How to reduce health care prices 80% in two easy steps:

1) have people shop with their own money or vouchers and keep what they don't spend
2) have providers compete on basis of price and quality

 

Insurance companies would never allow this. The entire health insurance industry is predicated on pushing health care prices as high as possible to make insurance the only way to pay for health care.

 

our subject is not whether they would allow it but whether it would work if implemented

 

Anything that breaks the hold insurance companies have on care will help lower prices.

 

It doesn’t seem especially practical for every patient to have to individually assess the quality and value of the service provided by all the potential healthcare providers, especially for complex conditions requiring multiple interventions and procedures over a long period of time.

I also doubt that this kind of change would reduce prices anything like 80% given that there’d be as much if not more administration in your proposed system (every single healthcare provider would have to do a lot of the things insurance companies currently do) and there’d still be the profit motive within the industry. I’d expect providers to come together and sell insurance-like packages of provision for efficiency (and profit) and patients would have no more connection to the actual quality of care they can expect.

I think money ultimately corrupts healthcare and so the best systems are ones where there is a line of separation between the financial and the clinical, meaning actual healthcare providers are motivated to provide the more beneficial treatment rather than the most profitable. Insurance based systems and government managed systems can both work towards that aim though they also both bring risks and disadvantages too.

A key thing to remember in this (like so much else) that there is no perfect solution so trying to create one is a recipe for disaster. We need to acknowledge all the risks and seek out the least worst option to best minimise them.

 

they would simple rely on reputation, Consumer reports, consultants, ratings agencies which would pop up. Everyone knows Japanese cars are most reliable and Sloan Kettering, MD Anderson is best for cancer etc etc.
Govt would require published prices and published results so we'd have infinitely wiser shopping than we have today. Do you understand?

 

wrong , all they would have to do is collect the money from the patient when the patient left the office or hospital. 99% less paper work and administration than now.

 

to make profit you need lowest possible price and highest possible quality. if you are not best competition kills you and you go bankrupt. That is why capitalism works. Econ 101. Sorry

 

it would be the law. providers must publish price and quality so wise shopping is possible. Make sense now??

 

why would it any more than it does in other industries?

 

in all industries they try to provide the most profitable services but we only buy the highest quality we can afford. It would work identically in health care. Makes sense now? Health care is so important that want to profit to inspire better and better quality as it does in all industries. Someone tricked you into thinking health was different when the opposite is true.

 

actually when people don't shop with their own money and suppliers don't compete on basis of price and quality you have the least perfect solution imaginable . Imagine if we bought cars that way? Hungarian cars did not have gas gauges in the 1980's because there was no price quality competition. Do you get this?

 

insurance companies are not the problem, liberals are because they made it illegal for insurance companies to compete across state lines. Imagine if each state had, for example, its own toothpaste companies. Do you understand?

 

Shopping for healthcare won't work. The patient doesn't order tests, medications and procedures from a menu. You should probably listen to someone who knows about healthcare before bloviating.

 

Competing across state lines has already been tried and it failed miserably. Someone should tell that idiot Trump.

 

if I said he does I'll pay you $10,000. Bet??

 

you mean each state should have its own cars, foods, and health care???

 

Insurance companies are the problem and govt does as much as they can to make sure they remain a problem. Obamacare made the pricing problem worse when it mandated what percentage of total income must be paid out for health care. Politicians literally just gave insurers a great reason to increase the cost of care, not lower it.

 

This is patently false and you know it. A non emergency doctor only reccomends a course of treatment, it's up to the patient whether they agree to and pursue that treatment. You can go into your doctor's office tomorrow and ask for any test you want. If your insurance company will pay for it, every legal test and procedure you ask for will be done. Any non regulated medication (a very small number if I remember correctly) you ask for will also be prescribed.

On the flip side, if your doctor orders a test and cannot explain to your liking why that test is needed, there is no reason for.you to submit to that test.

 

so you agree with OP??? there is simple way to reduce prices 80% and probably add 10-20 years to our
lifespan.

 

There are many ways to reduce costs, not increase life spans.

 

You don't know what you are talking about.

Cars and food are NOT healthcare. Until you can order your own tests, Xrays, surgeries and medication YOU are not the customer.

 

You can order all of those things. People order their own surgeries every day.

 

Everyone believes Japanese cars are most reliable, reality doesn’t always match the stereotype though. You’re not talking about patients selecting the best treatment options for themselves, you’re talking about businesses marketing their products to get the most profit.

The price list would have literally hundreds of thousands of items and many of those are entirely circumstantial anyway. It’s totally unrealistic to expect patients to reach a valid conclusion at this level without individual independent support. It’s hard enough for patients to make clinical decisions even when they have friendly professional advice!

Except when the patient can’t or won’t pay or the payment doesn’t go though, or when they’re using whatever voucher system you’re referring to (presumably for the poor who can’t afford to pay directly) and you seem to be presuming there wouldn’t be all sorts of different insurance and coverage schemes to account for. Essentially, much of what currently goes on between providers and a handful of insurance companies and government agencies will instead go on between providers and each individual patient.

No, to make profit you have the highest price and lowest quality you can get away with. If a business can increase prices or reduce costs without significantly impacting sales, they will do so.

I wasn’t talking about healthcare as an industry, I was talking about healthcare as a need. Pushing further into making it just another industry is exactly the kind of corruption I’m talking about.

Of course healthcare is different. Nobody dies if they can’t afford a new car, phone or cup of coffee.

And today, car companies have been faking their emissions tests so they appear higher than the competition on the league tables. Competition in business isn’t a fundamentally good thing or band thing but the way those positives and negatives impact a market in luxuries will be significantly different to how they impact a fundamental need.

 

And how are you going to create a system of competition in price and quality. Only someone who has never been in a hospital for a major medical issue could possibly believe the competition on price and quality is even a remote possibility

And people shopping with their own money I guess is a back door way of saying eliminate health insurance.. No question that would reduce spending since it would make healthcare unavailable for a large portion of society.

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