TORT REFORM & COMPETITION
The high cost of health care is partly due to the malpractice insurance doctors have to carry to protect themselves from lawsuits. Doctors have to spend the big bucks paying for insurance and a staff to file endless paperwork. Some articles I've read put the cost of insurance alone at 30% of the Doctor's overhead.
The state of Texas a few years ago capped noneconomic damages in medical malpractice suits. For a Doctor who moved from Chicago to Austin it meant a savings of 75% of his insurance premiums. Nation wide tort reform would go a long way to reducing medical costs.
Another problem is laws and the availability of insurance carriers. States limit your choice of health insurance companies you can work with. If you've ever moved from state to state you know what I'm talking about. Why is it with car insurance you can move from state to state and keep basically the same policy, but when it comes to health insurance your choice is limited?
The Free Market System Works
Competition in a free market place has always provided value and lower prices for the consumer.
We all shop around for a good value. When the car needs gas, do you know where the best price can be found? Do you shop at the grocery store that has the best prices for the items you need? We all shop for value.
The free market system works with everything that we consume. It would work with Healthcare too.
Competition is the best remedy to increasing service and bringing costs down.
Government involvement is the problem, not the answer.
How was your last experience dealing with the government? Been to the DMV lately? Have you spent time standing in line forever at the post office? The government solution to long lines and slow service at the post office is to remove the clocks from the walls. No joke. The last thing we need is government wisdom.
Recently a Doctor in New York figured that he could charge families a flat $75 a month to care for them. Pay the fee every month and he'd take care of you. He figured by dropping the cost of producing the paperwork required to file insurance claims - aka non medical office staff - he'd save enough money that his patients would only have to pay a $75 flat fee. The state government told him he couldn't do that because in their eyes he would become an insurance company (charging a flat fee).
The high cost of health care is partly due to the malpractice insurance doctors have to carry to protect themselves from lawsuits. Doctors have to spend the big bucks paying for insurance and a staff to file endless paperwork. Some articles I've read put the cost of insurance alone at 30% of the Doctor's overhead.
The state of Texas a few years ago capped noneconomic damages in medical malpractice suits. For a Doctor who moved from Chicago to Austin it meant a savings of 75% of his insurance premiums. Nation wide tort reform would go a long way to reducing medical costs.
Another problem is laws and the availability of insurance carriers. States limit your choice of health insurance companies you can work with. If you've ever moved from state to state you know what I'm talking about. Why is it with car insurance you can move from state to state and keep basically the same policy, but when it comes to health insurance your choice is limited?
The Free Market System Works
Competition in a free market place has always provided value and lower prices for the consumer.
We all shop around for a good value. When the car needs gas, do you know where the best price can be found? Do you shop at the grocery store that has the best prices for the items you need? We all shop for value.
The free market system works with everything that we consume. It would work with Healthcare too.
Competition is the best remedy to increasing service and bringing costs down.
Government involvement is the problem, not the answer.
How was your last experience dealing with the government? Been to the DMV lately? Have you spent time standing in line forever at the post office? The government solution to long lines and slow service at the post office is to remove the clocks from the walls. No joke. The last thing we need is government wisdom.
Recently a Doctor in New York figured that he could charge families a flat $75 a month to care for them. Pay the fee every month and he'd take care of you. He figured by dropping the cost of producing the paperwork required to file insurance claims - aka non medical office staff - he'd save enough money that his patients would only have to pay a $75 flat fee. The state government told him he couldn't do that because in their eyes he would become an insurance company (charging a flat fee).
posted by Troy at 11:45 PM
3 Comments:
stupid government involvement! i need to go to the dentist, but can't because i can't afford to pay them what i need done!
i had someone come into the snack shop while i was watching a bit on health care, and he said he thinks they should drop insurance and make the doctors compete in prices. you can go to one doctor and say "this is my issue, how much will you charge?" and then try another and quote the cheapest one until you get a good price. he said they'd done a study where they shopped around for a wheelchair and got one really cheap, but then when they did it again and said they had medicare, the companies tried to bleed as much money as they could from it.
not totally sure on the truthfulness of that study (i.e., did they really do it) but it makes sense to me. let us shop around and prices will drop!
I like choices. Thanks for posting that.
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