Would the cost of health care be more affordable if doctors and hospitals just lowered their prices?
Question:
Answer:
Probably, yes, but not guaranteed.
One problem is that the price of materials and pharmaceuticals isn't set by hospitals, it's set by the companies that produce them, so there's only so much a hospital can do about it.
Another problem is opportunity cost. If it takes a doctor eight years to become a doctor, and every year of school means $10,000 in tuition when they could be out in the real world earning $20,000 a year at McDonald's...that's around $240,000 that they're down by when they become a doctor - and that's assuming that their second-best option is to flip burgers, and that their education was dirt cheap! Realistically they're probably out closer to a million dollars...which means they need to make that much more in the 30 or so years remaining in order to be competitive, let alone attract people.
When you compare being a doctor to other high-paying jobs...you start to wonder why anybody would be willing to do the job for under $100,000 a year. Long hours, high insurance costs, paying rent and taxes...if doctors saw their incomes drop, you'd probably see a shortage of doctors.
Hospital and doctors cannot lower their prices enough. They have more expenses than insurance. Some doctors take home very little when they have to repay college costs as well as supplies, employees etc.
Pharmaceuticals are the ones who should lower prices.
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