Quote:
Originally Posted by tony286
[M]ost of the advancement we have in medicine was because the gov dumped mountains of money in to healthcare with medicare.
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That is true, Medicare radically increased the patient pool and with it -- the learning opportunities.
What really made a big part of the difference in cost was the advent of the third party payer. Unions negotiated healthcare benefits paid by union contract employers (employer self insurance) for union workers. Non-Union employers need to compete with these benefits to be able to offer competitive benefits to their workers. The Non-Union employers could not risk employer self insurance for their workers and transferred the risk to the private insurers for a premium payment -- and a monster was born.
The patient does not negotiate the bill because he does not pay it -- the third party insurer does. The Healthcare ''industrial complex'' took advantage of this ... and here we are ...