In one of the Chevy Chase movies Chevy is driving cross country when his car breaks down. He is forced to stop at a seedy car repair joint. He asks how much the repair will cost and the response is “How much do ya’ got?”
As best I can tell, this is the medical pricing mechanism also. More respectably stated “How much will the market bear.”
Surgery Costs Vary Wildly – Even in the Same Area.
The cost of having a knee or hip replaced varies wildly and can be up to four times more in one place than another -— even in the same area... A total knee replacement averaged about $31,000, ... [b]ut in [a single city,] Dallas, it ranged from $16,772 to $61,584.86. Across the USA, knee replacements costs as little as $11,317 in Montgomery, Ala., and as much as $69,654 in New York City, Some of the price differences are expected -— rent and other overhead costs are much higher in New York City than in Alabama. But the reasons why hip replacement in Fort Collins, Colo., costs tens of thousands more than in Pittsburgh may have more to do with whatever the market will bear.Variable pricing in pharmaceuticals through the international markets is similarly explained as "what the market will bear." The article posted on today daily commentary by edwardelinsky is another great example.
Who benefits from this system? The insurance industry. But wait. Who exactly is that? Who are the human beings hidden behind the mask of the term “insurance industry?”
The oligarchy owns the insurance industry. I don’t know the specific details of exactly who that is, but a group of the wealthiest own the insurance industry and this small group controls its actions. It is, most definitely, one of the structures that the oligarchy uses to harvest resources from the population.
As a single example, I read that the late David Rockefeller was a principle (meaning >5% ownership) in 105 of the largest 125 corporations on earth. So we have a single human being intensely invested in, and with high level of controlling influence over, the current system, one component of which is the immensely profitable parasitic operation called “health insurance.” Together, this fairly small group of people form the parasitic alliance.
This is the same oligarchy that owns the media and funds the re-election campaigns of our “representatives.” I personally believe that there is a fairly high degree of coordination among this elite class to shape society for its own benefit. The elite make the laws, rules and and propagate the myths that move the sheeple.
A social activist from the civil rights era remarked that power is never relinquished voluntarily. It must be demanded.
Are we to the place where we are ready to demand a transparent and equitable system that cannot be gamed? Or must the pain be increased further?
A government owned program with employed, salaried, doctors and nurses would be one such system. Despite my visceral aversion to “government control,” this seems smartest, and least likely to be gamed, to me. And as DaveF has pointed out, it is a globally tested system.