Further, the reason health care is so expensive is government regulation.
No, healthcare is expensive because there are multiple layers of middlemen, each trying to earn an increasing amount of profit, and because healthcare treatments are performed without regard to efficacy by profit-motivated private medical service providers.
Healthcare costs have increased far more rapidly than the increase in healthcare legislation; indeed, the only metric that has increased alongside costs is profits earned by HMOs and other insurers. By the way, "profits" is just the net revenue the insurers earn, after deducting from income the insane, multi-million dollar yearly bonuses they pay to the C-suite officers and board members.
If government were the driving force behind healthcare increases, the rest of the world would spend significantly greater sums of their GDP on healthcare than we do, yet they spend far less--and have comparatively better results for the amounts they do spend.
The worst thing to happen to healthcare wasn't government; it was the corporatization of health care.
Healthcare in the US is expensive because it doesn't follow a normal market economy. The people using healthcare generally aren't paying for the services out of pocket, so they have no incentive to try to keep costs low. The government has encouraged this through tax deductible insurance. The system has gotten so bad that it is nearly impossible to find out how much a procedure will cost before you have it. Of course, it's all made worse by America's belief that there is a pill for everything and somehow, if you visit doctors enough and have enough procedures done, you won't die.
This is why many companies like health savings plans: they put the consumer back in touch with how much healthcare costs. The consumer has an incentive to understand and reduce costs.
Healthcare in the US is expensive because it doesn't follow a normal market economy. The people using healthcare generally aren't paying for the services out of pocket, so they have no incentive to try to keep costs low.
I'm just curious -- can you point to a country in which healthcare does follow a "normal market economy", and which therefore has a more efficient healthcare system?
No, healthcare is expensive because there are multiple layers of middlemen, each trying to earn an increasing amount of profit, and because healthcare treatments are performed without regard to efficacy by profit-motivated private medical service providers.
Healthcare costs have increased far more rapidly than the increase in healthcare legislation; indeed, the only metric that has increased alongside costs is profits earned by HMOs and other insurers. By the way, "profits" is just the net revenue the insurers earn, after deducting from income the insane, multi-million dollar yearly bonuses they pay to the C-suite officers and board members.
If government were the driving force behind healthcare increases, the rest of the world would spend significantly greater sums of their GDP on healthcare than we do, yet they spend far less--and have comparatively better results for the amounts they do spend.
The worst thing to happen to healthcare wasn't government; it was the corporatization of health care.