"That's what health insurance does to medical care. Patients rarely even ask what anything costs. Doctors often don't know. Often nobody even gives a damn. Patients rarely ask, "Is that MRI really necessary? Is there a cheaper place?" We consume without thinking. By contrast, in areas of medicine where most patients pay their own way, service gets better, while prices fall.Why not just have a free market where people can buy whatever kind of health insurance they want? Competition would then bring prices down."
No, people are not going to consume as much health insurance as they can. And no, competition is not going to magically lower prices. But cutting out the executive salaries and stock dividends that go to for-profit insurance company investors would. And generally people don't sit around and say, "Hey, I feel fine, but I think I will go get poked and prodded by a doctor and nurse, because hey, what the heck it free."
I am sure for a well paid free-market ideologue propagandist like Stossel he actually believes that it is a simple matter to go out and buy the health insurance ones needs. This is far outside of the reality of most working Americans. Their reality is that if they don't get insurance through a group plan from their employers, then they can't afford it period. They can't even come close to affording it. I know, I did shop around for it before I had my present job, and I could only afford to pay for my son, leaving myself uninsured.
It is easy to make these delusional "free-market" arguments from one's perch in the elite corporate media. But it just doesn't fly here in working-class America!
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