>The main factors keeping cost high is low supply of doctors, hospitals, and medicines. This is an enormous oversimplification unless you are taking such a bro

>The main factors keeping cost high is low supply of doctors, hospitals, and medicines. This is an enormous oversimplification unless you are taking such a broad view of "low supply" that it loses usefulness. >I’m not aware of any insurance industry effort to keep those supplies down. I don't know every policy that insurance industry lobbyists push. I do know that they lobby against price transparency--the lack of which almost certainly plays a role in healthcare costs. >If people had doctors and hospitals competing to offer standard procedures like births, broken bones, fevers, etc at lower costs, then that’s what will bring prices down. For elective procedures like plastic surgery and LASIK sure, but overall medical care is full of such extreme examples of market failures that you need more than just free market competition to control costs.