How to combat healthcare benefit costs as a startup

Re:How to combat healthcare benefit costs as a startup by tptacek on Friday November 19, 2010 @02:29PM (#1922452)

You're trying to pin down a value judgement I'm not making. Stipulate that the government played a major role in creating this problem. Now what? I'm pretty sure my point still stands: there's no free market for private health care to fall back on, no matter how efficiently you consume health services.

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Re:How to combat healthcare benefit costs as a startup by yummyfajitas on Friday November 19, 2010 @02:33PM (#1922472)

I'm not disputing your main point that the market in medical services is very far from free, or attempting to pin down a value judgement.

I'm only questioning your claim that collusion among insurance companies does much of anything besides push us closer to monopsony pricing.

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Re:How to combat healthcare benefit costs as a startup by tptacek on Friday November 19, 2010 @02:46PM (#1922513)

Collusion between providers and insurers has, as an externality to the actual transaction taking place, severely distorted the market for medical services in the US. I'm not questioning whether insurers should be able to negotiate prices with providers.

If employer-sponsored health insurance wasn't the primary vehicle for medical expenses in the US, maybe you could get an actual price list for hospital services even in the face of aggressive negotiation. But it is, and so you can't, and any conversation about health expenses that tries to dodge that point is disingenuous. That's my point.

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