Free markets could solve a lot but not all of the cost side. For example allowing somehow to open an MRI imaging facility assuming they hired the necessary licensed personal would lower the cost of MRIs but Certificate of Need licensing prevents that from happening. Forcing medical providers to post prices would allow customers to shop around.
[/quote]
MRI would be a bad example. You got to realize the amount of incidental findings from a single MRI can generate so much more follow up MRIs or potential unnecessary procedures and surgeries. So to suggest that we reduce the threshold for MRI imaging and lower the barrier to an MRI will increase cost, not lower it.
Assuming that $1000 cost (it can be much more, $4000 sometimes), and assuming you allow the cost to go down to $500. Now you are making MRI a standard practice for ALL knee pains. the cost to the system would explode.
[quote=livinincali]
Forcing medical providers to eat the costs of their own mistakes would help. I.e. if I elect to have knee surgery for an aching knee if I get an infection while under the care of said hospital they would eat the cost of treating the infection and extra days in the hospital but instead they currently get to charge people for that.
[/quote]
I know someone who went in for spine surgery for chronic back pain, came out of the surgery as a paraplegic. The medical group that did this is absorbing all future cost related to his new paraplegic status. This is already being done. This is not the reason why cost is high.
[quote=livinincali]
Allowing a business that is licensed to purchase drugs in India or somewhere else where the drug company sets them much lower and re-import them here would drastically lower the price of drugs here. These are all free market forces that would lower the cost of health care here.
[/quote]
Big Pharma is blocking this for the obvious reason. And Big Pharma is in bed with congress.
[quote=livinincali]
Forcing health care providers to post prices and always charge that price would effectively lower health care costs. If you want Medicare patients you bill everybody the Medicare price or you choose not to have any medicare patients. If you can’t make if with the medicare patients or without them because you have a lot of debt or outlays you go out of business and somebody buys your assets for pennies on the dollar and can make a profit at the medicare rates.
[/quote]
Not if you are not paying for it. Who cares about the price printed and listed if you don’t actually have to pay for it in person.
This would only work if you move away from insurance and change to a full fee for service system.
[quote=livinincali]
All of those free market forces would work to lower health care costs. Single payer is just an alternative to that and one that’s likely less efficient. It would probably work and it might involve slightly less disruption.
In the end though Health Care revenue is a component of GDP. If you lower the cost of health care you’ve lower health care revenue and GDP. By definition lower GDP means we’re in recession. Health care primarily is a service provided by people. If you materially reduce health care costs you are most certainly are either laying people off or reducing their salaries by a material amount. This is math not theory.[/quote]
You do realize you have a huge black hole known as the ER. Where people not covered and not able to afford fee for service will simply allow whatever that ills them to worsen until it becomes bad enough to be life-threatening and thereby the ER can not turn them away.
China runs a very good free market health care system. But they allow people that can’t pay for the ER to die outside the doors.
That is a key ingredient in a successful free market health care system.
