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Only way to drive down costs is to regulate the market so that the private sector does not exploit the market for too much profit.
...no. The way to drive down costs, as has been shown, is to re-introduce competition along with price-sensitive purchasing and transparency of costs.
This happens when there is actual competition. Hence no barriers for insurance companies, and links between the insurance companies and the healthcare providers. Right now, most Americans cant choose what hospital they want to go to.. because their insurance company has a "deal" with specific hospitals and a deal on what to charge (often far more than needed).
Exactly. That's what you call "not competition".
yes but costs on drugs, doctors and so on are all driven by the private healthcare system which is out of control.
No they are not. Medicare declares what the prices of those things will be in its reimbursement schedule, and Medicaid does the same. That is why access is becoming a problem for many of the people who depend on those programs - the reimbursement rates are too low to make it profitable to provide services. Or, sometimes, providers make up the difference by charging private sector customers more, causing prices to rise for the rest of us.
Horse****. Your whole system is built up around private for profit system...
No. Half of our system is government, and the other half is heavily regulated by government at both the state and federal levels.
a system that is totally unregulated and allowed to create monopolies and worse in geographic areas that drive up prices even more.
.... do you.... do you know anything about the US Healthcare Industry? That isn't meant to be mocking, it's meant as an honest question.
Those state monopolies are the result of regulation. They are caused by state governments restricting competition in order to benefit large corporations that purchase enough local politicians. The healthcare industry in America is one of the most heavily regulated industries that we have.
On top of that the insurance industry is in cahoots with the medical industry and the one getting screwed is the consumer.
You forgot that - thanks to heavy regulatory agency overbearance, they are also in bed with the government. But you are right that the consumer gets screwed.
Of course, the consumer also screws himself. Because, in our model, costs are socialized, but benefits are individually realized, everyone has a strong incentive to screw their neighbor by overusing medical resources. Because our tax system encourages purchasing socialized-pre-payment models rather than actual insurance models*, most consumers drive up insurance premium prices for each other over time. Instead of exerting downward pressure on medical prices and upward pressure on quality, our system is designed to produce upward pressure on premiums with little pressure either way on quality.
*Insurance is the transfer of risk of catastrophic events. So, for example, your auto insurance will pay for you to get a new car if your current one gets totaled, but will not fill up your gas tank. In the US, because of preferential tax treatment, the models that dominate the market are health insurance plans that pay for the medical equivalent of filling up your gas tank. This is a socialized pre-payment model. For example, I know that I am going to get an annual checkup. If I demand that my insurance policy cover the cost, then really what I am doing is pre-paying for my checkups through my premium (which will be higher), but I am doing so along with everyone else in the insurance pool. So now my incentive is to maybe get two checkups a year, or four. After all, it doesn't cost me any more to do so. The result is that everyone always buys the healthcare equivalent of Premium gas, because they aren't paying for it - everyone else is - and so the costs skyrocket as everyone tries to beggar their neighbor.
Of course it does, but it also kills debt.. which is what this discussion is about
Yeah. And your claim that others' solutions might be bad for retirees is non-credible when you admit that your solution would be disastrous for them.