Bitcoin Makes Healthcare Fair for Patients – Bitcoin Magazine

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This is an opinion piece by Robert Hall, content creator and small business owner.

Nothing is more essential to long-term health than having access to health care when needed. But every jurisdiction in the world implements this process differently. Many countries socialize the cost of health care through the government on a sliding scale from full government control to private market health care, with a sprinkling of government-provided health insurance for the poor and people. elderly.

In the United States, we have primarily a private health care system. If you have money, you can buy health services from any service provider you want. But the problem in America isn’t a lack of health care providers; this is how health services are paid for.

When you see your doctor, you don’t know how much you’re going to spend. But if you think about it for a second, it’s very strange. Can you think of another service that you don’t know how much you will spend on before your visit? Hell, even some sort of estimate would be nice, right?

When you arrive at the doctor’s office, you usually hand over your health insurance card and pay a co-payment. Do you know what co-payment or co-insurance is and how it works? Few people do. All most people know is that you hand over a card, pay a nominal fee, and receive services.

Once the services have been rendered, your doctor’s office will send a request for reimbursement to your health insurance fund. Once the debt is paid, you must pay the rest if there is a balance. This usually happens months later, and at this point you may not have the money left to pay the balance.

How crazy is that? Not only are you faced with a surprise bill that has yet to be budgeted for, but healthcare providers are also struggling to find qualified staff to process the payments. The government also passed the law last year with no surprises, making it even more burdensome for healthcare providers to receive payments.

Why do we need third parties to pay medical bills in the first place? Imagine your car insurance company pays to fill your gas tank. Weird, right?

Did you know that in 2021, 20% of Americans had medical debt and 58% of collection bills were for medical debt?

As you can see, people are struggling with medical debt, which has a cascading effect on healthcare providers. Healthcare providers lose revenue when their patients don’t pay and have to raise prices to make up the difference. Does the consumer of health care directly see a price increase? No, health insurance companies are seeing rising costs to provide services.

This increase in the price of health goods and services is reflected in the price paid for health insurance. The typical American family spends $22,221 on health insurance each year. I don’t know about you, but that’s a lot of money. Imagine what you could do with $22,221 in your pocket.

The situation becomes troubling when you consider the federal government and how much it pays for health care.

Medicare is expected to be insolvent by 2026. It’s barely three years away, but no one is talking about it in the media, and no one campaigned significantly about it during the election. Medicare provides health coverage to 63 million elderly and disabled Americans.

What will they do when the government runs out of money to provide health coverage to this population? In 2021, Medicare spending growth averaged 7.6% over the previous five years and isn’t slowing down anytime soon. This is a slow-motion train wreck in the midst of an already broken healthcare system.

The system is broken and needs to change before it implodes and takes everyone with it. How can we transform the health care system into one based on free market principles while helping health service providers increase revenue and reduce costs for their patients?

Bitcoin to the rescue

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Imagine a world where you know how much your medical bills will be before services are rendered. Imagine a world where you could compare the prices of different medical procedures in the same way as when you go to the grocery store or shop on Amazon.

Bitcoin makes this world possible. If the world adopted a Bitcoin standard, the average consumer would have more purchasing power to pay their medical bills. The deflationary nature of Bitcoin makes this possible.

There are only 21 million bitcoins that will ever be created. The longer you hold it, the more its value will increase. The more value it earns, the more it can be used to purchase health services. The increase in value will attract more healthcare providers to enter the market and offer their services for bitcoins. More competition between health care providers means more access to health care, better customer service and lower prices for everyone. Do you see how it all works now?

Healthcare providers would be incentivized to list the prices of their services in bitcoin to attract new patients to their practice.

Typical health insurance, where insurance companies foot the bill for simple office visits, would disappear on a bitcoin standard. There would be no need, as consumers would have enough purchasing power to pay their bills at the time of service.

Lightning Network: A boon for healthcare providers

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Running a medical practice is a business. There are overheads that must be paid to stay in business. Rents need to be paid, employees need to be paid, and supplies need to be purchased.

Medical practices can use the Lightning Network to receive instant payment from their patients and reduce medical billing confusion. Adopting Lightning Payments would increase revenue and improve cash flow.

This cash flow could be used to invest in the business, buy better equipment and hire more staff. Not only does this benefit the business, but better equipment also leads to better healthcare outcomes, and more staff leads to better customer service. High-quality customer service will increase long-term profitability.

According to a recent study, healthcare providers who provide “excellent” customer service reported a 50% higher net margin than those who provide “average” customer service.

The Lightning Network will also reduce transaction costs for medical practices. Payment processing takes a large chunk of healthcare providers’ bottom line and offers very little utility. The average payment processor charges 1.5% to 3.5%, and they often institute other confusing schemes to scam businesses out of their money.

Healthcare providers could save money on transaction fees if they switched to the Lightning Network. The average fee for sending a Lightning payment is 0.01%! Many Lightning Nodes don’t charge a fee to send a payment. Traditional payment processors simply cannot compete with this.

Healthcare providers should move to a Bitcoin standard and use the Lightning Network as soon as possible, and watch their businesses transform. It will be good for them, their patients and the economy.

This is a guest post by Robert Hall. The opinions expressed are entirely their own and do not necessarily reflect those of BTC Inc or Bitcoin Magazine.

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