Looking At US Healthcare

[Annie]

via insurance:

http://www.janegalt.net/archives/009471.html

Very interesting.

 

[BaronVonBigmeat]

He makes a good point, although you cannot blame all of the price increases on improving technology. We have more government red tape strangling the health care market than any nation on earth, even those darn dirty nordic countries with their socialist health care systems. Our tax code more or less forces us to get health insurance through our employers. Or as congressman Ron Paul (a former doctor) says:

The problems with our health care system are not the result of too little government intervention, but rather too much. Contrary to the claims of many advocates of increased government regulation of health care, rising costs and red tape do not represent market failure. Rather, they represent the failure of government policies that have destroyed the health care market.

It’s time to rethink the whole system of HMOs and managed care. This entire unnecessary level of corporatism rakes off profits and worsens the quality of care. But HMOs did not arise in the free market; they are creatures of government interference in health care dating to the 1970s. These non-market institutions have gained control over medical care through collusion between organized medicine, politicians, and drug companies, in an effort to move America toward “free” universal health care.

One big problem arises from the 1974 ERISA law, which grants tax benefits to employers for providing health care, while not allowing similar incentives for individuals. This results in the illogical coupling between employment and health insurance. As such, government removed the market incentive for health insurance companies to cater to the actual health-care consumer. As a greater amount of government and corporate money has been used to pay medical bills, costs have risen artificially out of the range of most individuals.

Only true competition assures that the consumer gets the best deal at the best price possible by putting pressure on the providers. Patients are better served by having options and choices, not new federal bureaucracies and limitations on legal remedies. Such choices and options will arrive only when we unravel the HMO web rooted in old laws, and change the tax code to allow individual Americans to fully deduct all healthcare costs from their taxes, as employers can.

http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul345.html

Really, if we had anything resembling a free market in health care, we would have both technological innovation and lower prices too. Innovation can mean wonderful new health care advances, or it can mean new ways of offering the same services at lower costs.

 

[Hobbit]

I have another cause of high health care costs: malpractice suits. If you're an obstetrician, you only have a 3 in 20 chance of NOT being sued for malpractice just because some crying mother wants to blame the doctor for a birth defect. You can also blame John Edwards himself for the rise in C sections.

 

[Annie]

He makes a good point, although you cannot blame all of the price increases on improving technology. We have more government red tape strangling the health care market than any nation on earth, even those darn dirty nordic countries with their socialist health care systems. Our tax code more or less forces us to get health insurance through our employers. Or as congressman Ron Paul (a former doctor) says:



http://www.lewrockwell.com/paul/paul345.html

Really, if we had anything resembling a free market in health care, we would have both technological innovation and lower prices too. Innovation can mean wonderful new health care advances, or it can mean new ways of offering the same services at lower costs.

I don't think initially the spiraling up of health costs or innovative medical techniques began with the government intrusions, (well accept perhaps with pharmaceuticals brought to quicker introduction in WWII). Personally I think the influx of $$$ by employer provided insurance companies began the spiral. Government, ie, then started racheting up their contributions in the name of 'elderly' and 'poor.' Suddenly the average worker had access to whatever modern medicine could offer. It became the norm. So to 'therapy' in so many fields.