re: #569 Obdicut

Again: The Russians don’t have anything to do with Sweden, or Japan, or Israel.

The end-consumers are people who seek health care. Those who lack insurance certainly do have an incentive to be frugal, as any health care they receive comes out of their own pocket. Anyone with a deductible likewise has an incentive to be frugal.

I have no idea what you mean by this statement. Do you mean those people who pay for insurance whose insurance masks the costs from them? Those people are the problem?

I am “those people” and I’m not saying they’re the problem, I’m saying the problem is that we have no incentive to be frugal. No incentive to seek out the lowest cost for the best product, like we normally do.

I don’t even know what my doctor charges for a check-up. The prices are different for self-pay, insurance, and medicare anyway.

As for deductibles, it’s only an incentive to be frugal if it’s a percentage. My co-pay is a set amount, regardless of the cost of service. I remember a friend saying years ago, who had percentage insurance, that if she had known what cost a certain service was, she would have gone without.

My comments about the Iron Curtain have to do with the idea of command economies and government monopolies. Right now in Oregon, they have government insurance for children (sliding scale payments.) They had to admit that there were some places you wouldn’t be able to get a pediatrician because of costs.

Price caps cause shortages.