George Will has an excellent column on health care today. He writes about outgoing Health & Human Services Secretary Michael Leavitt's perspective from DC. This quote struck me as hitting at a huge underlying problem in our health care system:
"until health care recipients of common procedures can get, upfront, prices they can understand and compare, there will be little accountability or discipline in the system: 'In the auto industry, if the steering-wheel maker charges an exorbitant price, the car company finds a more competitive supplier. In health care, if the medical equipment supplier charges an exorbitant price, none of the other medical participants care.'"
This is called the third-payer problem. Unfortunately most health care "reforms" being considered at the state and national level stoday will only perpetuate this problem.
In a recent study, What Works and What Doesn't: A Review of Health Care Reform in the States, WPC health care analyst Dr. Roger Stark highlights the efforts of Florida, Georgia, and Indiana, that work towards empowering health care consumers in decision-making (see pp. 10-12 of the study).
Federal or state centralized health care bureaucracies are not the answer to this problem, and it's a problem that will get worse. George Will's column points out:
"Absent fundamental reforms, over the next two decades the average American household's health care spending, including the portion of its taxes that pays for Medicare and Medicaid, will go from 23 percent to 41 percent of average household income."
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