Originally Posted by sperbonzo

Actually no. It's NOT because of capitalism. It's because the states have all mandated a massive number of procedures that insurance carriers MUST carry. In the 50s and 60s, people typically bought insurance that only covered catastrophic events. For all other services they paid cash, or worked out a payment plan with the Doctor. Because of that, people actually paid attention to their bill, and would seek out the price/quality doctor that they wanted to pay. This kept costs low, through competition in the free market. Doctors and hospitals were incentivised to keep the bills low or risk losing customers to the competition.

In the 70s, state government began putting in all kinds of stipulations about the things that insurance carriers HAD to cover. People stopped looking at their doctor bills. They simply handed over their insurance card and forgot about it. Costs went up because no one shopped around. There was no free market incentive to keep the costs lower because the state mandated coverage removed it..




.