Didn't John Stossel say that eye and plastic surgery has gotten cheaper BECAUSE of competition? These two categories aren't paid for by insurance, they're elective.
This is quite true, and the fact that they are elective surgery does make for competition. At the same time that emergency surgery to remove a hot appendix was not elective surgery. You were in emergency and had to do it, nor was that heart attack, it wasn't your choice either and you were not given the right to "shop" for price and what you wanted.
There are many medical practices currently that give a discount to cash customers who pay up front. They then submit the insurance and the payment or repayment is assigned to you the patient.
Why is this done? It is done because many insurance carriers hold up payments to MD's for months.
Right now, I am paying cash to a local medical clinic for my present care. The office visits I need are in fact lower than what the insurance payments would be by far. The problem is that the Rx's are of course outrageous.
There are places where competition would help and places where it won't work because of the way the system is currently operating.
If the FEDS opened up foreign made prescription drugs approved by the World Health Organization as good and safe to the American Market, drug costs could be cut by as much as 80% for some medications. The soft money paid by the major pharmaceutical companies in this country has stopped all far competition and raised the prices of drugs exponentially to all of us.
There are many good foreign manufacturers making drugs of equivalent quality to our own. American drug manufacturers have successfully kept them out citing safety issues. Amazing, they are safe enough for Canada, Germany, France, the United Kingdom and many other civilized countries, but they are toxic to Americans and not safe enough.
At the same time we have a medication out there marketed by these same benevolent corporations for plaque psoriasis that can cause hon-hodgkins lymphoma cancer.
As the saying goes:
(Two women standing over a casket and talking at a funeral.)
"Gee Ellen, it is terrible she died of non-hodgkins lymphoma cancer, the family lost their home, and they will be in debt for years." "She had so many problems with the chemotherapy and the radiation was terrible when the cancer got near her heart." "She was so sick!"
"I know Margaret, but isn't her skin beautiful?"