How often have you heard this remark? This leads many people to see a doctor for even small problems that may go away on their own. This also leads many providers to not be cost conscious of the work they do, at least not as cost conscious if the patient was paying out of pocket.
People rarely ask the follow-up question: who pays for insurance? The answer is that we all do, directly or indirectly. If we pay the premiums directly, it comes out of our pockets. If our employer pays the premiums, its money that could go into our pocket instead or its money that has to come from the price of the goods or services sold. If the government pays, it comes out of our taxes.
Since there are so many payers of health care, there are no real controls on the costs. So, no controls, no limit on costs. Up and up they go.
For some more thoughts on this, see "What Happened to U.S. Health Care Costs?" Megan McArdle, The Atlantic, 2010-12-01.
She has an interesting graph showing how U.S. health care costs diverged dramatically from the costs in other countries.
