Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: bentway who wrote (704635)	3/17/2013 1:48:24 PM
From: i-node	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 1578563

>> "Government intervention" is what causes one place to charge $400 and another to charge $1800 for the exact same service? If people were responsible for their own health care costs they would select the least expensive of the two which would allow competition to bring prices into the same range. That's how markets work. Government destroyed the market during WWII when it imposed wage and price controls and made employer cost of health insurance tax free, thus causing employers to take over responsibility for health care as a form of compensation. It further wrecked it in 1965 when it enacted Medicare and Medicaid, which made vast numbers of people totally insensitive to the price of their health care. And now, with Obamacare, it drives the final nail in the coffin. There is now no reason at all for providers to charge $400 when they can charge $1800. Of course, they can't collect $1800. But they can "charge" it all day long; and there is no reason not to. In fact, there is no reason not to charge double that; there are no market influences at work to keep them from doing so -- they're going to get paid based on Medicare/Medicaid allowables for many procedures, and the $1800 fee lets them cost-shift some of it to private plans who subsidize government plans.