“Ah,” someone says, “but the government negotiates huge discounts with the phone makers since it buys in bulk!” I think this misses the forest for the trees when it comes to cost control.
I suspect that it’s mainly doctors who need to be more responsive to cost incentives as they’re often the ones recommending unnecessary tests or treatments.
> I suspect that it’s mainly doctors who need to be more responsive to cost incentives as they’re often the ones recommending unnecessary tests or treatments.
Doctors would recommend fewer tests if their patients were more price sensitive, I think. I'm not sure a more direct route to making doctors price sensitive when they are on the provider-side, why would they want you to utilize less? There probably also needs to be malpractice/tort reform in the US.
Obama phones were literally a thing and
>Over the years, they’d get used to replacing their phones for the smallest reason — a scratch, a tiny crack, dropped it a little hard — because it costs them nothing.
Did not happen because this is absurd and not how any entitlement program anywhere has ever worked, and more importantly, in healthcare you WANT THIS TO HAPPEN
It's cheaper for someone to go see their doctor when they "think I might have something wrong" then once they actually know something is wrong, and so substantially cheaper that even US insurance companies try to entice it by making yearly physicals free or other preventative care, but it doesn't work as well for the US because even with insurance incentivizing it, you still end up with all the billing BS that can leave you harmed by going to the doctor
> I think this misses the forest for the trees when it comes to cost control.
Sorry, the actual empirical evidence is that the government setting prices has done better all over the world than whatever the US does. This magic belief that allowing the government to control access magically produces bad systems is just wrong. Government is capable when you vote for people who want to make good government
