Not really. It's not so much direct negotiation that lowers the price as it is price competition. When you go to Best Buy to purchase a tv, there is probably not a lot of negotiating room, but thats because they already have reasonable prices that are kept in check by competition. It's the price competition that our current system lacks, and thats due to having a third party pay for our medical purchases. When someone else pays, we don't bother to price shop.
This misstates the market. You shop for medical insurance, and the insurance company bargains with the HC provider. So you already have what you want. It's failed. And we know why it failed.
Repairs for casualty loss to homes are also usually paid for by insurance. But home repair cost doesn't go up and up by 15% a year like medical care. That's because it's a different market. So your analysis is flawed. It's not whether insurance pays; it's the type of market.
Insurance would only be a problem in the health care market if its cost wasn't encompassing some large externalities. But that's not the case. I doubt you feel you're paying too little for health insurance. It's true that HC providers costs may be leaving out certain externalities (like the obligation of some hospital to treat the poor and eat the loss). But that's not a general problem. Basically, HC providers negotiate a price with payors (either insurance companies, the government or individuals) with tremendous bargain power on their side. No case can be made that HC providers in this country are underpaid.
Which is the reason that health insurance policies should be standardized, and identical, and purchased as a large group policy paid for by the guberment.
No argument there. But you'd still be comparing apples and oranges and it would still take incredible investments in time and information gathering to compare. If a policy stated that it didn't cover a long list of heart infarction treatments but covered a long list of others, would you be able to intelligently compare it to another policy with another list without going to medical school. I doubt it.
Again, that market flaw is due to the third party payer system that disincentivizes price shopping and thus price competition.
No, that is a myth. Other markets have high insurance profiles without huge inflation. Insurance companies have bargaining power and probably can get lower prices than you could negotiate (indeed that's been established since hospitals bill individuals who don't have insurance a huge amount more than those who do). So you already have a "free market" with parties negotiating prices (and insurance companies are better at it then you I assure you) Indeed, the health care market is dominated by for-profit actors with fierce competition, from drug companies to hospitals to doctors to insurance companies to drug stores. Still, prices rise every year often ten times the inflation rate.
The market flaws in heath care are well known. Insurance doesn't make things better, but it's not a key problem.
Aren't you forgetting that YOU are the one who opened the door to that comparison?
Just using flair to make a point: quality health care costs dough. You can't get it on the cheap. So no market can provide cheap health care. If you actually think you can get quality health care at bargain basement prices, I have a used Yugo I'd be happy to sell you.
Health care IS a consumer product. Without consumers, no one would "make" it.
No, it's not. Anymore than water is. It's a necessity of life, which if a society can't provide, time to change society. If a system can't provide water to anybody but the rich, we'd have a revolution tomorrow. Health care is a slow revolution. It's becoming increasing dysfunctional, and a privilege of the rich. Time to change that.
