Why is healthcare so expensive?

Here are my top 5 reasons in order of most significant to least significant.  These are all caused by government intervention in the marketplace for health care:

1.  Price/Payment Fixing by Medicare, CHIP, Medicaid, etc make it difficult for people without insurance to afford health care.  Moreover the government has laws about who care providers can serve and what they can charge if participating in these programs.  So health care providers have no reason to to compete on price as all the folks using these services have no incentive to economize.  The result of this fascism is predictable: Higher prices and Fewer Choices.

2. Regulation of the development, manufacturing, marketing, distribution, advertising, etc of medical devices, pharmaceuticals, alternative medicine etc only helps those large organizations who have expertise in managing the process over those other providers.  For example: Kellogs is removing a claim on cholesterol reduction under pressure from the FDA.  Why, who does this help, it certainly does not help consumers of food.  It does help cholesterol reducing pharmaceuticals.

3. Licensing of doctors, nurses, etc.  These licenses are extremely difficult to get.  They are given out by "accredited" agencies to people they favor only.  The medical industry would save billions by letting the licensing be done by private organizations.  Then people would have the ability to request the certifications of their providers.  You can have the following done by non-certified people: parenting, educating, communicating, manufacturing, producing food, etc.  Why does the government need to license doctors when it does not license who makes your food?

4.  Regulation of insurers, people are not allowed to buy insurance across state lines and insurers have lots of mandates on them that increase costs.  If the mandates were removed and people could buy insurance across state OR BETTER YET INTERNATIONAL boundaries then the price would be dramatically reduced.

5. Insane liability system for negligence.  This part is completely nuts.  There is a weird lottery where the whole system is at the whims of a jury.  How about a system where the two parties the plaintiff and defendant each select an arbitrator or agree on one to hear the case.  Then the arbitrators would pick a third who has binding authority.  This would not only save billions but would be much fairer to those who have been damaged.

jct181:

I understand why a universal healthcare plan will drive healthcare costs up.  But why is American healthcare currently so expensive?  What is going on in the current market that is keeping costs up?

 

jct181:

I have another question.  I was debating nationalized healthcare with someone, who brought up the point that no countries with nationalized healthcare have had a shortage of the H1N1 vaccine, while the U.S. has.  Does anyone have an answer to that?

I'm not sure but it's a stupid argument considering U.S. vacines are being handled BY THE STATE

jct181:

I have another question.  I was debating nationalized healthcare with someone, who brought up the point that no countries with nationalized healthcare have had a shortage of the H1N1 vaccine, while the U.S. has.  Does anyone have an answer to that?

For the love of god do not let them use europe as an example of how socialism works. Europe produces practically nothing but then sells their technology to the third world for natural resources. Of course, the exchange is very very favorable to Europeans, since the EU conspires with the US to destroy these countries with IMF aid and UN policy.

You lend money to a dictator, he fails to repay, you sell off their national resources to corporations. You restrict weapons trade in Africa because there are warlords running around killing people, then the common man has no weapon and is more vulnerable than ever before. There has been AMPLE time for this country to industrialize on its own. Neo-imperialism keeps these countries in the hole, and the EU/USA reaps the benefits.

Europe isn't an example of how socialism works, its an example of how slavery works for slavemasters.

So think of it like this: Europe doesn't have universal health care because the majority of its workers are in other countries. They only provide health care to a select few, so if its good, we should not be surprised.