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From: hrubin@odds.stat.purdue.edu (Herman Rubin)
Newsgroups: alt.cancer.support, alt.support.diabetes, fidonet.diabetes,
 misc.health.diabetes, talk.politics.medicine
Subject: Re: Single Payer Universal Health Care
Date: 26 May 2004 19:36:57 -0500
Organization: Purdue University Statistics Department
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References: 
  
 
NNTP-Posting-Host: odds.stat.purdue.edu
 00:36:58 GMT)
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In article ,
George Conklin  wrote:

>"Ted Rosenberg"  wrote in message
>news:2hifrqFcsf02U1@uni-berlin.de...
>> One of the problems of the health care system is that it is not even
>> vaguely a free market. Most health care providers will not provide
>> prices for  comparison shopping, and, if they do say anything, it is
>> usually false.  They are also not consistent.


>   When I have asked about prices, here are the two most common answers:

>1. What's the matter?  Don't you have insurance?

This is an excellent reason why it is important to get RID
of insurance for all except major or unexpected items, and
to have the prices for ALL up front.

With the pseudo-insurance, you have already paid most, and
it is only the marginal cost which you can now use to 
decide whether or not to incur the expense of the procedure.
So we run into the tragedy of the commons.

>2. Ask the nurse.  (She does not know or won't say either).

Of course she does not know.  She does not handle the money,
nor is she paid for the explicit job.

-- 
This address is for information only.  I do not claim that these views
are those of the Statistics Department or of Purdue University.
Herman Rubin, Department of Statistics, Purdue University
hrubin@stat.purdue.edu         Phone: (765)494-6054   FAX: (765)494-0558