Making medical care cheaper

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Two simple things would cut costs substantially. From Market Watch:

The U.S. can slash health-care costs 75% with 2 fundamental changes — and without ‘Medicare for All’
As the Democratic presidential candidates argue about “Medicare for All” versus a “public option,” two simple policy changes could slash U.S. health-care costs by 75% while increasing access and improving the quality of care.

These policies have been proven to work by ingenious companies like Whole Foods and innovative governments like the state of Indiana and Singapore. If they were rolled out nationally, the United States would save $2.4 trillion per year across individuals, businesses, and the government.

The first policy—price tags—is a necessary prerequisite for competition and efficiency. Under our current system, it’s nearly impossible for people with health insurance to find out in advance what anything covered by their insurance will end up costing. Patients have no way to comparison shop for procedures covered by insurance, and providers are under little pressure to lower costs.

The article cites LASIK eye surgery which is not covered by medical insurance. Because of this, the clinics have to publish their prices and competition has cut the price by quite a lot.

The second item is creating a Health Savings Account - a great idea and is working well for the State of Indiana:

Those changes resulted in 35% lower health-care spending than when the same employees were enrolled in traditional health insurance. Even better, the study found that employees enrolled in the deductible security plan were going in for mammograms, annual check ups, and other forms or preventive medicine at the same rate as when they were enrolled in traditional insurance. Thus, these cost savings are real and not due to people delaying necessary care in order to hoard their HSA balances.

Of course, the lobbyists in DC do not want this so it will never happen. I thought that our elected officials were supposed to listen to their constituents.

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This page contains a single entry by DaveH published on August 26, 2019 2:31 PM.

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