Off Topic Board

From the article-

"The 2010 health-reform law does little to directly address prices. It includes provisions forcing hospitals to publish their prices, which would bring more transparency to this issue, and it gives lawmakers more tools and more information they could use to address prices at some future date. The hope is that by gathering more data to find out which treatments truly work, the federal government will eventually be able to set prices based on the value of treatments, which would be easier than simply setting lower prices across-the-board. But this is, for the most part, a fight the bill ducked, which is part of the reason that even its most committed defenders don’t think we’ll be paying anything like what they’re paying in other countries anytime soon."

the article talks about government oversight in medicare is about the only thing in america keeping costs down. without, it would be worse. those other countries have much more govt oversight and they pay way less.

Didn't Democrats have 60 votes in the Senate for a year, and a majority in the house?

I never understood why people always use other countries (mainly Canada) to try to push their social medicine agenda. Apples and oranges comparison.

This suggests that Obamacare did not go far enough! Not a position I'd thought you'd take!

I wasn't taking a position. Scinsc5 said, "looks like obamacare will actually drive down costs," so I pasted the section of the article being discussed which explicitly says 'obamacare' will do little to directly address prices.

So much BS, so little time:

"Health care is an unusual product in that it is difficult, and sometimes impossible, for the customer to say “no.” In certain cases, the customer is passed out, or otherwise incapable of making decisions about her care, and the decisions are made by providers whose mandate is, correctly, to save lives rather than money."

The vast majority of care, as well as money spent, is not on this basis, but rather with some scheduling and flexibility. Further, I find it fairly offensive that so many think of doctors as gouging people due to their perceived ignorance or capture of their patients. Most doctors I know are pretty ethical, and do not want to be pricing their services significantly higher than their competition unless they are providing something others don't do. Further, if we spend more money on some of these emergency services because the services are something not offered elsewhere, then we are getting more, and if covered by true insurance, with the majority of our care being covered through our own HSA/cash, then we would not likely be spending more on our health care, overall, but less. There is a hell of a lot of variable not considered in this story, too, such as the influence of tort.

"In other cases, there is more time for loved ones to consider costs, but little emotional space to do so — no one wants to think there was something more they could have done to save their parent or child. It is not like buying a television, where you can easily comparison shop and walk out of the store, and even forgo the purchase if it’s too expensive. And imagine what you would pay for a television if the salesmen at Best Buy knew that you couldn’t leave without making a purchase."

I call total bullshit, again, on this notion that we, as consumers would not have any ability to comparison shop, or that the doctors would have the ability to, or desire to, keep us ignorant of market / competitive pricing for services. Of course we don't have much competitive pricing information right now, BECAUSE OUR FEES ARE BEING PAID FOR BY OTHERS, AND THOSE OTHERS PAY WHATEVER THE HELL THEY WANT, ANYWAY. But if we were to be paying for our services, you can bet your ass there would be all kinds of services letting people know comparative pricing. Further, doctors would have MUCH MUCH more incentive to be competitive, as otherwise, they would quickly become known as over-priced. You guys think good referrals, or bad reviews, are not important in medicine? Give me a break.

Further, if we are paying for much of our services out of pocket or out of our HSA, providers would know they are going to be getting paid, they will know they don't have to deal with bureaucracies, they will know they won't have part of their fees "dis-allowed", they will know that there is a limit to what they can charge and what people will be willing to pay. Pricing of drugs, of devices, and of care will naturally be reflective of what people can afford to pay.

Nope. I'm saying if that cost were spread around to those in Canada, Germany, etc., naturally, they would be paying a bit more, and we would be paying a lot less. Our innovators and providers should be forced to spread the true cost of their products around to everyone, we should not allow others to have price controls and the cost burden be carried by us.

How would it have done that? I didn't respond to this thread to be partisan or because I had an opinion, I responded because I saw a poster make a claim that was the opposite of what the article states. That is not to say I think the poster will be wrong as time goes on (because I don't know), but he was wrong now in his assertion that this article supports his claim.

Because the innovators and developers would not do the innovating and developing without the ability to make a profit.

A HUGE part of the cost in medicine (drugs and divices, most notably, here) is on the R&D, rather than the materials and manufacturing. Once a product is developed, a company can make more by selling the product to a nation with price controls than they can be not selling it to them, even if they are selling it less than they do to Americans. However, if they don't sell it to those places without price controls at a higher rate, they lose their incentive to do the expensive R&D. So, they go ahead and do it, and WE are the ones paying for it. One solution I would see is that exports of our medical products are priced no lower than they are priced for us. If those other nations really want to tell their people they can't have the products if not at the full price, my guess is that the price controls stop being so attractive when they no longer have them available.

Why would teachers back unions that lower educational outcomes for kids?

i don't buy this innovator argument one bit. healthcare providers are not the innovators. innovators are big pharma drug companies and other drug inventors. they are not health care providers.