The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new report from Johns Hopkins

Re:The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new rep... by DennisP on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @07:57AM (#18855200)

People want complete price information because we don't have price controls, like they have in Germany, France, and Japan. Having a "free market" in healthcare without showing prices in advance of providing services is sort of obviously the worst way to get a reasonably priced healthcare system.

That's somewhat mitigated by negotiations between insurers and providers, but not entirely given out-of-network charges.

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Re:The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new rep... by rscho on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @08:38AM (#18855395)

Agreed, however there is a solid base of evidence (as solid as medical evidence can be, which is not saying much) that health can't humanely be handled as a commodity.

Plus, providing complete price info itself is not free. Talk about administrative inflation!

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Re:The US spends more on healthcare for no gain says new rep... by DennisP on Tuesday January 08, 2019 @11:06AM (#18856529)

So then, go with price controls. We have multiple examples of that working just fine. The answer cannot be that we make people responsible for payment before telling them what the price will be, and it's unsurprising that by doing that, we have the most expensive healthcare system in the world.

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