[Alberta's Child]

"Market forces" will never lower costs when you have three parties in a transaction. In fact, there's no such thing as a "market force" when a buyer and a seller do not deal directly with each other.

An auto insurance claim is a perfect example of this. If you are involved in a crash and your car isn't totaled, you really don't care if the cost of the repair is $2,000 or $5,000 -- because you're not paying for it. And the insurance company doesn't care about pushing the body shop to do a $5,000 repair for $2,000 -- because they're not the ones who have to drive the car after it's fixed.

[ROCKLOBSTER]

"Market forces" will never lower costs when you have three parties in a transaction. In fact, there's no such thing as a "market force" when a buyer and a seller do not deal directly with each other.

I don't know about that.

I needed a CT-scan recently, and received a call from my insurance company. They asked if I'd be willing to drive 30 minutes to another facility since the cost was about 1/3 as high.

I said "hell-yeah".