High price of health care

Had to shamelessly steal Alex Pareene's Sunday Bobblehead Review from Atrios because something unexpected and not awful happened.

Somewhat wonderfully, the discussion of Steven Brill’s giant Time piece on healthcare costs turned into a fairly explicit endorsement of lowering the Medicare eligibility age — even dedicated “entitlement” foe Stephen Rattner unexpectedly endorsed this proposal! — which lead Stephanopoulos to point out that by the same logic we should just have single-payer healthcare. (Oddly, Brill’s actual article rejects price-controls and single-payer as solutions but when he was just talking about it extemporaneously everyone seemed to grok that those were the only coherent solutions to the problem.) Oh hey guys, you have all just discovered all the ancient arguments for single-payer that left-liberals have been making since forever, congrats. By tomorrow you will all return to demanding that the Medicare eligibility age be raised in the name of fiscal responsibility but for now, let’s enjoy this moment.

(Stops to savor...) Single payer is the obvious answer. For it to be said out loud in the Village receiving parlor is significant. Surely it will be immediately ignored but it's now on the internet. It will not be forgotten.

Brill's epic article in TIME explains in painful detail why we pay too much for medical care. The shorter: The business of medicine is based on entirely wrong payment incentives. Invitation to padding and kickbacks. Overly complicated paperwork provides easy cover for fraud. Corporate demand for profit creates pressure to cheat. All the things contribute to inflated pricing and diminished quality of care for the patients. It's a racket.