Trump has signed an executive order aiming to make healthcare costs more transparent

[Swordsmyth]

President Donald Trump has signed an executive order aiming to make healthcare costs more transparent for patients.
The ruling directs regulators to force healthcare providers and insurers to publicly disclose their prices, the idea being to make it easier for consumers to shop around for better deals.
The move marks a more aggressive approach to boost compliance with regulations Trump introduced in 2019, which providers have only half-heartedly been following.
Trump has long advocated for insurers to tell consumers up front the actual prices for common tests and procedures, believing it will drive down costs.
Healthcare prices have traditionally been veiled in secrecy, determined through private negotiations among doctors, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and insurers.
Those involved have fiercely guarded these figures, arguing confidentiality is essential to the bargaining process.
Andrew Bremberg, former assistant to Trump and director of the Domestic Policy Council at the Trump White House, said in a statement: 'This price transparency executive order is a major statement from President Trump. Healthcare price transparency will help millions of Americans and will be a cornerstone in President Trump's healthcare legacy.'

More at: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/...shell-executive-turn-american-healthcare.html

 

[TheTexan]

Prices are ass backwards right now. Insurance companies are supposed to have bargaining power to drive down prices but instead they do the exact opposite

 

[Occam's Banana]

Prices are ass backwards right now. Insurance companies are supposed to have bargaining power to drive down prices but instead they do the exact opposite

That's what happens when you heavily subsidize demand with mandates for "free" healthcare while simultaneously retarding and constricting supply with reams of regulations and controls.

As long as you continue doing those things, all the so-called "transparency" in the world won't make a damn bit of difference.

https://x.com/NickJFreitas/status/1993491043069612351

There is one reason, and one reason only, that insurance is the primary way to pay for the vast majority of healthcare in America.

Because the government has systematically been incentivizing it starting back in the 1930s.

Insurance is a horribly inefficient way to pay for things. It only makes sense for serious and unforeseen issues…and yet the government has increasingly pushed it as the primary funding mechanism for healthcare…why?

And now that the predictable keeps happening, those same politicians offer the government as the solution to the problem the government created.

What an absolute joke.

Virtually anywhere else in the marketplace place you find increased supply to meet demand. You find innovation and competition combined with increased quality for decreasing prices.

Then you look at medical care and what do you find? Drastically increasing costs accompanied by poorer results.

And the response to me pointing this out will be “show some compassion!”

Are you serious?

Who is the compassionate one? The person pointing out the source of the flaws in the system, or the people who caused it?

Who is the one who really cares? Are the people pointing out that the only way to reduce costs is to increase supply, or the very government officials and cronies actively restricting supply while advocating for more subsidies and power?

Canada has essentially executed tens of thousands of their own citizens with assisted suicide to save money on their “benevolent” government-run “free” health care.

The UK and European systems might be decent for basic care, but they aren't exactly setting the standard for health care research and innovation. And while you may love paying 50% in taxes so you can get a “free” cast when you break your arm, you may not be as keen on a system that makes you wait months for an MRI or cancer screening when it could cost you your life.

Not to mention that the same argument made for these “compassionate systems” are then used to justify those systems being overwhelmed by mass migration.

But yeah…Im the bad guy for pointing all this out.

But I'm not. I'm the guy that refuses to abandon reason so ignorant leftists can pretend that the government is good at making things affordable.

Maybe if the “compassionate ones” out there cared more about the truth instead of feeling morally superior we could actually achieve some positive change.

But instead, we are subjected to those in power who know better and simply want control, and their useful idiots who thoughtlessly repeat talking points as long as they get to feel compassionate in the process.

Or as Thomas Sowell once said…. “It is usually futile to try to talk facts and analysis to people who are enjoying a sense of moral superiority in their ignorance.”

 

[Snowball]

Prices are ass backwards right now. Insurance companies are supposed to have bargaining power to drive down prices but instead they do the exact opposite

It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the profit motive, could it?

 

[Occam's Banana]

[bold emphasis added:]

Virtually anywhere else in the marketplace place you find increased supply to meet demand. You find innovation and competition combined with increased quality for decreasing prices.

Then you look at medical care and what do you find? Drastically increasing costs accompanied by poorer results.

You will find exactly the same thing when you look at education.

Q: What are the two sectors of the economy the government is most heavily involved in subsidizing?

A: Medical care and education.

Q: What are the two most egregiously "out of whack" sectors of the economy with respect to supply, demand, costs, quality, etc.?

A: Medical care and education.

This is NOT a coincidence.

Imagine if the government had done for computers and computer technology what they've done for medical care and education.

We'd still be using dial-up modems and watching 360p videos.

Or maybe (maybe, if we were lucky) things might have "advanced" to DSL connections and 480p videos - at 10x the price.

 

[Occam's Banana]

It couldn't possibly have anything to do with the profit motive, could it?

Nope. There is nothing wrong with the "profit motive".

The "profit motive" is what puts food on tables, clothes on backs, and roofs over heads - always has been, always will be.

The problem is the centralized, cronyist "power and control" motive - always has been, always will be.

 

[Occam's Banana]

You will find exactly the same thing when you look at education.

Q: What are the two sectors of the economy the government is most heavily involved in subsidizing?

A: Medical care and education.

Q: What are the two most egregiously "out of whack" sectors of the economy with respect to supply, demand, costs, quality, etc.?

A: Medical care and education.

This is NOT a coincidence.

Imagine if the government had done for computers and computer technology what they've done for medical care and education.

We'd still be using dial-up modems and watching 360p videos.

Or maybe (maybe, if we were lucky) things might have "advanced" to DSL connections and 480p videos - at 10x the price.

And speaking of the education system being as thoroughly borked as the medical care system:

https://x.com/ChrisRossini/status/1993757097561903404

Textbook example of "I'm from government and I'm here to help."

Government decided that it would provide better "access" to college.

That better "access" came through student loans.

The loans drove up the price of college, and buried the students in debt.

Now the degrees are not worth what they used to be, and 25% of the graduates are unemployed.

 

[Snowball]

Nope. There is nothing wrong with the "profit motive".

The "profit motive" is what puts food on tables, clothes on backs, and roofs over heads - always has been, always will be.

The problem is the centralized, cronyist "power and control" motive - always has been, always will be.

You couldn't possibly be more wrong. The profit motive is an unnecessary and intrusive, problem-creating, artificial and disruptive invader that has nothing at all to do with productive human activity, whether it be individual or societal. There are occasions where it has its place but there are also many occasions where it leads directly, incontrovertibly towards financial enslavement. The very objective you think you sustain is shattered by its implementation. When it reaches maturity in its development, as it has today, the result is subjugation and dependency.

The Federal government, State governments, Municipal governments, indeed the entire world is being artificially and intentionally constricted and abused by it. Many ills has it caused. The consolidation of capital is the primary problem in the world today, because we are living in the final fruits of the financial profit regime. Just as today, productivity and labor is separated from automated wealth creation. The profit motive is the reason why we all the debt, all the inflation, all the dependency, and all the strife.

The only times where profit motive should take place is when it is necessary as a conduit for transactions in real goods and services. It must be limited to acting as a conduit, to encourage free enterprise, yes, but not to encourage usury.

What has taken place in the health sector during my lifetime and that of the prior generation is a corporate takeover, spurned on by the bought-off politicians and Wall Street against a previously beneficial health care sector. The Catholic Church was the biggest and indeed the originator of the hospitals in the entire Western world. The Knights Hospitallers and the monastic societies and dioceses, it goes back to the Middle Ages and continued into the modern landscape. By the 1970's, however, financial pressures (driven by profit motive) began to break down this massive network built on love and care for neighbor. The YOU KNOW WHOS and their unwitting co-conspirators, the WASPS, began lobbying politicians to implement the HMO's in 1973... and health care was on its way to becoming forever unaffordable and directed and managed by the oligarchy that is putting us all into THEIR vision of the New World Order. They intentionally did all this to subjugate the common man, deprive him of his natural rights and make his natural ability inconsequential and constrained by the power of artificial capital.

 

[acptulsa]

The profit motive is an unnecessary and intrusive, problem-creating, artificial and disruptive invader that has nothing at all to do with productive human activity, whether it be individual or societal.

 

[Occam's Banana]

You couldn't possibly be more wrong. The profit motive is an unnecessary and intrusive, problem-creating, artificial and disruptive invader that has nothing at all to do with productive human activity, whether it be individual or societal. There are occasions where it has its place but there are also many occasions where it leads directly, incontrovertibly towards financial enslavement. The very objective you think you sustain is shattered by its implementation. When it reaches maturity in its development, as it has today, the result is subjugation and dependency.

The Federal government, State governments, Municipal governments, indeed the entire world is being artificially and intentionally constricted and abused by it. Many ills has it caused. The consolidation of capital is the primary problem in the world today, because we are living in the final fruits of the financial profit regime. Just as today, productivity and labor is separated from automated wealth creation. The profit motive is the reason why we all the debt, all the inflation, all the dependency, and all the strife.

The only times where profit motive should take place is when it is necessary as a conduit for transactions in real goods and services. It must be limited to acting as a conduit, to encourage free enterprise, yes, but not to encourage usury.

What has taken place in the health sector during my lifetime and that of the prior generation is a corporate takeover, spurned on by the bought-off politicians and Wall Street against a previously beneficial health care sector. The Catholic Church was the biggest and indeed the originator of the hospitals in the entire Western world. The Knights Hospitallers and the monastic societies and dioceses, it goes back to the Middle Ages and continued into the modern landscape. By the 1970's, however, financial pressures (driven by profit motive) began to break down this massive network built on love and care for neighbor. The YOU KNOW WHOS and their unwitting co-conspirators, the WASPS, began lobbying politicians to implement the HMO's in 1973... and health care was on its way to becoming forever unaffordable and directed and managed by the oligarchy that is putting us all into THEIR vision of the New World Order. They intentionally did all this to subjugate the common man, deprive him of his natural rights and make his natural ability inconsequential and constrained by the power of artificial capital.

That is all just a bunch of special-pleading semantics and gymnastic sophistry.

Every time you ever do anything at all with the expectation of achieving or acquiring something you regard in some way as more valuable or worthy than the thing you did, you are operating on the "profit motive". The "profit motive" is an utterly inescapable dimension of all human action, and human existence would not be possible without it.

The fast that some people are motivated by profit in doing bad or objectionable things is no more an indictment.of the "profit motive" (rather than of the people doing those bad or objectionable things) than the fact that some killers use guns to murder people is an indictment of guns (rather than of the killers who use them).

 

[Snowball]

That is all just a bunch of special-pleading semantics and gymnastic sophistry.

Every time you ever do anything at all with the expectation of achieving or acquiring something you regard as more valuable or worthy than the thing you did, you are operating on the "profit motive". The "profit motive" is an utterly inescapable dimension of all human action, and human existence would not be possible without it.

The fast that some people are motivated by profit in doing bad or objectionable things is no more an indictment.of the "profit motive" (rather than or in addition to the people doing bad or objectionable things) than the fact that some killers use guns to murder people is an indictment of guns (rather than or in addition to the killers).

I really think you should reconsider the overarching assessment you're making, because it's not historically, or even presently true (in some cases).
Regardless, the obvious solution regarding healthcare is to make healthcare (and all the links along its chain) as profit-free as possible, and the bodies which run healthcare institutions should be organized as non-profits.

 

[acptulsa]

Every time you ever do anything at all with the expectation of achieving or acquiring something you regard as more valuable or worthy than the thing you did, you are operating on the "profit motive".