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- Apr 5, 2009
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"How did the bill get that high? Shameless overcharging. For example, the hospital charged Recchi $283 to have a simple chest X-ray for which Medicare would have paid $20.44. Recchi was billed more than $15,000 for blood and other lab tests. Medicare would have paid only a few hundred for the same thing." ~ Froma Harrop
Free-market price-gouging in medicine
Froma Harrop
February 26, 2013
When folks pan the Affordable Care Act for being nearly 3,000 pages long, here's a sensible response: It could have been done in a page and a half if it simply declared that Medicare would cover everyone.
The concept of Medicare for All was pushed by a few lonely liberals. And it would have been, ironically, the most conservative approach to bringing down health care costs while maintaining quality.
Medicare bringing down health care costs? "Ha, ha, ha," says the program's foes, citing the spending projections for the government health plan serving older Americans.
Unfortunately, the critics confuse spending levels with costs. Total Medicare spending is bound to rise as more older Americans live longer.
Sure, you can curb that increase through a voucher system limiting how much taxpayers will subsidize each beneficiary. But that's not the same as curbing the cost of treating a heart attack or cancer. Without Medicare's cost controls, the size of the bill for each course of care would be larger. Which is exactly what the medical-industrial complex wants.
A Time magazine piece by Steven Brill is must-reading on this subject. For all the waste and perverse incentives in Medicare, the federal program remains an oasis of cost-control in a desert of price-gouging by medical institutions, many parading around as "nonprofits."
<snip>
But the economics of medicine in the private sector bears little resemblance to a real free market. Hospitals routinely put on a magic show designed to bilk ordinary Americans, especially -- and tragically -- the underinsured.
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"How did the bill get that high? Shameless overcharging. For example, the hospital charged Recchi $283 to have a simple chest X-ray for which Medicare would have paid $20.44. Recchi was billed more than $15,000 for blood and other lab tests. Medicare would have paid only a few hundred for the same thing." ~ Froma Harrop
Free-market price-gouging in medicine
Froma Harrop
February 26, 2013
When folks pan the Affordable Care Act for being nearly 3,000 pages long, here's a sensible response: It could have been done in a page and a half if it simply declared that Medicare would cover everyone.
The concept of Medicare for All was pushed by a few lonely liberals. And it would have been, ironically, the most conservative approach to bringing down health care costs while maintaining quality.
Medicare bringing down health care costs? "Ha, ha, ha," says the program's foes, citing the spending projections for the government health plan serving older Americans.
Unfortunately, the critics confuse spending levels with costs. Total Medicare spending is bound to rise as more older Americans live longer.
Sure, you can curb that increase through a voucher system limiting how much taxpayers will subsidize each beneficiary. But that's not the same as curbing the cost of treating a heart attack or cancer. Without Medicare's cost controls, the size of the bill for each course of care would be larger. Which is exactly what the medical-industrial complex wants.
A Time magazine piece by Steven Brill is must-reading on this subject. For all the waste and perverse incentives in Medicare, the federal program remains an oasis of cost-control in a desert of price-gouging by medical institutions, many parading around as "nonprofits."
<snip>
But the economics of medicine in the private sector bears little resemblance to a real free market. Hospitals routinely put on a magic show designed to bilk ordinary Americans, especially -- and tragically -- the underinsured.
.
