LogFAQs > #875086781

I'm going to simplify things by a lot.

Here's the thing: free markets aren't always what you want when they lead to poor results. For example, free markets led to poor standards in medical schooling. After some government intervention, there were fewer schools with higher standards. That, however, helped to drive up prices.

While that was happening, there were problems with medical records (the administrative side of medicine). That took some fixing, but that, too, helped to drive up prices.

Then there's technological innovations. As you can imagine, that raised prices.

All of this led to higher health care costs. Insurance became more in-demand. People used health care more since they had insurance, and hospitals were happy to oblige and soak up that sweet, sweet reimbursement. Also, there was Medicare and Medicaid. Higher demand led to higher prices.

Insurances needed to cut costs. Government (Nixon) thought they could control costs through HMOs. They sort of did(n't), but HMOs were a bad proposition for patients and they cut reimbursements to providers. While all of this was happening, there were more innovations, medical schools became more expensive, and the need for more administrative services raised overhead. More products came out, more patients came on, people who couldn't afford health insurance and couldn't qualify for Medicaid used high-priced emergency services, and the costs were passed on to insurances and patients.

I've skipped a lot, but that's the abbreviated story of US healthcare. If the government dropped all of its regulations right now, you'd still have expensive health insurance, expensive health care, broke people who couldn't afford to pay, doctors who need to pay their own expenses, and patients who can not and will not accept fewer health care services.