Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
The information imbalance seems particularly extreme here. I shop around for credentials and price with a PPO, too, but I was thinking about the problems with insurance plans that specify what sorts of treatments are covered. As it stands, it's next to useless for the ultimate purchaser -- the patient -- to try to consider this ex ante. And even when you look at credentials, the kind of information you get is pretty lousy.
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All fair points. How does government solve it?
1) Gov't plan. Well, it makes shopping around unnecessary, at least.
2) Gov't control of plans. Okay, so the gov't says what should be covered. A bit better, but then you see what we do in states--whoever has the most powerful lobby gets their disease covered. And it's still one-size fits all.
3) Information forcing. Well, what's government's role then? To rate plans? Maybe that works, but you still end up with some of hte problems of 2 (e.g., some lobby insists that a "high" plan has to have coverage for a particular disease). Nonetheless, this is the least objectionable.
All in all, though, while government can solve part of the problem, I'm not sure any broad solution doesn't create more problems than it solves.
