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Originally Posted by willravel
The free market has given birth to these outragous costs.
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Actually, no - health care costs ratcheted upward pretty much in tandem with the degree of governmental involvement in healthcare. Before Medicare was enacted in 1965 the rate of increase in the % of the economy dedicated to health care was much much lower than it is now. That doesn't mean Medicare was a bad thing, and it doesn't mean there necessarily shouldn't be some degree of governmental involvement in health care, but it's fallacious to say that the free market has caused the outrageous costs. It is the particular combination of government regulation and economic freedom that the US has had in the last 40 years that has yielded the current environment, which includes both extremely high costs and a truly amazing rate of innovation and creativity.
As with most things, there are always tradeoffs. Health care is no different.