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Politics : Mainstream Politics and Economics -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Steve Lokness who wrote (9693)	2/18/2012 1:21:34 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 85487

But insurance companies don't offer any help with that since they just pass on the cost. Agreed. Insurance, both public and private, is the biggest factor in increasing cost insulation, which in turn is an important factor driving up health care costs. But at least when you have private insurance, and the law and regulation doesn't get in the way, you can have things like co-pays, deductibles, health care savings accounts, catastrophic insurance coverage, and/or other types of policies that reduce health care cost insulation. When the government gets involved it tends to mandate more and more coverage, while also restricting competition. You cut your knee and need stitches, are you going shopping for the lowest cost? Perhaps, more likely you do so before hand. Also that is far from the simplest case. The simplest cases are predictable costs. Simple treatment you need regularly. The problem with even those cases is that the costs are not always transparent, but both private insurance companies, and the government, have a lot to do with the lack of transparency. To the extent the I'd look for a federal government initiative to deal with the problem, it wouldn't be to provide or mandate coverage, but rather to encourage competition and transparency. The problem here is that politicians incentives might not align well with that type of action.