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Politics : A US National Health Care System? -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Road Walker who wrote (7416)	7/8/2009 1:17:53 PM
From: skinowski	1 Recommendation Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 42652

For over 20 years healthcare has been functioning under a price control regime, established by the Federal government. If Warren Buffett would come to me as a patient and offer to pay for the visit more that the 70-80 bucks "allowed" by medicare, I couldn't accept - I'd be breaking a whole host of federal laws. Price controls tend to create bigger messes than whatever it is they intend to cure. Healthcare was no exception. "Relative value scale" pricing made price competition, for the most part, nonexistent. There is very little "free market" pricing out there. Maybe there is some - mostly at the fringes, like a plastic surgeon who can charge whatever the market will bare for a boob job. Uninsured persons most often can ask for - and receive - a break. Your ol' country doc is almost out of the picture - costs of keeping up with regulations and other costs of running a practice made his economic survival quite unfeasible.

To: Road Walker who wrote (7416)	7/8/2009 1:22:53 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 42652

In a free market The market is free, other than the fact that government has inserted itself into it to the tune of 46%. the end user drives prices lower based on his cost/benefit analysis and competition. That isn't the case today. Where is the evidence of this? What makes you think that individuals can drive harder bargains than corporate benefits administrators? In fact, what you say is totally at odds with your own claims (and those of your liberal cohorts) that by having larger numbers of insureds under contract, Medicare can wield more power insisting on cuts in pricing. Do you not think that Walmart can get better per-employee pricing than its employees could do on their own? Have you ever priced group insurance versus a similar individual policy from the same insurer? To be clear, I'm not claiming that getting the employer out of the picture won't improve the situation. I'm simply asking for EVIDENCE of what appears to be a counter-intuitive claim, rather than just representing some liberal dogma as fact.