National Medical Price Controls

Americans pay extremely wide variations of price for the same medical procedures and services. These extreme variations hurt the uninsured the most because they have no options when sick and they have little bargaining power with medical providers after they have received treatments.

Governments and private insurers negotiate the best deals for their patients. The uninsured and underinsured are often charged twice as much or more for the same procedures, services, and drugs because they have no preexisting agreements with the providers. And so the high costs of medical care is past onto those who can least afford it. And many of these uninsured or underinsured of the poor and middle classes wind up loosing their life savings and their homes in bankruptcies when they can not pay their medical bills.

Most hospitals, clinics, and doctors do not post any kind of pricing for their services. Since most people have insurance their prices vary according to the amounts the insurance companies have negotiated or are willing to pay. Doctor prices are often set 25% above these insured amounts and the difference their insurance will not pay is billed directly to their patients for additional income. Few doctors have cash paying patients because of this system and fewer still accept any type of uninsured patients on a charity basis. Most all uninsured charity medical practices are now provided by the state, local, or non-profit clinics and hospitals.

A National Medical Price Controls Board that sets fair prices for all medical procedures, services, and drugs will go a long way in controlling costs and providing competition to the medical community. Requiring doctors, hospitals, and all medical practitioners to post a complete list of prices for their services will place competition in the now non-competitive medical community. Currently doctors do little to compete against other doctors on pricing because there is no need to because prices are high and no one cares about prices because most patients have insurance. And so prices remain as high as the unregulated medical markets will bear because there is no way for patients to compare and lower costs by going elsewhere. This lack of medical pricing and portability has enabled hospitals, clinics, drug companies, and doctors to continue charging whatever the market can bear because patients are captive to their system of medicine their insurance provides and can not easily change doctors or medical providers

A National Medical Price Control Board should be established which set prices at a fair rate and allow only a 25% difference in either direction higher or lower. And the medical price controls should mandate that any patient can go outside their insurance provider's network for any reason. In this way competitive pricing and lowered costs would add competition back into the medical marketplace.

Medical price controls would allow the millions of uninsured and underinsured to compare prices and seek the most affordable medical care for them. And they can go to any doctor or hospital and not worry that they will be charged far more than other patients pay for the same medical services. Regular medical doctors would add a new source of income from cash patients who now will know their pricing and are not worried with overcharges and high costs because they do not have health insurance.

The medical price controls will level the playing field and add competition back into the medical community to help bring prices down to true competitive rates.

The medical community has a near complete monopoly on health care in America with little competition from alternative health care practitioners. These alternative health practitioners must be fully included in any medical price controls and be allowed to compete with regular medical services that has successfully excluded them from mainstream medical practice for over 60 years in America.

Alternative health care and alternative product treatments like herbs and vitamins are often far cheaper and more effective than conventional treatments and drugs for the same disease and yet are they excluded by insurers from participating in their networks and insurance payments. So all alternative treatments, products, and services should be allowed outside of insurer policies if substituted for traditional medical treatments for the same disease. In this manner additional competition can be provided and the unfair medical monopoly in America ended after more than 60 plus years.

America must become like every other countries of the world which treats diseases in a comprehensive and holistice manner with all medical treatments and services treated equally especially alternative medical treatments. America must end the unfair medical monopoly which has kept cost and services high and uncompetitive for the poor and uninsured as well as all of the population in America. --J.E. Ante