“The greatest cause of increased Healthcare costs is simply over utilization.”
I have yet to meet someone who thought that they had too much healthcare though. True that if you’re coming out of pocket for it, you are a little more careful about whether you really need it. But the reality is that the mere fact that your health ins. co. is picking up most of the bill does not mean you’re going to use vastly more healthcare than you need. No one likes to go to the doctor. You have to take off work and sit around in a waiting room for an hour. You’re not going to do it unless you think you must.
From the perspective of a policy maker, you’ve got to assume that what the patient wants is a justifiable service, unless there is some proof otherwise. A system that emphasizes bureaucratic review of the consumer’s choice is not going to substantially improve the outcome, and is more likely to impair the outcome. In any event, managed healthcare is here to stay, so there is no point in dwelling endlessly on its faults.
So for the most part, we’ve got to take “demand” as a given, just like in every other area of economic activity, and simply focus on how to efficiently generate sufficient supply to satisfy that demand.
We spend vast amounts of effort tinkering with the demand side. Virtually nothing has been done to make more supply available. In fact, most of the tinkering on the supply side has been designed to reduce supply, not increase it. The policy-makers would have us believe that unlike every other area of economics, we can reduce costs and prices by suppressing supply.
“But the reality is that the mere fact that your health ins. co. is picking up most of the bill does not mean you’re going to use vastly more healthcare than you need.”
No, that is exactly what the research shows. If someone else is picking up the bill you are going to spend more.
“No one likes to go to the doctor.”
Oh you need to spend some time as a doctor. There is a quite a percentage of the population (especially the elderly) that quite enjoy coming to the doctor. (I have the graying hair to prove it.)
“A system that emphasizes bureaucratic review….”
Did you read my post? I want much much less bureaucracy. The only area that I think that the government might and I mean might be of help is that of standardizing certain clinical recommendations and thus reduce defensive medicine.
You can increase the supply of doctors all you want but this is not going to decrease healthcare costs because we are not dealing with a supply and demand situation. The government and the insurance companies do not reimburse for services based on the number of doctors but on the complexity of the medical visit or the procedure rendered. If healthcare was pure fee for service then the supply of doctors would matter. If there were many doctors in a given area then competition would lower the cost of their services. As it is now, doctors do not set their own prices.