- It costs exactly $20
- It costs not more than $30 allowing negotiation
- You may only charge one price for all customers
- You may not charge more than some n percentage over the national average in the last business quarter
The problem now is there is no downward price pressure from competition and transparency. Market controls are an extreme solution which will likely have unintended negative consequences.
None of these exist today in the market for US healthcare...but they do for fast food. Trying to compare the two would be extremely disingenuous.
It is in medical providers best interest to raise prices.
Efficient markets need more competition, but in healthcare the market is fragmented and once a provider or insurance gets big enough it gets acquired by another leading to larger duopolies.
I'm in favor of what you suggest, but it will come with increases in Medicare costs.
So hospital utilization would not change.
Remember I'm talking about the payment for any particular procedure, not the number of procedures an average person has.
I know from when I was healthy individual in my 20s, that I tried to avoid doctors visits as much as I could - even though I had killer coverage (90-95%).
I still paid premiums (well my company did) but I simply didn't go.
Prices negotiated between payer and provider today are already 1 + N year length contracts. Having one transparent national price list would 1000x easier than the hundreds of thousands of healthcare administrators that exist today whose sole job is to negotiate and determine price lists.
What exactly do you think is going to change in the market?