Political Crossfire Forums

Actually, there are some downward pressures on prices and upward on quality.

1. Something like 85% of premiums must go to actual health care

2. cadillac plan tax removes these expensive plans

3. forced free preventive care pushes prices down (as well as contraceptive care)

4. medicare moved to looking at re-admission rates pushes prices down and quality up. Less BS testing and stuff.


It's only a small blip, unfortunately, in the grand scheme of health care costs. But it should at least slightly bend the curve and possibly improve care at least for the elderly.

But health care costs continuing to rise will hopefully lead to forcing a better system.

I think we should nationalize the healthcare industry and go single payer.

This is humorous. No one seems to get why healthcare costs so much.

Let's think about basic economics, for a second. What are the 2 determinants of price? Supply and Demand. First, there isn't enough supply to meet demand. Medical schools and nursing schools cannot train enough people fast enough to meet demand. Also, fewer and fewer people are entering those fields. So, the people that are there get to set their rates.

As for demand, that's only going up. Aging population, more procedures available, more pills to take, etc. And, now that everyone has insurance, demand is going to increase at an even more accelerated rate.

Now, let's look at another reason. Y'all mention "single payer" and " 85% of health insurance premiums go to healthcare" and similar things. None of those provides a downward force on price. It just means that there is payment. There might be some downward pressure because there are fewer uninsured, but all you are really doing is ensuring that doctors and hospitals get paid, not that they are paid LESS.

If you want lower costs, you have to train more doctors, open more pharmaceutical companies, open more medical device manufacturing companies, train more nurses, and encourage preventative care (which someone did mention already).

the US has a similar number of doctor's per capita as countries like canada and japan, and actually has more nurses per capita than countries like japan, france, and italy. all of which have acceptable healthcare systems.

secondly, most of western europe and japan have a far higher median age than we do. and they don't have any less access to new procedures or medications than we do.

thirdly, we lead the world in medical device manufacturers. johnson and johnson, medtronic, general electric, etc etc. most of the worlds largest manufacturers are based in the US and, presumably, do quite a bit of business domestically with all this high demand.

"supply and demand" and "simple economics" is not why our healthcare industry is a f**k mess.