[dude1394]

Nice article about how obamacare is faring in the public as well as why it's getting market forces into the industry versus insurance reform.

http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/op...-95104599.html

A huge part of the problem with our health-care system today is that far too much money is funneled through insurers, which keeps patients from controlling and allocating their own health-care dollars more efficiently and which also adds an unnecessary layer of costs. Dr. Marcy Zwelling, a Southern California private physician, says that the same MRI for which insurers are billed $2,000 to $3,000 — and for which they might actually agree to pay something like $1,000 (depending on their negotiated rates) — costs only $300 to $400 for patients who pay cash. Two weeks ago in these pages, Tony Mecia cited Dr. Brian Forrest, a North Carolina doctor who says that the prostate-cancer screening test for which a lab bills insurers $184 can be purchased by his patients for $30 in cash. It makes no sense to be funneling so much money through an unnecessary middle-man.
Yet, according to the CBO, in ObamaCare’s real first dozen years (2014 to 2025), it would funnel $1 trillion from American taxpayers, through Washington, to private insurers — in exchange for insurers’ largely giving up their autonomy to the government. Thus, ObamaCare would further entrench insurers’ position as an inefficient middle-man — that’s a key reason why insurers largely supported the overhaul — while simultaneously entrenching an even more problematic and inflexible middle-man in the form of the federal government.
Conversely, Hansen’s plan would empower patients, make prices more transparent, give patients more opportunity and incentive to shop around, and thereby lower health costs — all without reducing liberty or lowering the quality of care.

Read more at the Washington Examiner: http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/op...#ixzz0pQl54IBY