Not when second party holds a monopoly on a certain patient population, as does Medicare for the elderly. The healthcare market is so distorted by government intervention that calling anything a true 'market rate' is laughable.
And again, doctors do not have to accept Medicare. It doesn't matter how "monopolistic" Medicare is. There's no force that makes doctors accept it. They can simply decline to accept Medicare just as they can Aetna. If Aetna pays below the rate a doctor is willing to accept, then they simply don't work with Aetna. The same applies to Medicare.
It's not medicare, but there have been instances where hospital systems have dropped (or threatened to drop) medicaid because accepting and dealing with it became too onerous.
This is fairly widely claimed, but it's a pretty weak claim. Doctors are not required to accept Medicare. They choose to do so. They choose to accept the rates Medicare offers. When one party offers an amount for a second party's services, and the second party accepts, they have just established the market rate for that transaction.
This claim also conveniently ignores the fact that insurance companies do the same thing. Check over a medical statement from your insurance company some time. You'll see where the doctor billed $300 for "nasal deconfrabulation", your copay was $25, and the insurance paid $125. Total due: $0.
> He's also neglecting to make a real comparison of the services that private health care provides vs. Medicare. Sure, private insurance premiums may have risen faster than Medicare spending during the '90s, but Medicare wasn't even paying for prescription drugs (a huge cost driver) until Part D was implemented in 2006.
The status of Medicare in 2006 seems to have little relevance to Medicare today. The first question is how much Medicare spends today per client vs how much private insurance spends per client, on average. The second question is how coverage differs in these scenarios. How does Medicare compare to the average insurance policy? I don't know the real answer to these questions, but I know Medicare's coverage or lack of coverage for prescription drugs in 2006 isn't relevant.