No it isn't. Healthcare isn't infinitely expensive, the world is full of people who can pay cash for healthcare (or take an insurance policy with a very high excess which approximates the same thing).
I don't believe that is the case. Otherwise, we would see a shortage of care provided. Since everyone gets care, the competition with the super rich- if any- is vote driving prices
Even if that is true, a company will be successful in the degree they can do this more than the other companies in the same space. I don't think laws like this effectively lower the cost, because first of all, a good chunk goes to lawyers and patient advocates.
Also as the system gets itself more expensive, the mechanics that make it more expensive can also become more worthwhile! Its a spiraling costs issue.
you may not be familiar with how healthcare works. There is, generally, almost no price pressure. In fact, consumers of healthcare, because they aren't paying for it, often equate higher price with higher quality so I wouldn't bet on the prices going down
No, it's really not. The costs of healthcare have increased massively in the last 2 decades or so without a concomitant increase in the quality of care.
That's exactly my point. Why aren't costs agreed upon first in healthcare? Sure the doctors, hospitals, insurance, etc will lose their ass on some jobs but it should more than balance out over time.
This is a myth. Prices are inflated because there is no transparency and is privatized. Healthcare is not car insurance. We should stop treating it that way.
I think the reason medical costs are on an upward spiral is not consumers not shopping around. It's that it's extremely hard to get a price for healthcare, that hospitals are being bought up by investment companies uninterested in improving outcomes but very interested in jacking up the price of service, and that it is perfectly legal to have the only cure for debilitating, potentially fatal illnesses like hepatitis C cost $24,000.
I think the problem with never-ending healthcare costs is that it isn’t run enough like a business. Any normal business decreases costs to survive. It appears healthcare is at 20% of GDP and rising forever.
Most healthcare is not for life threatening illness. The bigger problem in healthcare in the US is that consumers almost never know how much a service will cost beforehand.
I hope you don't actually believe that providing health care is exorbitantly expensive. Providing health care is absolutely not exorbitantly expensive. It just isn't. Paying the prices that our hospitals, insurance companies, and drug companies charge is exorbitantly expensive.
Not quite. It's simply an argument that the money will end up back in healthcare, just maybe further down the line, and maybe that's okay. Just remember that as everything else gets cheaper, the percentage that is spent on healthcare must increase.
There are two prices of health care I have to pay. One is the up front cash (or monthly insurance) cost I have to pay, the other is the massive time sink and general pain and inconvenience it is to get it.
I live in country where the cash cost is basically zero, yet I consume as little health care as possible due to the high second cost. In fact the times I do need health care I often opt to pay more up front to avoid as much of the second cost as possible.
As long as you keep the second high enough the demand for health care won't go to infinity even as the first cost goes to zero.
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