How would a patient know what their care costs? Is there a list of prices? Is the price even the same for everyone? The answers, of course, are no and no.
IBM (my employer) has started to do just what you suggest. I now pay a percentage of the cost of care rather than the traditional copay. The problem is I can’t shop around or decide if I even want to buy a service because no one will tell me the price of anything.
There is no reason that prices couldn’t be available for all to see. Of course everyone including Uncle Sam should be paying the same for the same service.
Another thing, the AMA should be broken up as a labor/trade monopoly.
Get the government out. Abolish the FDA.
A riotous politically free market would crash prices.
What you would see.
Wall Mart selling drugs.
Sales Days.
Loss leaders offered.
0 percent financing.
Shuttered hospitals.
McDonlaized care for common and popular procedures.
Vast increases in innovation and the speed of innovations.
Losts of scoundrels taking advantage of the stupid( Our present system depends upon scoundrels entering government).
Lots of procedures only done at a few centers.
As it is now, any change into a politically free medical market would cause a post-Soviet type meltdown as our ‘system’ is presently 80 percent socialism.