Why are Medical Costs So High?

Vin Suprynowicz reports:

You’re a doctor. You need to bring in $3,000 apiece for your most common procedure. But Medicare and Medicaid – which pay for about half your patients – have just told you they’re only going to pay you one-third of what they’re billed. What do you do? You don’t need to be a CPA to know the answer is to start billing everyone $4,500 for your procedure. The half of your patients who pay full price thus pay $1,500 extra, covering the $1,500 shortfall for each Medicare/Medicaid-covered procedure.

Now the tricky question: If someone who’s NOT on Medicaid or Medicare visits your medical office to have this procedure done, and promptly pays his or her $4,500 in full, how much has he or she paid you, this year?

And the answer is: $6,000. Those who are not on Medicare or Medicaid are known as “taxpayers.” Where do you think Medicare/Medicaid got the $1,500 to pay for the welfare patient? The taxpayer pays $4,500 for his or her own procedure, and then an extra $1,500 in taxes to fund someone else’s.

The high cost of government intervention.