Other Links and Pundits

Getting Real About Fixing Health Care
Found this post from Doc Searles from back in 2009.

NY Times: Oregon Study Shows Benefits, and Price for Newly Insured
Researchers say Oregon’s lottery system for granting health insurance has made it the best place to study the costs and benefits of the federal health care law.

Getting Lost in the Labyrinth of Medical Bills In the “I rest my case that the free market in health care is complete and utter bollocks”, department. This article illustrates the complete opacity, capriciousness and outright fraud that takes place in the United States, in our so-called free market in health care.

Hospital care tends to be the most confounding, and experts say the charges you see on your bill are usually completely unrelated to the cost of providing the services (at hospitals, these list prices are called the “charge master file”). “The charges have no rhyme or reason at all,” Gerard Anderson, director of the Center for Hospital Finance and Management at Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health. “Why is 30 minutes in the operating room $2,000 and not $1,500? There is absolutely no basis for setting that charge. It is not based upon the cost, and it’s not based upon the market forces, other than the whim of the C.F.O. of the hospital.”