Cost of Health Care Continues to Rise

[whell]

Originally Posted by BlueStreak

It seems to me that in the (recent) pre-reform debate days, healthcare was costing us more and more every year, to the tune of double percentage digits and all we ever got was less coverage, less people covered and higher premiums. Talk about being charged more for nothing, that's being charged more for less.

Have we as a society forgotten that that's what started this whole thing in the first place?

It is not coincidental in my opinion that the government's encroachment in the health care system has coincided with the increased per capita spending in health care. Medicare changed the marketplace in which health care is delivered, and costs have risen exponentially since. It made the marketplace much larger, and created more demand for medicine. Also, the introduction of the HMO following the Health Maintenance Organization act of 1973, created huge demand.

Health care is subject to the same laws of supply and demand as any other commodity: as demand increases and supply remains static or increases more slowly than demand, prices rise.

http://www.nursingcenter.com/library...icle_ID=630811

http://www.nber.org/digest/apr06/w11609.html

"The overall spread of health insurance between 1950 and 1990 may be able to explain at least 40 percent of that period's dramatic rise in real per capita health spending."

What started this? Dramatically rising costs, and the public's clamor to "fix" it. They turned to the same folks to fix it who fueled the increases in per capita spending (and the resultant increase in health insurance costs), and we'll likely get more of the same.