An obligation to pay is always good for the billing side. Think about the sociopathic prices of US pharmaceuticals.
Afaik any other country with mandatory health care also puts a ceiling on prices. In germany, there is a price catalog for any service, with only few exceptions, and doctors/hospitals cannot legally charge anything else for these covered services. Now guess what the US does not have, even thought obama had foreign consultants explicitly advising for it.
Health ensureance companies are certainly not the most altruistic but any profit oriented company trying to cut cost where ever possible is hardly a supprise.
> In germany, there is a price catalog for any service, with only few exceptions, and doctors/hospitals cannot legally charge anything else for these covered services. Now guess what the US does not have
Well, we sort of do: we have Medicare's reimbursement rates, which are indeed a price catalog for every service... but only if you're covered by Medicare, of course.
I've heard that price negotiations between private payers and providers are often done with reference to the Medicare rate: "I'll pay you 20% over Medicare for this."
Afaik any other country with mandatory health care also puts a ceiling on prices. In germany, there is a price catalog for any service, with only few exceptions, and doctors/hospitals cannot legally charge anything else for these covered services. Now guess what the US does not have, even thought obama had foreign consultants explicitly advising for it.
Health ensureance companies are certainly not the most altruistic but any profit oriented company trying to cut cost where ever possible is hardly a supprise.