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Originally Posted by whell
Yet, you're wrong again Finn. There are solutions out there, and they've been around a while. The problem is that the left and the AMA hate them, and them. You spout the lefty party line every time, for example, the topic of Health Savings Accounts/High Deductible Health plans are brought up. But that is certainly one element of the fix that needs to be implemented.
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Health Savings Accounts do nothing to help the poor who cannot afford them to begin with. They only help those with high enough marginal income tax rates and disposal income to take advantage of them. Basically, it is yet another scheme to reduce taxes of those with higher incomes at the expense of the poor at a time when income disparities continue to get larger.
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The conventional supply and demand relationship in health care doesn't exist when the consumer is removed from the equation. You cite examples of emergency medical treatment, but the decisions that are made between a doctor and a patient in an office setting occur far more frequently and account for significant costs in Medicaid, Medicare and private health insurance plans.
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Correction - The conventional supply and demand relationship in health care cannot exist without an informed consumer. Unless all Americans get medical degrees and have complete cost information in advance to evaluate their options as to provider and therapies, a conventional supply and demand relationship cannot exist. Moreover, health care has fairly inelastic demand (a patient will pay whatever it takes to save their own life or health).
In summary, you seem to have bought into the conservative fiction that health care can be sold like widgets. It can't. Consider for a moment that virtually all first world industrial democracies offer comprehensive health care at about half the cost of ours. Without exception, this isn't achieved by unleashing free market choices in the health care sectors of these countries.