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California eyes health care price controls

vegas giants said:
In healthcare.....they sure do
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Why? Most would not prefer to have a discount repair shop perform their surgery. As I tell motorcycle riders - if you have a $25 head then buy yourself a $25 helmet.
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Why? Most would not prefer to have a discount repair shop perform their surgery. As I tell motorcycle riders - if you have a $25 head then buy yourself a $25 helmet.
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They get better outcomes than we do in many areas
 
ttwtt78640 said:
That is true of K-12 education as well - should we use their price controls for our K-12 teachers and administrators?
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Sure. Teacher unions are destroying our country. See.....we can agree
 
ttwtt78640 said:
We can agree that price controls set by union/government consent do not lower costs or improve outcome.
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Sure they do ....in every country with single payer
 
ttwtt78640 said:
The US has single payer K-12 public education and it does not lower costs or improve outcome.
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Yeah it does not work as well in education. Works great in healthcare
 
vegas giants said:
Yeah it does not work as well in education. Works great in healthcare
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Nope, it works only as well as the government that makes the attempt. If the CA government cannot control public K-12 educational costs and get decent outcomes then why would you expect that same government to do so for medical care costs and outcomes?
 
ttwtt78640 said:
Nope, it works only as well as the government that makes the attempt. If the CA government cannot control public K-12 educational costs and get decent outcomes then why would you expect that same government to do so for medical care costs and outcomes?
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Because every country that has done it has a better system than we have. Because medicare is a single payer model and people love it
 
Some context on this proposal:

Health care prices are rising at the fastest level in years
FIRST IN PULSE: HEALTH CARE PRICES ARE RISING AT FASTEST LEVEL IN YEARS — That's according to new data from Altarum, which found that prices have risen 2.2 percent since March of last year, the fastest annual growth rate since January 2012.

— The big driver of price growth: Hospitals. Altarum found that hospital prices have been annually growing at nearly 4 percent, the highest level in eight years.

Meanwhile, pharmaceutical price growth has slowed down. Pharma prices grew just 1.9 percent over the previous 12 months, versus 4.7 percent price growth over the year before that.

— What's the culprit? Altarum's not sure. "We’ve seen the increase in hospital price growth for several months so it’s not a one-time blip, but we don’t have a good explanation," Altarum's Ani Turner told PULSE. "The one corroboration is the labor data showing hospital hiring picking up in and fairly robust in Q1 2018."
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California attorney general sues Sutter Health, alleging unlawful price rises
California Attorney General Xavier Becerra has filed a lawsuit against Sutter Health, accusing Northern California’s largest health system of using its dominance in the market to unlawfully raise prices.

The state alleges that Sutter violated California antitrust laws by forcing health insurers to enter into agreements that gave Sutter the power to raise prices for hospital and health care services “that far exceed the prices it would have been able to charge in an unconstrained, competitive market.”

“It’s time to hold health care corporations accountable and bring down illegally inflated health care costs imposed on California families,” said Becerra, who announced Friday that he filed the lawsuit in San Francisco Superior Court.

Sutter, which operates 24 hospitals and 35 outpatient centers in Northern California, is aware of the lawsuit but has not yet reviewed it and cannot comment on the specifics, said Sutter spokeswoman Karen Garner.
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And an oldie (almost a decade old now!) but a goodie: Unchecked Provider Clout In California Foreshadows Challenges To Health Reform
 
Greenbeard said:
Some context on this proposal:

Health care prices are rising at the fastest level in years


California attorney general sues Sutter Health, alleging unlawful price rises


And an oldie (almost a decade old now!) but a goodie: Unchecked Provider Clout In California Foreshadows Challenges To Health Reform
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the irony here is that in all likelihood.. it was the actions of the insurance companies that gave Sutter Health is marketshare.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/hospital-physician-relationships/top-reasons-physicians-want-to-sell-their-practices.html

Internal medicine subspecialists cited reimbursement cuts (79 percent) and the cost of maintaining a practice (64 percent) as why they wanted to sell.
• Primary care and generalist physicians want to spend less time working and more time in private life (53 percent). They also cited healthcare reform complexity (42 percent) and reimbursement cuts (42 percent).
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I'd be wary of this, because if you take the profit incentive away from say, drug and medical device companies, they won't invest in the extremely risky and expensive R&D. Investors would not invest money into start ups. You could dry out the pipeline of new treatments
 
Sampson Simpson said:
I'd be wary of this, because if you take the profit incentive away from say, drug and medical device companies, they won't invest in the extremely risky and expensive R&D. Investors would not invest money into start ups. You could dry out the pipeline of new treatments
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Canada has figured this out. medications are not covered under their single payer model. Most people have insurance for this
 
vegas giants said:
Canada has figured this out. medications are not covered under their single payer model. Most people have insurance for this
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First off, they don't have a ton of pharmaceutical companies, they are not affected by setting prices. Secondly, US is the largest market in the world for pharmaceuticals. Companies make the most money off of US. So they can still make large profits charging set prices in other countries and premium pricing in the US. However, this changes when there is bargaining power, as drugs on Medicare are charged lesser amount since Medicare deals with a lot of people and have a lot of buying power.


now, that seems unfair, but we have a huge biotech/pharma industry, many jobs, startups that could be affected if the profit incentive is not there. But I do think something needs to be done, I'm just wary of going too far and losing the incentive people have to take what seems to be insurmountable risks and tons of money to successfully bring a drug to market. Even if you get to market, a competitors might also have a product that is better and you don't get a large market share
 
Sampson Simpson said:
First off, they don't have a ton of pharmaceutical companies, they are not affected by setting prices. Secondly, US is the largest market in the world for pharmaceuticals. Companies make the most money off of US. So they can still make large profits charging set prices in other countries and premium pricing in the US. However, this changes when there is bargaining power, as drugs on Medicare are charged lesser amount since Medicare deals with a lot of people and have a lot of buying power.


now, that seems unfair, but we have a huge biotech/pharma industry, many jobs, startups that could be affected if the profit incentive is not there. But I do think something needs to be done, I'm just wary of going too far and losing the incentive people have to take what seems to be insurmountable risks and tons of money to successfully bring a drug to market. Even if you get to market, a competitors might also have a product that is better and you don't get a large market share
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If we use the canadian model the incentive remains to develop medications
 
Greenbeard said:
California takes a break from contemplating single-payer to consider just setting commercial health care prices.

Last it year it was Massachusetts--its Republican governor, no less--considering a weaker form of price controls (https://www.debatepolitics.com/heal...nor-proposes-regulate-health-care-prices.html). I suspect the idea will continue to surface around the country.

An ambitious California bill would put the state in charge of controlling prices in the commercial healthcare market



Pro:




Con:
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No one has explained to me how you can have a socialized medical program and open borders at the same time.

IMO, the whole thing is an income redistribution scam to get more money flowing into the state treasury to buttress the general fund to hold off state bankruptcy. Just like infrastructure bonds and taxes, the money walks away in the dead of night and end up in the social services account, meanwhile the medical system gets it's bills short paid. Every agency has the same thing happening to them.

I'd dare the state to offer a state audit in exchange for honest consideration of a bill like this. That will happen when pigs are flying in formation over my million dollar shack.

FYI: Look at state spending and debt:

State of California Debt Clock
 
chuckiechan said:
No one has explained to me how you can have a socialized medical program and open borders at the same time.

IMO, the whole thing is an income redistribution scam to get more money flowing into the state treasury to buttress the general fund to hold off state bankruptcy.
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This bill creates a commission with the authority to determine the prices health care providers can accept for their services in the commercial market.

100620. (a) (1) Beginning July 1, 2019, and annually thereafter, the commission shall establish base amounts that health care entities shall accept as payment in full for health care services, in addition to applicable cost sharing. The base amount shall apply to a contract with a health care entity that was issued, amended, or renewed on or after the effective date of the base amount. The commission shall determine the effective date or dates of base amounts, which shall be no earlier than July 1, 2019.
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It doesn't bring any new money into the state treasury.
 
vegas giants said:
If we use the canadian model the incentive remains to develop medications
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Not as much because as he points out.. the profit gained in the US helps subsidize lower prices in Canada and other countries
 
jaeger19 said:
Not as much because as he points out.. the profit gained in the US helps subsidize lower prices in Canada and other countries
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If we used the canadian model then medications in the US would also be outside the single payer model. They would have the EXACT same incentive they have now.
 
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