. . . with a pair of editorials: one detailing some of the issues plaguing our health-care system, including “shell-game” of re-distributing health-care costs:
Costs are shifted “from the payer to the patient, from the health plan to the hospital, from the hospital to the physician, from the insured to the uninsured and so on.Passing costs from one player to another, like a hot potato, creates no net value,” the professors said. Players compete by growing larger to gain greater bargaining power. But bargaining shifts costs; it doesn’t reduce them.
Another with some solutions, including disclosing health care costs – discussed previously:
To make truly informed choices, patients and employers need far more accurate information than they are now given. That information should include prices that are clear, understandable and comparable. That’s not the case now.
