Anyone looking for a clue about the future of health policy debates should take note of a Center for American Progress panel convened earlier this month. The topic at hand was journalist Steven Brill’s Time magazine story on high medical bills, which compared rates charged to uninsured and privately insured patients with the negotiated, lower per-service rates charged to Medicare.
But rather than push for a government-run, single-payer system—what liberals often term “Medicare for all”—several of the left-leaning health experts on hand talked up a technocratic alternative known as "all-payer": Instead of the federal government serving as a universal insurer, as in single payer, the government would set payment rates for the entire system, public and private, eliminating price discrepancies for different payers.
In other words, price controls. This is the great new idea that has gripped liberal health wonks as health costs have continued to rise: to simply have the government declare that prices must be lower.
(Excerpt) Read more at reason.com ...
