Like I've always said, health care isn't a consumer product. It cannot be part of the free market.
The Time Magazine article, written and narrated below in the video by Steve Brill, is summed up in just over 3 minutes. Not bad for a story that spans over 30 pages. Jon Stewart interviewed Brill recently as well, which I've posted here.
Ask your conservative friends to watch and then have them argue how health care should be in the free market place, with little or no regulation.
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I saw Steve Brill on "This Week" on Sunday and was very disappointed how ABC danced around the problems of health care costs. It almost seems like there is a media gag order to protect health care. Maybe once the health care industry was aware of this article, they issued a media-wide warning not to discuss it or they would pull all their advertising.
ReplyDeleteThe article and Brill's recommendations on how to fix the problems he cites were terrific. But many of his solutions could only be put in place after a huge fight.
ReplyDeleteHere's a simple idea he didn't mention, that could empower the un- and under-insured and help them negotiate with hospitals:
Since Medicare already has an efficient bureaucracy in place that cuts through the insane overpricing of retail hospital bills, the government should sell a service to consumers whereby they analyze retail bills and report back what Medicare would pay for the same array of services. Brill indicates that bills are anaylzed for a cost of less than a dollar. This service could be sold to consumers for, say, $3-$10, with the profits used to defray Medicare expenses. The consumers could then go to the hospital and use this as a negotiation tool to get retail prices reduced to a sane level.