>>Health care costs started their escalation with the advent of employer-paid "insurance," which increased demand. You could call that "the market" given that it's not "the government," but the key factor is that it took away the normal market incentive of having to make a cost decision when one makes a purchase.<<
Karen -
Those statements don't take into account the fact that insurers negotiate with providers to set costs for procedures. Anyway, if healthcare costs have risen because of the prevalence of employer-paid insurance, why have they been increasing faster as more and more employers have reduced the coverage they offer, or forced employees to shoulder more of the cost? Shouldn't there be a direct correlation?
I suppose that if everyone had to pay for healthcare out of pocket, we'd be in a very different situation. Very few people would ever pay for MRIs or CAT scans or things like that. Instead, they'd just wait until their cancers were big enough to make themselves obvious in some other way.
Then, since most people wouldn't be able to afford chemotherapy and radiation, they'd just die instead. Note that I am not trying to say that you have advocated such a system. I'm just musing.
I would submit that employer paid health insurance is just another part of the free market. People do want to be covered by insurance in case something horrible happens, so employers offer insurance benefits as a means of attracting and retaining quality employees.
If there were no employer paid health insurance, it might be that insurance companies would be more forceful in their negotiations with healthcare providers, so that they could come up with policies that were more affordable to a greater number of people. More likely, the bargain policies would just cover less, as they do now.
I, for one, am quite grateful that I had continued to pay for my own health coverage, through the COBRA program, after leaving my last employer. That made it possible for me to enjoy a wonderful buffet of chemo, radiation, surgery, and hospitalization when I had cancer a year and a half ago.
- Allen |
