Why is Health Care so expensive?

President Obama tells us health care is too expensive, and puts cutting costs at the top of the agenda. It's interesting that in principle he believes in universal coverage, and yet he's not pitching things in those terms, he is saying national healthcare will save us money.

Conservative analysts say that his form of cost cutting is likely to make our health care worse, limiting options and eliminating more expensive forms of treatment. Here's a good article on that topic:

http://www.princevivek.blogspot.com

It may seem sensible to eliminate expensive treatments, but remember how technology normally works: Initial stabs at it are very expensive, and then costs go down to the extent that mere mortals can afford them. For example, cellphones were $1,500 bricks when they first came on, and we now have the iPhone that fits in our palms and does just about anything one could want from a gadget.

Likewise, laser eye surgery started prohibitively expensive and now anyone who can save up $1,000 or so can get it.

Why have heart operations not followed the same trajectory?

Why does an uncomfortable hospital room that's not even private cost $680 a night base rate?

I still want to understand why hospitals are, at base, bad hotels, and yet they charge about 10x more than bad hotels in the same general area.

When government takes something over, from education to public transportation, it tends to fix present institutions in place, eliminate innovation, and consider change more in terms of advances for employees ("Jobs for the Boys") than improvement in quality or cost.

National healthcare will institutionalize bad hotels and prevent any kind of innovation that gives us better care. Certainly time and time again, government has shown that it's great at creating really expensive institutions, like public schools, and horrible at making them work, like public schools.

Hospital employees are clearly hard-working and dedicated, but patients get only a tiny sliver of their attention. I would think I could install a hospital bed in my house and hire dedicated, round the clock nursing, for less than what a hospital charges.

Much of the problem would seem to be that we are not advised on cost of hospital services while we are getting them. We are not asked to pick and choose on an informed basis. We're in there and in their power and as a result massive bills can be run up in the blink of an eye.

It seems like because third parties are generally paying, nobody cares how expensive things are.

I think it would be far better if we did know, and if we had to pay for our health care. If we did, we could make our own choices instead of letting insurance companies or the government control our lives. This is the approach used by medical savings accounts, and it seems far wiser than what most of us are doing.

One example of what might happen when patients are in control is the "Minute Clinics" in some drug stores that charge $59 for you to see a doctor. They are cost-effective but provide better service than hospitals. I think we need a lot more like this. A Wal*Mart Hospital might not seem ideal but I wonder if it wouldn't be a lot better than what we have now.

One thing for sure: ObamaCare is going to take us away from even the vague possibility of that kind of reform, and for that reason it must be opposed by anyone who cares about the future of health.