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There's no real fix for this outside of a banning providers from billing patients directly. As long as there is any legal route to people paying expenses direct
by gok 7y ago
There's no real fix for this outside of a banning providers from billing patients directly. As long as there is any legal route to people paying expenses directly, doctors will find sneaky ways to trick people into doing that.
- deogeo 7y ago> doctors You mean hospital administration and private equity firms buying hospitals and squeezing them for all they can.
- gok 7y agoI mean doctors. Cost of medical care is directly attributable to doctors enforcing a cartel of care availability.
- deogeo 7y agoYet the US has approximately the same number of doctors per capita as Canada and the UK [1]. And the cost of healthcare in the US has sharply risen in the past few decades - presumably due to some unreported restriction in the supply of doctors? [1] https://www.who.int/gho/health_workforce/physicians_density/en/ https://www.who.int/gho/health_workforce/physicians_density/...
- gok 7y agoAll three have few doctors compared to other rich countries. In the UK and Canada there are price controls which means this is bad for doctors but good (well, cheap) for patients. In the US this scarcity just means exorbitant pay for doctors. And yes those dreaded administrators too.