Reply #15: People should shop for health care like they buy a car - if you think you have a heart problem...

[AdHocSolver]

visit several hospitals in your area and ask for their price lists. Negotiate a better price. Tell them that your brother-in-law may need cataract surgery and you will steer him their way if they give you a good deal.

Hospitals are first and foremost corporate businesses and are run as such. Even the so-called nonprofits are run to make a profit. The doctors are mere employees and their salaries and promotions depend on how much business they bring in.

The closest business to serve as a model is the automobile dealership. When you buy a car, the salesman are always trying to push you into a more expensive model with more options. The service department has a long list of maintenance items that they push that are unnecessary or overpriced for what you get.

Similarly, each hospital in a given area wants its own CAT scan unit, or MRI unit, even though there aren't enough legitimate cases to keep such units busy in one hospital, let alone three or four hospitals. So every case of hangnail requires a CAT scan just to be safe (and to pay for the thing).

The joke about health care accounts and tax breaks for such accounts is that if you don't have the money to put into it, then you're not paying much in taxes anyway. Only people who are rich enough to pay for health care will benefit. As for consumers shopping for lower health care costs, I would hope that my sarcastic first paragraph puts that idiocy to rest.

One last important point to make. Hospitals and insurance companies and drug companies are not independent entities. Investment companies hold stocks in drug companies and health insurance companies and hospitals and medical clinics. All of these entities are tied together financially and work together to increase each other's profits.