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I find the comments that 'Single Payer' isn't intended to address pricing problems sort of strange. 'Single Payer' means that providers have to negotiate the p

I find the comments that 'Single Payer' isn't intended to address pricing problems sort of strange. 'Single Payer' means that providers have to negotiate the prices with _one_ payer, the state, instead of separately for each insurance company (or having a go at every uninsured patient, for every procedure). Of course a seller of high value products will want to negotiate the price individually for every sale; the cost is smaller than consumer surplus would be in such cases, right? That's why we have car salesman. Without respect to whether it's a good idea, isn't forbidding price discrimination the whole point of single payer, rather than a side effect?

InTheArena 6y ago
And yet, even when the government is the payer, they have shown consistently that they are unwilling to enforce pricing control. For example, even though medicare billing rates for doctors where supposed to go down several times, in each case, threats of strikes by doctors with very public "look how evil the government is" posts by doctors have kept the rates inflated. Cost control isn't linked to single payer. Nor is efficiency. If you don't believe that, look at Germany. Not single payer, but incredibly efficient, and great at COVID19. On top of that, there are places where the government enables horrible behaviour and payments. For example, they negotiated a shitty deal on CPAP machines, and now everyone who does CPAP gets medicare rules, which is $300 a month lease for a machine that is sold commercially for $650. When I pushed back on my insurance company they said that this was medicare rules. Good governance is good governance. We don't have it, and single payer won't fix it any more then Obamacare and health rationing fixed it.
- elipsey 6y ago
  I agree that the govt seems to suck at negotiating. What do you think we should do now? > health rationing What are you talking about?

InTheArena 6y ago

And yet, even when the government is the payer, they have shown consistently that they are unwilling to enforce pricing control. For example, even though medicare billing rates for doctors where supposed to go down several times, in each case, threats of strikes by doctors with very public "look how evil the government is" posts by doctors have kept the rates inflated. Cost control isn't linked to single payer. Nor is efficiency. If you don't believe that, look at Germany. Not single payer, but incredibly efficient, and great at COVID19. On top of that, there are places where the government enables horrible behaviour and payments. For example, they negotiated a shitty deal on CPAP machines, and now everyone who does CPAP gets medicare rules, which is $300 a month lease for a machine that is sold commercially for $650. When I pushed back on my insurance company they said that this was medicare rules. Good governance is good governance. We don't have it, and single payer won't fix it any more then Obamacare and health rationing fixed it.

elipsey 6y ago
I agree that the govt seems to suck at negotiating. What do you think we should do now? > health rationing What are you talking about?