Americans' Health-Care Costs Are Too Damn High, Study Finds

[Hoyt]

5. First, malpractice insurance is not that expensive. Second, a doc can serve in a rural area for a

few years if they can't really pay back their student loans with a a starting salary well over $200K. Most decide they'd rather live in the city and let people suffer, than discharge their debt through public service.

With regards to malpractice insurance, it's not that high in family practice, general internal medicine, etc. Yet, we have a shortage in those specialties. Malpractice insurance goes up in some high risk specialties and in certain areas of the country like South Florida, but income goes up more than proportionately. Besides, surely you are not proposing to limit the thousands of patients injured unnecessarily by incompetent physicians from receiving just compensation.

Drugs are high, but as stats in article show, it's not that much more than other countries, and drugs are only about 8% of our healthcare expenditures. Heck, Canada does not even cover drugs in their system.

I agree that something needs to be done, including price controls and utilization controls. That means docs and hospitals will get less. As an economist, you know that will filter down to their employees.

But running on Medicare-for-All is likely a loser in the General Election because people are afraid of just one plan until someone demonstrates a government plan is better. I like my Medicare, but it is not anywhere near as cheap as people think.

But, we are in agreement that something needs to be done. I just wonder if voters as patients, and employees of the healthcare system, are willing to make the changes they will need to make in addition to those who directly profit handsomely from the system.