On Thu, 16 May 2013 17:26:56 -0400, "Phil Kangas"
<
pka...@upalphacomm.net> wrote:
>Talking about flat rates, do a web search for
>'chargemaster rates' and see how the medical
>people are ripping us off, at least those who
>are self pay.... The AHA and the AMA do
>not want to discuss it. Thieves, I say.
>bama has done nothing to bring down the cost.
The only way you can bring down medical costs is to impose them by
administrative law. No one has ever figured out how to make providers
competitive in a for-profit market. It's a broken market, and nobody
negotiates while he's on a gurney in the emergency room.
There is no way Congress is going to set up an agency to control
costs. Even Medicare and Medicaid are limited by statute about what
they can do to dictate costs. Under Bush, the plan set up for Medicare
Part D (pharma) explicitly disallowed cost controls on pharmaceutical
manufacturers. (My son interned with the Republican Congressional
staff director who wrote the law -- it was Republicans who demanded
this provision, over the objections of the Dems, who wanted to control
prices.)
Meantime, hospitals are not the place to impose charges. It has to be
done to the entire medical system at once -- pharma, medical
equipment, insurance companies, hospital, and physicians.
If anyone can come up with a way to make competition do the job, he'll
become famous. People sometimes point to Swtizerland as an example of
how to do it while retaining private insurers. What they don't say,
and probably don't know in many cases, is that Switzerland had a
national referendum in the late '90s that decided private insurers
would henceforth be run as not-for-profit institutions (except for
some add-on coverage). Their staffs are paid on the basis of service
provided for a cost. They're the ones who apply pressure to the
providers to reduce prices, because their success at doing that
determines their salaries.
'Up for that? It sounds good to me.
That's Stage II of Obamacare. Until the country accepts the system,
though, there is no way any of it will happen. The foolish knee-jerk
response that the market will do it is not only proven wrong, but it
can never work right. Health care is not a real market.
--
Ed Huntress