Think about what is going to happen to the cost of a CAT scan, PET, or MRI!!!
[Google "Liverpool pathway controversy" to get an idea how it works]
Discussions of Obamacare often use cost as the measure of how the PCAA will be worse.
A more important criteria than the cost is availability and existence of product options and product improvement.
The cost of basic brown beans in a free market might be, say, $1.00, while the cost of brown beans in a highly regulated market might also be $1.00, or perhaps a little less, or perhaps a little more.
But in the mean time, yellow beans and purple beans and mixed-color beans and low-calorie beans and gluten-free beans and organic beans and polka-dot means will either become non-existent (because they were never developed) or unavailable in your store (because few growers grow them) and unaffordable (because of their limited supply and high demand).
I think somebody (perhaps Rush) rightly pointed out that Obamacare is forever going to freeze health care in the year 2012. Nobody will have any incentives to invest in moving technology or treatments beyond those that existed on the date of implementation.