There was a discussion on a thread a while back and it was mentioned how health care costs started escalating when government introduced medicare/medicaid. Prior to that there was no need for health insurance because doctors were paid by their patients at time of service. Doctors also have been known to bartered services with patients.
I believe it. Any time the government gets involved the costs to providers goes up. A lot of our healthcare has been socialized (meaning government involvement) for a long time...from health department inspections to JCAHO accreditations to billing and coding regulations to licensure requirements to medicaid to medicare and the list goes on. The amount of staff required by an average sized hospital just to ensure compliance to all of the government regulations would probably surprise a lot of people.
Next time (hopefully not soon) you have to go to a hospital, ask someone if they have someone specifically designated just for compliance to HIPAA.
You're right. Look at the cost of lasik eye surgery and plastic surgery. Those prices have been dropping. No involvement of insurance or government and it's the only area of medicine where prices have dropped.