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CAROLINE M. POPLIN's avatar

I like the annual cap on out-of-pocket expenses (although I'm not sure health savings accounts would help--might just mean less coverage, higher premiums, etc.) And of course Uwe Reinhardt was exactly right about prices. But the reason the prices are so high is power. Prices only approach costs in a perfectly competitive market, where by definition NO participant has market power, there is total transparency, etc. In medicine, hospitals and insurers and now "health care systems" have immense power; patients and doctors have none, with predictable results. So I vote for price controls, which could be regulated just like utility prices used to be regulated (maybe still are) providing due process per the APA, instead of the RUC. We need Medicare-for-All (not Medicare Advantage, of course), financed by taxes on employers and workers. Since disease is now chronic and predictable, everyone at some point needs care, everything medically necessary should be covered, I'm not sure why we need private insurers to provide different 'plans'. Medicare would spread medical risk over the entire population. Today's Medicare was supposed to be just the first step, but then the New Deal ended, unexpectedly, in 1968.

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BradF's avatar

CBO estimates 10-year cost of subsidies in the 300B+ range. The number of additional enrollees estimated to be 3.6M. Square those per capita costs for the incremental bump in lives covered? Where is all the money going?

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