I'm sure this has been discussed but the 2/3 rule on healthcare is indisputable.

Did someone listen to Shapiro's podacst yesterday?

Costs were never addressed by ACA. True costs. Until that happens it's all a shell game.

We are going about healthcare reform all wrong. What needs to happen is a price cap on equipment, medication, and technology.

$100 for a syringe? $345 for crutches? $100,000 for one round of cancer treatment? frick that rediculous shite. Cut that out and cap those prices at reasonable levels and leave healthcare insurance alone. The rest will take care of itself with lowered costs, which equates to more affordability, which means better availability. Only prices are lowered, not quality of said equipment, meds, technology, etc., so quality is still there.

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Vehemently disagree.

All attempts at changing healthcare laws have done exactly jack shite to address quality.

You make it affordable and improve quality and people will make damn sure that anyone that wants access to care will get it.

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I don't think he was talking about laws affecting...

I think he meant in general...

I was familiar with the concept before but Ben did motivate my OP.

Replace Availability with Universality, and your Shapiro point is correct

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What needs to happen is a price cap on equipment, medication, and technology.

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Take an Econ 101 class. Price caps NEVER work as intended, unless your intent is to limit the availability.

Put a cap of say a nice round $1000 per x-ray generator or oxygen delivery system. Result is 0 units sold or even rented/leased out due to no manufacturer making them.

Put a cap on the price of the latest and greatest cancer drug and watch as the supply of that drug evaporates.

Under price caps in the 1970's landlords allowed their properties to literally fall apart so they could then claim the losses either to insurance or at the very least off their taxes. The results of price caps on rents and leases was a severe shortage of housing. Medical equipment and supplies would be no different.

Caps = profit disincentive = forget getting involved with capped item/service

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There are three aspects to healthcare:

1. Availability

2. Affordability

3. Quality

You can have two of these in any combination but all three are impossible.

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That goes without saying when you refuse to change the system that has produced what is by far the most expensive healthcare in the civilized world yet also has by far the greatest mortality amenable to healthcare.

Eh I'm a firm believer healthcare isn't some special industry that wouldn't be improved via deregulation.

80 years of regulations and all everyone can do is suggest more or different regulations, and not the simpler of solutions. It's about time we tried some really different.

But nope, we'll keep getting the next new idea that just shifts shite somewhere else until the next regulation shifts that shite somewhere else, and so on.