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Many hospitals survive solely on Medicare revenue.

• mindslight 8y ago
  I didn't mean to make it out like Medicare was the sole cause (eg how health "insurance" got started by being excepted from the wage restrictions of the time, and how it continues to be exempt from income tax). But I think the analogy of musical chairs describes the present constructive behavior of the system quite well. A no brainer step to reforming the health care market is to force all providers to publish a price schedule, uniform across any payer. We wouldn't accept grocery stores forgoing price tags and instead trying to gouge each person for as much as they can, and any free market rhetoric needs to incorporate that fact. (Note this is orthogonal to what level of care should be guaranteed by the government)