Just give consumers access to a price list before service is provided. That will go a long way towards helping the problem.

(Not that you are going to price shop for every service--a trip to the emergency room for a broken bone wonte get shopped--but some portion of health Care is discretionary or is deliberate enough it can be shopped.)

I agree. This probably won’t be a full solution but at least it would bring a little transparency into the process. Usually going to a US doctor or hospital means to pretty much hand out a blank check telling them to take as much as they feel like and your only hope is that they won’t rip you off too much.

That’s not enough. What the people should do is demand that corporate health insurance be banned and demand uniform/transparent pricing. (Removing the corporate tax deduction and adding a personal one would have the same effect)

That’d lower the cost of the average policy as their would be an influx of (on average) healthier people to the market for insurance.

We need to eliminate tax deductions as well. They distort behavior yet only benefit the wealthy.

Families making under $50k aren't paying much in federal taxes as it is. The federal tax bill for a family of 4 making $50k/yr is $2,739. Cutting their tax bill in half gives them back a little over $100/mo.

The individual tax deduction is meant to be a temporary bait and switch. A full top line individual deduction of health insurance premium would allow corporations to shift their current contributions to their employees with no net tax consequence (income paid is deductible for the corporation and the premium would be for the individual).

Once that’s in place the next step would be making the general populace aware that the majority of the deductions, at higher tax brackets mind you, are going to the top. That would give the political capital to eliminating the “fat cat insurance deductions” and gradually get us to sanity.

As long as you ignore the 15.2% that everyone pays in social security and Medicare. There is no separate account where those taxes go. It’s just goes into the general tax budget.

Price lists and comparisons are available for health insurance plans. That hasn't stopped premiums and deductibles from rising to the point of popular furor.

Where are these lists?

I'm not talking about price lists for procedures, I'm talking about price lists for deductibles and premiums on health insurance plans.

Visit healthcare.gov and navigate to your state marketplace. They typically provide a detailed price comparison based on several adjustable factors (expected income, expected visits, number of medications, etc).

If readily available and detailed price comparison tools haven't stopped health insurance deductibles from tripling in the past year[1], why should we expect price comparison tools at the point of healthcare service to reduce costs?

[1]https://www.latimes.com/politics/la-na-pol-health-insurance-...

I was able to find one for some hospital procedures on their website recently. It was not helpful. It was both incomplete and inscrutable.