[T]he often advanced idea that American patients should have “more skin in the game” through higher cost sharing, inducing them to shop around for cost-effective health care, so far has been about as sensible as blindfolding shoppers entering a department store in the hope that inside they can and will then shop smartly for the merchandise they seek. So far the application of this idea in practice has been as silly as it has been cruel. […]
In their almost united opposition to government, US physicians and health care organizations have always paid lip service to the virtue of market, possibly without fully understanding what market actually means outside a safe fortress that keeps prices and quality of services opaque from potential buyers. Reference pricing for health care coupled with full transparency of those prices is one manifestation of raw market forces at work.
–Uwe Reinhardt, The Journal of the American Medical Association. I thank Karan Chhabra for the prod.
