Tag Archives: health care

Stacy Summary:  So 17.3% of the US economy is health care and we’re supposed to believe that this is an innovative, competitive, genuinely free market global empire? And I love the solution this economist proposes of using anti-trust legislation (health insurance is uniquely exempt). Of course, half of the American population would man the barricades to prevent their favored banking oligarchs from ever having to compete.

• Monopolies, lack of competition drive US health care costs soaring despite deflation

The pricing power of local hospital systems has received scant attention in the search for answers to the nation’s rising medical costs, according to Alain Enthoven, an economist at Stanford University. In 2009, as consumer prices fell for the first time in 54 years, the U.S. health care bill rose by 5.7 percent to $2.47 trillion, a record 17.3 percent of the economy.

“Provider consolidation is driving up health care costs,” said Enthoven. “We need effective antitrust enforcement, and we haven’t had that for some time.”