Reply #5: That is not the primary reason. The primary reason is that providers can charge basically whatever

[BzaDem]

they want.

In a normal market, there are two factors that mitigate this desire. One is competition, and the other is the ability for the customer to walk out the door if the price is too high.

In medicine, there is often little competition. When you are being flown to the emergency room, they don't ask you to pick the emergency room you would like to go to, or give you a menu of prices and doctors you can compare. And even if they did, you wouldn't have enough information to figure it out anyway. Medical knowledge is quite specialized, and most do not know how to evaluate doctors or prices.

Furthermore, the ability to "walk out the door" is almost non-existent, given that most people would prefer to stay alive.

Some other markets differ in one or the other way, but often not both. For example, food is something we all need (so we can't "walk out the door"). But there is plenty of competition, and the information is not specialized, so customers can use the information to make informed choices about what food to buy and at what price. This drives the price down significantly.

Similarly, there are other markets where there is little competition, but do not involve essential goods. So the ability to "walk out the door" keeps the price in check.

Medicine, however, fails both tests, which means there is very little ability for anyone to resist whatever providers want to charge.

How does every other modern industrialized nation deal with this problem? The set price controls on providers. This is done in single payer countries, in mandate-subsidize-regulate countries (like Switzerland and the Netherlands), and even health savings accounts/catastrophic insurance countries (like Singapore). It is done everywhere. Except here. And then we wonder why our medical costs are unsustainably high.