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A comment on The Fed has made a historic mistake on inflation. Parent comment

Re:The Fed has made a historic mistake on inflation by Amezarak on Monday June 13, 2022 @05:00PM (#31731710)
The federal government alone already spends 920 billion on health care for people under 65 [1] plus 667 billion for people over 65. [2] That's 1.5 trillion for the federal government alone: the states all contribute to their Medicaid programs, and a lot of hospitals and hospital systems throughout the US are actually government-owned, usually at the county/city level. The problem with US health care costs is definitely not "the USG doesn't have a big enough stake." It's one of, if not the single biggest US government expenditure already.

I support single-payer, but it's not going to solve the US health care cost problem - and "solutions" to it are likely not going to be pleasant. Likely, in the practical world, whatever cost control ultimately ends up being imposed on whatever system we have 20 years from now is going to make health care worse. Indeed, what makes US health care so bad right now is in part ineffective cost control measures.

[1] https://www.cbo.gov/publication/56571 [2] https://www.pgpf.org/budget-basics/medicare#:~:text=Medicare....

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Re:The Fed has made a historic mistake on inflation by adventured on Monday June 13, 2022 @05:08PM (#31731781)
That's correct, it won't solve the US healthcare cost problem, and I never suggested it would.

What it will do, is slow the expansion of cost vs what we'll see in the private sector coverage. That slowdown will be courtesy of the massive-scale, centralized, top-down pricing push-back capability that the government has (and has very strong incentive to use as the years go by, given the fiscal situation).

The cost per capita of the two systems will split apart more and more as time goes by.

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Re:The Fed has made a historic mistake on inflation by upsidesinclude on Monday June 13, 2022 @06:23PM (#31732516)
Pricing push-back seems wholly non-existent. Not sure why you would anticipate any real control mechanism in that regard. The price of health care in the US, with largely subsidized medicine, is the most (or nearly if not) outrageous on earth.

The government might enact further measures which will likely have consequences not unlike the current policies

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