[spence]

Originally Posted by detbuch

Being as how the consumers are the taxpayers, then neither the pre-HCB "system" nor the impending "HCB" system (fixed or not), are a "solution" to costs. At least the pre-HCB system had more of a relation to market forces, and would have even more with less regulation.

We let Pharma companies charge what ever they want for patentable drugs without any negotiation.

Not my idea of market forces at work...

Before medicare health costs were much lower.

Over simplification. I could see medicare raising some costs as it put more people into the health care system. And unlike many industries, health care is still pretty manual and doesn't scale well.

But there are a lot of other reasons costs have increased. A big one is the proliferation of advanced (i.e. expensive) technologies that are now standard and expected. I'd also think that we treat so much more than we did 50 years ago...ailments and diseases that simply weren't diagnosed previously.

Wha . . .? All nations are sovereign. Our nation has levels of sovereignty. The individual being the most sovereign. Well . . . it sort of used to be that way.

Joke. Although I do like the perspective of the Economist. Usually pretty smart.

So far, though the average person bitched about the rising costs, he was able to pay. There certainly have arisen many market options (cadillac plans, cheaper ones, medical savings, catastrophic insurance, etc.) to lower the cost. Wasn't the impetus for the HCB to cover the so-called uninsured. It doesn't, other than fictitious projections which we know are most always over-optimistic, seem to have lowered the price.

Being able to pay doesn't mean it's painless. I remember when my first son was born in 2003 my out of pocket was maybe a few hundred bucks. Fast forward to 2010 and my second son cost easily 10X that out of pocket. Same company and relatively the same plan. While I'm fortunately "able to pay" that few thousand bucks would put a damper on a lot of families budgets.

Yeah, there a lot of "solutions" but Federal mandate is not even legal, never mind more expensive to our debt problem.

I'll let the SCOTUS decide on legality...

Others see how over-regulating was the problem

Like I mentioned above, there are a lot of problems.

Another big one is simply how the system works, where people never really see the cost as it's passed to an insurance company and then you see only your part weeks after. People don't even question the costs they're being charged.

I switched to an HSA this year and it's making me much more aware of what's actually being billed. If the tax exemption will really save any money remains to be seen, the shyte is so complicated I can barely figure out what's going on.

That "perfect" thing is not resolvable. Market solutions, ugly as they seem to some, work out problems more sustainably than centrally planned economies.

I think market solutions are more desirable but are also easily corrupted and can be self consuming when not monitored.

Health care is somewhat unique in that most everybody needs it, we have a very complex system to deliver it, the massive size of the industry attracts a lot of R&D, hospitals are obligated to dispense some of it and most of the system is for profit.

The consumer is in essence quite detached from the market in many ways. If a market solution is the answer, perhaps that's really the root of the problem.

-spence