Posted on 08/31/2009 5:59:04 PM PDT by Kaslin
Decades of data confirm a simple truth: If we want to lower health costs, we need to put consumers back in charge.
Many people now feel like second-class citizens when they enter the doctor's office. That's because everyone in the office knows that the patient isn't really the payer — that the patient doesn't hold the purse strings.
The greater the percentage of medical costs that patients pay to their insurance company in premiums, the more insurers are in charge.
The greater the percentage that patients instead pay directly to their doctor out-of-pocket, the more patients are in charge.
Whether it's televisions, computers or Lasik eye surgery, when consumers are in charge, prices stay in check. In 1970, consumers paid for 62% of all privately purchased health care out-of-pocket. Today that percentage is just 26%.
Meanwhile, per-patient health costs have nearly quadrupled — even after accounting for inflation.
Consumers are paying less directly to doctors, but they're paying four times as much overall — to insurers or the IRS.
Where consumers have had the least control, costs have risen the most. As a study by one of the authors (Anderson) for the Pacific Research Institute study has shown, since 1970 the per-patient costs of Medicare and Medicaid have each risen one-third more than the combined per-patient costs of all other health care in America — the vast majority of which is purchased privately. And that's even without the Medicare prescription drug benefit.
(Excerpt) Read more at ibdeditorials.com ...
They tried to put insurance companies in charge......didn't work
How about putting patients and their physician back in charge....it works
I have been having this same conversation with people lately. You never ever see the cost of anything, until you get 10 different bills from all the independany contractors involved in your visit. it is the biggest bunch of BS, no other industry could ever survive doing that.
We need to see the cost up front, and all of it consolidated. It would result in tremendous savings for everyone.
BTTT.
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