Health Care: Both Single Payer and Cost Control are Required

For years now the problem with health care in the US is not only that greed in the system creates unfairness and early deaths due to lack of health care, but also that the whole price structure has become grotesque and unsupportable by the economy as a whole. It's absolutely ridiculous to spend 16%, and going up, of your economy, for health care.

The other countries with their varying single payer systems have not only made sure that health care is not perverted by profit, but they have also ensured that the price structure does not become wildly excessive. In other words, the US system is not only unfair and dysfunctional from a health care perspective, and it not only has made US businesses less competitive, but for years it has gotten to the point where the prices for health care goods and especially for health care services are wildly out of line with what they would be in a true free market, let alone with what they would be in a carefully regulated market.

This of course is yet more proof that you can not have a private for greed health care system.

Especially rigorous price control is done by Japan, where an MRI costs about $100, versus about $1,200 in Denver, according to the recent PBS documentary.

In practical terms at this time, what this means is that even if a public plan is created as an option (and I'll believe that when I see it) it can not be mandatory for (mostly poor people) to purchase it, because if so it would be nothing more than an extremely regressive tax.

In summary, at this point the US has to have both single payer and control of costs and prices. The time when you could fully correct the system with just single payer alone ended years and years ago.

[The above is in response to this article.]