Supporters of Obamacare: Are there no free market solutions to Healthcare?

So you agree that the insurance system absent of government is still not really a free market system?

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Are there no free market solutions to Healthcare?

Is greater government control the only answer here?

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might as well ask a wolf if he wants the farmer to take down the fences that keep in his sheep

there are many alternatives to Obamacare as far as healthcare reform is concerned. here's one of my favorites:

National Review

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The idea that the health arena as a whole simply is not amenable to market economics of any sort is a deeply rooted dogma for some on the left, based especially on the work of Kenneth Arrow in the 1960s and his successors, but we believe it is simply not justified. (We recommend this thoughtful reflection on the question, and on Arrow’s work, from Avik Roy.) Insurance is a financial product, decisions about coverage and care answer to discernible incentives and motives, and health care constitutes an enormous portion of both public and private spending in America. Clearly economic thinking is one of the ways of thinking we have to apply to health care. Pointing out that health care is not like consumer electronics is just too abstract a point to have much to say to our particular proposals. Similarly, the claim that health care is not like other economic goods would not constitute a sound argument for a single-payer health-care system over Obamacare (the latter being at least superficially a more market-friendly arrangement).

Finally, Sullivan builds on the reader’s comment to express his own concern about our proposal: that, compared to Obamacare, “a more bare bones insurance regime which does not have to include the basic needs of most lives, and skimps on preventative care, is a false economy.” We suspect this remark rests on a misunderstanding of our proposal that was also evident in McIntyre’s post about it. We are not proposing a regime of universal catastrophic-only policies, with perhaps some supplementary coverage packages on top of that. (There have been some proposals of that sort by others.) We propose, rather, to build on today’s insurance market, in which most people get tax-preferred coverage through an employer while other people get non-tax-preferred coverage on their own, by allowing those other people to have the same benefit provided through a credit they could use to help them buy insurance.

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I don't like Obamacare for a lot of reasons but I will answer your question anyway.

The main reason health care costs are so out of control in this country compared to others is because in other countries there is a clearinghouse of sorts that will collectively bargain for prices on heath care products. People with health problems are in no position to act like consumers the way they would for a car or a tv so consumers are gouged as a result.

If there were a private, yelp type organization that would bring everything together and either collectively bargain for services or make it a lot easier/more practical for people to act as they normally would as consumers then I would be fine with that.

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So you agree that the insurance system absent of government is still not really a free market system?

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Sort of. The mistake patients make is believing that they are the customer when it comes to receiving healthcare. They are not. The insurance company is the doctor's customer.

A market does exist between insurance companies and providers. But it's a much smaller (fewer actors) and thus less competitive market, lacking downward price drivers, than would exist if patients were paying their own bills.

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I don't like Obamacare for a lot of reasons but I will answer your question anyway.

The main reason health care costs are so out of control in this country compared to others is because in other countries there is a clearinghouse of sorts that will collectively bargain for prices on heath care products. People with health problems are in no position to act like consumers the way they would for a car or a tv so consumers are gouged as a result.

If there were a private, yelp type organization that would bring everything together and either collectively bargain for services or make it a lot easier/more practical for people to act as they normally would as consumers then I would be fine with that.

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Pretty much this.

I don't like Obamacare either, but I also don't think there's a free market solution to high healthcare costs. At least I haven't seen one yet.

I've been in healthcare for 20 years.

It's expensive because the primary payor source is a government entity: Medicare.

Because of this, market forces are not to be found.

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Scoop - how much would you say is paid by the Government.

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I believe Medicare and Medicaid combined are around 50% of healthcare spending.

Look at LASIK surgery. You have you pay out of pocket. Technology has improved and prices have gone down. That's how the free market should work in medicine. There is a surgery center in Oklahoma that lists their prices online, people will actually fly I'm because prices are so much cheaper. How can you control prices when you're separated from the true cost by insurance plans?

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Supporters of Obamacare: Are there no free market solutions to Healthcare?
Is greater government control the only answer here?

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Yes