Or – we can have market rates apply to health care – like they apply to everything else. Because in today’s insurance driven system we are totally out of the loop in terms of cost. For example – when Lasik eye surgery first came out – the costs were about $5000 an eye. This treatment was not covered by insurance -so guess what – once the costs were in the hands of the people – the price went down – because nobody was going to pay so much money. The problem with our current system is that because we have insurance we don’t shop around for the most economic price – we don’t care if our insurance company is billed $3000 for an MRI. If we only had catastrophic insurance – and everybody would be paying for routine tests and appts ourselves – the prices would go down. One more factor is the huge malpractice premiums that US doctors pay to protect themselves against frivolous lawsuits. I definitely agree that there should be a financial penalty if a doctor makes a careless mistake (like taking out the wrong kidney) but today everybody is out to make a mountain out of a molehill and the doctors have to protect themselves. Those costs are passed down to us. Until we have Tort Reform – prices will not go down.
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