will get two days less productivity from each employee on average.
The cost:
- To the state:
- R0 for the changing of the legislation
- Increased costs for the state clinics
- To the individual
- If they have health insurance, R0, as all most insurers would gladly subsidize 1 visit in prevention
- If they don't, they would need to pay out of pocket for it.