Coyote Blog

I have written on a number of occasions that the real problem in American health care is the insulation between the person who receives the services and the true cost of the services.  Other than a few folks like me with high deductible policies, there is no incentive to shop around and no incentive to eschew certain avoidable and high cost procedures.

Marc Cooper complained that he went to the hospital for a day and it ended up costing the insurance company over $100,000.  His take-away form this is that the government needs to step in.  My take-away was different:

Did he ask for a price estimate in advance? Did he ask, as most of
us do with all of our large purchases, for a written estimate or
quotation? Did he get such estimates from two or three competitors? Did
he shop around?

Of course not! Because in a system where someone else is paying the
bills, we have no incentive to shop around. So providers have no
incentive to compete on price or to worry about productivity and cost
control.

Sure, this looks like a rip-off.  But if you went in to buy a car,
concerned only with the quality of the
car, and never asked the price and then got a bill for $100,000 a few
weeks later, would you be surprised?  Would anyone give you sympathy if
you complained you paid $100,000 for the car but admitted you never
asked what the price was?

So I was very pleased to see this from John Stossel:

America's health-care problem is not that some people lack insurance, it is that 250 million Americans do have it.

You have to understand something right from the start. We Americans
got hooked on health insurance because the government did the insurance
companies a favor during World War II. Wartime wage controls prohibited
cash raises, so employers started giving noncash benefits like health
insurance to attract workers. The tax code helped this along by
treating employer-based health insurance more favorably than coverage
you buy yourself. And state governments have made things worse by
mandating coverage many people would never buy for themselves.

Competition also pushed companies to offer ever-more attractive
policies, such as first-dollar coverage for routine ailments like ear
infections and colds, and coverage for things that are not even
illnesses, like pregnancy. We came to expect insurance to cover
everything.

He concludes:

Imagine if your car
insurance covered oil changes and gasoline. You wouldn't care how much
gas you used, and you wouldn't care what it cost. Mechanics would sell
you $100 oil changes. Prices would skyrocket.

That's how it works in health care. Patients don't ask how much a
test or treatment will cost. They ask if their insurance covers it.
They don't compare prices from different doctors and hospitals. (Prices
do vary.) Why should they? They're not paying. (Although they do in
hidden, indirect ways.)