AUTHOR SAYS:
The most important reason is #6. The primary purpose of any healthcare system is to provide timely medical care — when it’s needed, not when it is convenient or financially optimal. Between the cost of regulation diverting dollars from care and the gamesmanship employed by third parties, price transparency will drive access to care down. That is the worst outcome of all.
If buyers (patients) and sellers (providers) could interact directly rather than having third parties disconnecting them and making all financial and medical decisions, price transparency would work, just the way it works for cell phones and dry-cleaning services. When buyers spend their own money and sellers set prices in competition with other sellers for buyers’ dollars, the magic of the marketplace will restore health care to low prices, high quality, and rapid service.
No agenda there at all.
I don’t have any solutions, but the health system like the law system in this country is an expensive mess.
Thank God for the other sectors of the economy, at least they make sense.
“When buyers spend their own money and sellers set prices in competition with other sellers for buyers’ dollars, the magic of the marketplace will restore health care to low prices, high quality, and rapid service.”
So, I’m having a heart attack, do I go shopping for the best price?