Have any of the remaining Democratic candidates for U.S. president addressed the excessive (by world standards) costs of medical care with any specificity? No? Yes? Details please.
Some have said a little bit about the topic. Elizabeth Warren has proposed having the government manufacture drugs in some circumstances. But overall, all proposals have focused mostly on paying for insurance for everyone, rather than cutting costs.
If we actually wanted to cut costs, there are plenty of possibilities for changing the supply and demand curves to move prices downward:
[ul]
[li]Identify and remove laws and regulations that prevent new hospitals from being built.[/li][li]Change student loan policies to support med students and pre-med majors.[/li][li]Boot private equity out of health care. (This would surely be a winning position in the Democratic primary.)[/li][li]Tort reform to deal with lawsuit costs.[/li][/ul]
Aside from these policies other policies worth looking into that involve utiliziing market forces.
[ul]
[li]Allow international competition (let people legally buy drugs from overseas, make it easier to travel overseas for surgery, long term care, etc)[/li][li]Use the power of the public sector to negotiate prices[/li][li]Make all medical prices transparent[/li][li]Create a single administration system (either single payer, or make all insurance companies use the same forms)[/li][li]Trust busting hospital conglomerates where they can charge higher prices due to lack of competition[/li][/ul]
But on the subject, no not really. Democrats aren’t really talking about lowering prices sadly other than creating medicare for all.
Medicare for all could in theory save 400 billion a year (to start, the number will grow over time) due to at least 3 factors.
[ul]
[li]Medicare has lower reimbursement rates[/li][li]Medicare has lower administrative costs[/li][li]Medicare can use the public sector to negotiate prices[/li][/ul]
I honestly don’t get it. The republicans run on free market capitalism. If they actually promoted the free market in the health care system, it could drive down costs. Right now the only solutions they promote are reducing consumer protections (via interstate insurance purchases) or reducing coverage. But they don’t promote true free market reforms that would actually reduce medical costs. Jim Banks proposal sadly may not get anywhere. I guess both parties are more concerned with protecting wealthy interests than actually lowering prices.
That link is worth reading. “Private equity” is rather a misnomer in some cases — “leveraged buy-outs” is often the modus operandi of these unscrupulous greedsters, who thereby loot a company and/or its customers while putting up little or no equity of their own. This problem affects more industries than just the healthcare business. As the article points out, Liz Warren has a plan to hinder the excesses of leveraged buy-outs.
theamericanconservative.com is almost a breath of sunshine in post-rational America: a conservative publisher interested not in embracing greeds and hatreds, but in, well, conservative thought.