on Health care

[atlkvb]

Heard Nancy Pelosi the other day saying one of the Democrat's agenda items will be expanding medicaid to bring down costs for healthcare services and making the ACA more affordable. @Bulya can you explain how that happens?

For instance in the car business, there are a variety of factors dictating what you pay for an automobile...materials, labor, manufacturing, distribution, design specification, marketing etc. Government typically doesn't set or control those expenses.So how would expanding an entitlement such as medicaid eventually lower the costs of such things such as research, testing, manufacture of new medicine, and delivery of health care services.? Who pays for all that? How would health care prices go down if Government is setting the costs for providing services? Are there any examples where this model is already working?

 

[mule_eer]

Heard Nancy Pelosi the other day saying one of the Democrat's agenda items will be expanding medicaid to bring down costs for healthcare services and making the ACA more affordable. @Bulya can you explain how that happens?

For instance in the car business, there are a variety of factors dictating what you pay for an automobile...materials, labor, manufacturing, distribution, design specification, marketing etc. Government typically doesn't set or control those expenses.So how would expanding an entitlement such as medicaid eventually lower the costs of such things such as research, testing, manufacture of new medicine, and delivery of health care services.? Who pays for all that? How would health care prices go down if Government is setting the costs for providing services? Are there any examples where this model is already working?

The idea is that if more people end up paying their bills through insurance rather than discharging them through bankruptcy, healthcare providers won't have to spread those losses across the board. As for medication costs, how about the manufacturers stop buying Super Bowl ad time?

 

[atlkvb]

The idea is that if more people end up paying their bills through insurance rather than discharging them through bankruptcy, healthcare providers won't have to spread those losses across the board. As for medication costs, how about the manufacturers stop buying Super Bowl ad time?

I'm not a big fan of big Pharma but the escalating costs in prescription drugs has many layers to it fed chiefly by government interference. For one thing the approval process for promising experimental drugs is way too long and complicated. I know you have to be on guard for public safety, but the levels of hoops created by the FDA actually add more danger to experimental drugs than safety! Costs for research and development are almost through the roof burdened with the additional complications of meeting all of the FDA requirements that have nothing to do with actual drug safety! It's just needless bureaucratic paperwork going through the approval process for so many of these promising and cost saving medications...many of them natural! They take years to get FDA approval, and grow more expensive as a result as Pharmaceuticals seek to recover their R&D costs the longer approval takes!

Regulating insurance markets is another HUGE problem. Restrictions on selling policies across State lines only allows limited monopolies which face little or select competition. It's too easy for them to "collude" to set rates and/or fix prices when there are limits on who can sell or write policies in their specified markets. Medicare and medicaid community rating regulations as well as "doughnut hole" loopholes on medical reimbursements to Doctors and other health care providers also add tremendously to the costs of medicine and care. It gets complicated but the bottom line is neither consumers nor health care providers are driving costs for the services most needed or desired.

Insurance companies and Government bureaucrats are dictating those costs...one hand washing the other or one back being scratched for the other. We need true free market consumer driven competition fed by free and open source care providers competing for market share like any other industry in this country. Until we get third party cost shifters out of the picture, and link health care consumers directly to health care providers to negotiate directly for services rendered without unfunded mandates or restrictions, we will continue to have escalating health care costs in this country with continued misguided calls for even more government regulations and cost controls which do NOT work and actually add more costs to health care overall.

 

[rog1187]

Heard Nancy Pelosi the other day saying one of the Democrat's agenda items will be expanding medicaid to bring down costs for healthcare services and making the ACA more affordable. @Bulya can you explain how that happens?

For instance in the car business, there are a variety of factors dictating what you pay for an automobile...materials, labor, manufacturing, distribution, design specification, marketing etc. Government typically doesn't set or control those expenses.So how would expanding an entitlement such as medicaid eventually lower the costs of such things such as research, testing, manufacture of new medicine, and delivery of health care services.? Who pays for all that? How would health care prices go down if Government is setting the costs for providing services? Are there any examples where this model is already working?

Expanding coverage is not the same as addressing the costs of medical care IMO.

 

[atlkvb]

Expanding coverage is not the same as addressing the costs of medical care IMO.

Agreed...but I'm asking how expanding health care coverage through a government entitlement program lowers health care costs? Health care costs are the reason most folks need insurance correct? So, I simply fail to see the connection between expanded government paid insurance and overall lower health care costs. How does government sponsored health insurance lower overall health care costs if getting costs under control is our objective?

Can you explain?

 

[rog1187]

Agreed...but I'm asking how expanding health care coverage through a government entitlement program lowers health care costs? Health care costs are the reason most folks need insurance correct? So, I simply fail to see the connection between expanded government paid insurance and overall lower health care costs. How does government sponsored health insurance lower overall health care costs if getting costs under control is our objective?

Can you explain?

IMO it doesn’t unless their end game is to control everything healthcare related...and that should go over swell.

People are poor consumers of healthcare because they don’t have enough skin in the game. I think high deductible health plans with HSAs might be one way to reduce costs - when you have to see what you’re paying for healthcare, you might be willing to shop around or use those funds a little more judiciously.

 

[atlkvb]

IMO it doesn’t unless their end game is to control everything healthcare related...and that should go over swell.

People are poor consumers of healthcare because they don’t have enough skin in the game. I think high deductible health plans with HSAs might be one way to reduce costs - when you have to see what you’re paying for healthcare, you might be willing to shop around or use those funds a little more judiciously.

Agreed. Competition works best when pricing health care delivery services, and your idea along with open pricing similar to what we can read on nutrition labels would help. The primary component in lowering costs for health care is putting consumers in charge of the services they want to pay for instead of third party cost shifters like government and insurance companies.