Quote:How we got here is a complicated path, it's a combination of things but the one constant is the deep pockets of massive insurance companies. They're willing to pay high rates to compensate hospitals and doctors that lose money on the poor, they are quick to settle large amounts of frivolous lawsuits and provide bad doctors cover to keep practicing instead of them going out of business, it's a case of subsidies under cutting price control in a true free market. 

 

It doesn't matter if it's a private or public subside anytime a third party is funding an economic system the market has lost the ability to control cost. 

 

Like I said earlier without insurance companies there would be no one willing to pay the high rates you see at hospitals or for the use of medical equipment like x-rays, MRI's and so on. No one could afford the rates so the medical suppliers would either have to lower the rate or not use the equipment that's how it works in every other economic system. There's technology for us all to go solar, but the cost isn't aligned with the market so it's not done in mass right now. 

 

Without insurance companies providing a buffer for malpractice bad doctors would be financially ruined when litigation is served against them. They would be forced out of medicine and new doctors would replace them. Also there wouldn't be multi-million dollar law suites for simple mistakes, there would be no point you can't get blood from a stone. 

 

Without insurance companies paying for prescriptions there would be a movement to find alternative solutions or cheaper ways to produce pharmaceuticals. You have the instances where pharmaceutical companies create a small variation in a narcotic and then get the FDA to require a prescription for it so they can charge double the cost as if it where over the counter. If private individuals where paying for it they'd simply choose the slightly different over the counter medication for half the cost. But no one cares when it's subsidized why should they that's why we have insurance. 

 

The whole system has become to complicated and to big, that's the crux of the problem. You have both public and private subsidies driving up the cost, no one is seeking alternative cost effective solutions because the cash cow is to big, and then you have the sue happy targets for what seems like endless deep pockets. 

 

I truly appreciate your input, but you're off base. Here is a slide from a presentation by Dr Atul Gawande from a recent lecture that I attended that shows the point I'm making:

 



 

The red represents the mortality rate of hospital inpatients, the blue represents the cost in dollars for the admission. This data covers nearly two hundred years from 1820 to 2010.

 

Since no one would answer before, the answer to my question of WHEN healthcare costs began their exponential increase is 1965. Third party insurance existed nearly 80 years before that.

 

Now, what unique event did occur in the healthcare industry that could've created such an increase?

 

Hint: It wasn't technology, a change to protocol, or a medicinal breakthrough.

 

Anyone care to guess?

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