re: #636 robdouth

I disagree. People don’t pay the costs. If they did, the prices wouldn’t be so high. We have proxies (insurance companies, HMOs) and we have those who don’t pay anything (AHCCCS in AZ or other welfare situations) and then when the government only pays a fraction of those bills, the prices are raised so that the fraction they pay, matches somewhat with the cost. Then the prices are raised across the board, so that if someone wants to pay out of pocket, the rate is jacked up because of government interference and the requirement that businesses provide health insurance in the first place. There is limited choice at your job and given that insurance is tied to work, it’s all screwed up. You talk about competition, but there is little competition as all the agreements and contracts are decided by the corporations amongs themselves so that it’s nearly impossible if you don’t have a job, or are self-employed.

I would think we’d do better if we could remove health benes from employment because it would also reduce the cost of employing someone. Reduce the restrictions on interstate health insurance and allow someone to purchase in another state. There are a lot of things, that we don’t hear from the right, because their too busy saying no to everything that comes out of Obama’s mouth. Hell I’m just an analyst in a healthcare system and there are some really easy fixes that i can see just crunching the numbers from my side. They wouldn’t fix everything, but they’d help with savings, and start the ball rolling.

I still feel that at the very least we do need some kind of federal ceiling on the price of healthcare, because I think my statements about how there’s no natural ceiling for it to hit stands true. Do you agree or disagree with me on that?