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

To: Cogito Ergo Sum who wrote (1037993)	11/10/2017 4:46:57 PM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1574267

LOL. As if I haven't heard that one before. Why don't you read your history books before you buy into socialism? Check in with the Venezuelans and ask them how price fixing has worked out for them. Here's the thing. Single payer, which simply means the government will bring all the buying power of the government to bear to negotiate with insurance companies, hospitals, and drug makers to drive prices down, is simply a form of price fixing. Do you really think that will bring health care prices down overall? Only the very short term. Here's a thought experiment for you. So let's say we go that route and the government negotiates prices down by 50% on insurance premiums, hospital bills, and drug prices. What will those companies do? Will they simply accept lower profit margins? Not likely. If they did, then their stock prices would suffer and you may even see buyouts or replacement of CEOs, or stockholder advocate groups like large hedge funds or private equity come in and force change at those companies. Either sooner or later, those companies will find another way to increase their margins. How? * Insurance companies will pull out of markets where they can't make a decent profit. This is not speculation.This has already happened massively under Obamacare, leaving some areas of the country with no insurance vendors. Or they may increase deductibles or they may reduce the amount of care or they cut corners in a million other ways. The bottom line is that the patient will end up getting what they pay for, no more, no less. Free market wins. * Hospitals can't take price cuts lying down either. If they let it stand, they could go out of business. In fact, some have already pulled out of cities or cut back on the amount of space they lease for hospitals. Or if they cut back on some prices where the government is pressuring them, they make it up by increasing other prices. In totality, the customer ends up paying one way or another. * Drug price cuts can lead to less money spent on finding new drugs to cure disease. Or if they cut prices on some drugs to please the government, they'll increase them on other drugs. In each case, these companies are governed by the profit motive. They will make their money one way or another and the customer is not left any better. The only real solution to the runaway health care costs are not more government control, but rather, a more thoughtful introduction of free market solutions. For example, why is it that 5% of the population consumes 50% of the health care costs spent in this country? Why is it that a huge majority of health care spending goes to heart disease and diabetes, which are largely the result of poor dietary choices and lack of exercise? Also, why should the 90% of people who need health care be forced to swallow 100% price increases, just so 10% of the uninsured population can get insurance? This are tough question, but we have most certainly NOT achieved the right answer with Obamacare. It's just made it worse for the vast majority of citizens, who are now paying far more than when it began.