Zonkerbl wrote:What are the cost drivers in the ACA?
I know that single payer would lower the *level* of costs, but it wouldn't do anything about cost *growth.* What's making health care costs *rise* so fast?
I'm pretty sure it's that our system is profit driven, and so we focus our attention on what people are willing to pay for, like cures to cancer and so on. Other countries do research but only to reduce costs, not to address OH MY GOD MOM IS DYING OF CANCER DO SOMETHING ANYTHING. So we funnel our research towards the cures that people really, really want and, to be brutally honest about it, the rest of the world free rides on our research.
I think single payer might succeed in slowing health care cost growth by choking off the incentive to research the deadliest diseases. Frankly I'm not sure it's such a good idea. Maybe we should get the rest of the world to pay their fair share of our research costs?
Biggest cost drivers would be: pharma (yes, the rest of the world benfits), litigation and the cost of Malpractice Insurance, AMA (AMA vigorously restricting competition and reducing automation), Facility costs (much of it due to provider consolidation), Lack of cost consideration from patients (you want to make sure there are always some deductibles - hear that Bernie?), Fee-for-service (ever try to figure out that hospital stay
), and high administrative expenses (that could be cured by something like single payer or made worse if done like the VA).I put the high administrative expenses last - I think that the cost drivers listed earlier should be addressed first. It would then make the likelihood of a single payer or other system more likely to succeed.
