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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Sam who wrote (134229)	3/22/2010 7:57:43 PM
From: Steve Lokness	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 542803

Sam; Steve should like this. Steve who? The virtue of a competitive market -- that is to say, a market in which it's easy for a lot of people to compare products and prices -- is that this sort of behavior is actually very difficult. Welllll, to start it's not like we haven't had a competitive market as we watched rates and cost go ballistic. Additionally, health care just is not subject to price contest like the price of a gallon of milk or pair of tennis shoes. .....I had a treadmill test today and being a wise consumer i asked what the price was. She said "I haven't got a clue - let me find out for you". When she came back and told me $480.00 bucks I said "oh". Did I shop for another test? Another doctor? Did I compare prices? Heck no and the very last thing on my mind was to think of switching insurance carriers. When we signed up for insurance we had the choice of several plans from different companies - all trying to game the system by making it sound like a good deal with a whole bunch of loop holes for them. Think competition is going to help? It will only drown you in fine print to read. One of the reasons I would have liked to see a single payer government in charge of money plan. What it means is this: Starting in 2011, insurers will have to spend at least 80% of every premium dollar on medical care. And sooooooooo, isn't the incentive for the insurance industry now to have higher and higher cost? The higher their bills the more they make. If your bill for a medical procedure is 100 bucks the insurance provider makes 20 bucks profit. If the medical procedure is 100,000 dollars the profit is $20,000.00.