Price Controls
Phil Gausewitz, MD, recently focused on the problem of price controls in medicine. He argues that the imposition of price controls have devastated quality and innovation in medical care and makes a compelling case that removing them would open up a new era of patient centered care and restore the physician/patient relationship.
With the removal of the price controls we can expect that, in addition to saving the enormous administrative costs they cause, the devastating effects of the physician shortage will be relieved. Patient care services will improve significantly as physicians compete for patients on service and fees. Medicare patients will regain the right to protect their lives, which they are denied now, by being able to freely contract with physicians who require fees greater than the government allows, and we will be spared the ridiculous spectacle of the “doc fix”.
Shortages caused by price controls protect less effective doctors who now have busy practices regardless of the quality of their service. The exciting new developments in diagnostic and treatment procedures, equipment, immunology, informatics and genetics will be brought more efficiently to patient care, without being inhibited by burdensome and needless financial regulations. The relationships between physicians and patients will improve as patients choose physicians with whom they are comfortable.
What a great article – I couldn’t have summed up the problems caused by overbearing government any better!
How long will we have to put up with power hungry politicians and bureaucrats who know nothing about how to optimize competition, prices, and quality? There “solutions” never work, and always have unintended consequences that end up hurting the very people they claim to help. How pathetic!
“How long will we have to put up with power hungry politicians and bureaucrats who know nothing about how to optimize competition, prices, and quality?”
For as long as we let them.
Yes we can choose who we vote in and vote out, but there will always be things beyond the voters control, especially as the bureaucrats change their tune once they are in position.
There is very little focus on the issue of administratively set prices in health care. The market economy is one where prices send information to all relevant parties. Set the prices wrong and you sent the wrong information to those involved. Administratively set prices are virtually always wrong.
Also see: http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB118101135977724637
The good doctor here is in favor of balance billing, and so am I.
But there are in a sense two kinds of balance billing.
One kind is where a physician tells a long time patient in advance that a certain procedure (which is postponable, and even somewhat discretionary) will require a payment over and above the insurance reimbursement.
The other kind of balance billing occurs when a patient enters the emergency room on a stretcher, or with a very sick child, and a procedure is needed right away, and a non-networl surgeon comes in and charges $10,000 more than the insurance reimbursement.
Like many government controls, the laws paint too broad a brush. In an understandable effort to restrict the ugly episodes in emergencies, controls are imposed where they are not needed.
I should add parenthetically that Germany and France have all kinds of price controls, and no one accuses these nations of bad medical care. They are very rarely accused of even having long waiting lists. So in that sense the good doctor is a being a mite provincial though his intentions are good.
“Patient care services will improve significantly as physicians compete for patients on service and fees.”
Well yeah. As price controls are gone and docs are competing for patients based on prices, everything will improve. Service will improve, wait times will improve and cost will improve.
You would think with a solution so simple, it would already be implemented. But the reason it isn’t is because it works too well and there are not enough loopholes to game the system.
“Shortages caused by price controls protect less effective doctors who now have busy practices regardless of the quality of their service.”
Doctors have very little incentive to provide great health care. Making them compete with everyone else is the only way to improve it.
Exactly, because if you don’t like your doctor, you can shop around and find another. To which doctors must always provide an incentive for patients to come see them over anyone else.