Dr. Sean Masaki Flynn discussed healthcare in the lecture, The Cure That Works--How to Have the World's Best Healthcare--at a Quarter of the Price. Dr. Masaki Flynn talked mainly about the comparisons between the United States and Singapore. He did this because, near the end of the lecture, he explained that most people believe that they only have three choices. The Canadian model, the English model, and then the model currently being used in the United States. The other reason he talked mainly about Singapore, is because he believes they are doing healthcare better than anyone else in the world right now.
Dr. Masaki Flynn was trying to explain the competitive nature of the Singapore healthcare system as well as the Singapore necessity to have healthcare savings. First, he talks about savings. He mentions multiple times that people, scientifically, can not be trusted to save. That is why the government puts in place a necessity for saving for healthcare. In Singapore, they have this failsafe, and it is a huge benefit to the people. Though, how does one set up this system? I wonder, if this was put in place in the United States, how the citizens would react to having their money divided out and forcibly saved. As good of a plan it is, I can foresee people going against this idea on the notion of freedom and some other notion that they can summon up in their minds.
Then there is the competitive market of Singapore. He explains it like a restaurant dining. When you go to a restaurant, you’re given a menu with prices on the side of each dish. If you went to a restaurant, and they refused to tell you the prices of any food until after you’ve eaten, would you eat there? The unanimous answer is no. Yet that is how the United States is. However, in Singapore, healthcare options are, in fact, labeled with their prices like a restaurant. This gives the consumer the ability to see the exact price of each process, and more importantly, gives the consumer the ability to compare prices with other free markets.
With the ability for comparison, there comes competition. Competition, he explains, will slowly make it to where there are many affordable healthcare providers with cheap rates. He explains that this will happen by taking the idea of one healthcare provider that is more expensive but has no mortality rates. Compared to a healthcare provider that is cheaper but has a low percentage of mortality rates. The first healthcare provider will want to lower its cost to compete, but the second will want to become better at their profession to compete with the second. So then you have a constantly changing and growing market that ebbs and flows with the consumer.
Now, while Dr. Masaki Flynn talks about this a great deal, he actually doesn’t believe that this would completely work in the United States, and instead offers an alternative by bringing up Whole Foods. He explains that Whole Foods gives their employees a set amount of money. They tell them that this money is theirs and that any of it they do not spend on healthcare will end up being theirs for whatever they want. Now, because of this, it had people looking at different markets. It had them comparing prices. They were more likely to buy the cheaper off-brand pills that work just as well as name brands. Because before, they would buy name brands, because it wasn’t them directly who were paying for it. Now that it was them that were paying for it, they began to be careful with their money and be more picky and comparative with the markets. This, Dr. Masaki Flynn says, dropped their overall healthcare price by about 35%. This plan not only drops the price of healthcare but it also drops the price the employers are paying by about 12%.
Now, this seems too good to be true, and so people begin to wonder why more people aren’t partaking in this new way of healthcare. And he says that it’s simply because people do not know about it. He says that the insurance companies would lose money through this, so two or three insurance companies will go and sell their pitch to an employer and give them a few options that are fundamentally the same as the other insurance companies and no one will mention that there is another way. So Dr. Masaki Flynn suggests that the biggest takeaway from this talk would be to spread the word and make more people aware that there is another way that is not only good for the healthcare system but is also cheaper overall for everyone. Sort: Trending