By TEVI D. TROY and JEFFREY H. ANDERSON
Investor’s Business Daily
Posted Monday, August 31, 2009
Decades of data confirm a simple truth: If we want to lower health costs, we need to put consumers back in charge.
Many people now feel like second-class citizens when they enter the doctor’s office. That’s because everyone in the office knows that the patient isn’t really the payer — that the patient doesn’t hold the purse strings.
The greater the percentage that patients instead pay directly to their doctor out-of-pocket, the more patients are in charge.
Whether it’s televisions, computers or Lasik eye surgery, when consumers are in charge, prices stay in check. In 1970, consumers paid for 62% of all privately purchased health care out-of-pocket. Today that percentage is just 26%.
Meanwhile, per-patient health costs have nearly quadrupled — even after accounting for inflation.
Consumers are paying less directly to doctors, but they’re paying four times as much overall — to insurers or the IRS.
The editorial continues at Investor’s Business Daily
