Gee, the media is finally covering this?

U.S. hospitals charge prices that, at times, can be thousands of dollars different for the same medical procedures, even within towns or states, according to federal data released today.

In some cases, the data from more than 3,000 hospitals that take Medicare, the health program for the elderly, showed that costs can be drastically different at hospitals just miles apart. For instance, three hospitals located in and around the Denver suburb of Aurora, Colorado, alternately charged $97,214, $46,457 and $28,237 to treat a respiratory infection with complications, according to the report.

No, really?  A nearly 4:1 ratio?

Of course what's left unsaid is that the lower end is reasonably within the ability of most people to pay, even if they had to sell something (or go out and borrow money) to cover it.  The high end?  Not so much.

But it's worse than that:

The hospitals located in and around Aurora were paid a fraction of what was charged for the treatment, according to the data. Pollack said the only people who face the full charges are those who aren’t represented by the government or a private insurer, such as UnitedHealth Group Inc. (UNH), the nation’s largest for-profit health plan.

Economics tell us that in a market economy where competition is present it is impossible for the transaction that has more indirection in it -- that is, more fingers in the pie each of which demands a piece, to be the lower-cost option.  

The reason for this is simple: Nobody works for free.

Therefore, there is only one rational explanation for the above: Someone, or some group of someones, have figured out how to use force or fraud to violate what would otherwise be an axiom in a free-market system.

In a just economic system we would apply what is an already existing law to this problem, The Sherman Act, otherwise known as 15 USC:

Every contract, combination in the form of trust or otherwise, or conspiracy, in restraint of trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, is declared to be illegal. Every person who shall make any contract or engage in any combination or conspiracy hereby declared to be illegal shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

So why is it, once again, that everyone involved in this is not both stripped of assets to their underwear and cooling their jets in a federal prison?

Sheesh.... will the stupid ever stop?

“It will be critical to continue to monitor the effects of the law as the major provisions go into effect in 2014 and beyond to ensure it achieves its goal of near-universal, comprehensive health insurance,” Sara Collins, the vice president for affordable health insurance at the Commonwealth Fund, in a statement.

Of the 84 million people cited by the group, about 55 million were uninsured during 2012. About 30 million were underinsured, meaning they had coverage that provided “inadequate protection from health-care costs,” measured by the amount spent out-of-pocket for care compared with their income, the group said.

So if you "give" them that "better" coverage how can you actually make out-of-pocket costs decrease when you have added more levels of indirection -- more hands the money must go through -- than existed before?

That's the logical fallacy and it's a knowing one.

You can only solve the problem by looking at why costs are so high and any dispassionate analysis of this finds that cost-shifting and other forms of monopoly game-playing are largely if not entirely responsible for that.

But Obamacare not only did nothing to stop this it added to those distortions.

Thus far there is not one politician willing to take this on.

Not one.

The game's up folks, and as the economic reality of this sinks into people's heads (and more-importantly their checkbooks) expecting the asset bubble game to continue to work is idiotic.

Oh look, a deathbed confession!

A senior Democratic senator who helped write President Obama's health care law stunned administration officials Wednesday, saying openly he thinks it's headed for a "train wreck."

"I just see a huge train wreck coming down," Senate Finance Committee Chairman Max Baucus, D-Mont., told Obama's health care chief during a routine budget hearing that suddenly turned tense.

Naw, really?

You mean that the scams and frauds built into our health care system that have been going on for the last 30 years, if expanded by government force -- a literal gun up the nose of Americans both individually and in business -- will result in a "train wreck"?

Who could have foreseen that?  Why anyone who gave a damn, that's who.

It's not like people such as myself haven't been raising hell about this since before Obamacare was passed, pointing out exactly where the monopolist games were played and their utterly outrageous and destructive impact on America.

Oh no, you've been warned quite fairly Max. 

The truth is that Baucus, like the rest of these clowns, simply thought they could get away with their "friends" in the "medical industry" stealing 20%+ of everything produced in the nation on a permanent and ever-expanding basis.

That this was mathematically impossible and thus that the attempt would destroy American jobs and wreck both the economy and the Federal budget never crossed their pea-brained minds.

Oops.

How come we can't nail this evil woman for violating the Sherman Act?

Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.

Yep.  Time for handcuffs.  Why?

PHOENIX - Gov. Jan Brewer vetoed legislation Friday that would have allowed individuals to shop around for the best price on health-care needs, saying there are technical problems with the proposal.

The legislation by Sen. Nancy Barto, R-Phoenix, would have put hospitals and doctors in the same position as retailers: They would have to give customers an opportunity to learn what certain procedures will cost before they show up in a waiting room.

That would have included both a requirement for online posting and making a price list available on-site.

Yep.  A good law requiring that you have the right to know what something costs before you agree to it was vetoed by the Governor of Arizona.

Barto called the veto "an insult."

I say it ought to be a felony for all of the firms in Arizona to not post said prices, and all those who conspire to keep that from being part and parcel of your daily life in Arizona should be exposed to prosecution and imprisonment for their part in that.

This now includes Governor Brewer.

And listen to this -- the governor's press aide admitted that one of the reasons for the veto was in fact a deliberate decision to fix prices!

Gubernatorial press aide Matthew Benson said the veto is totally unrelated to Barto's opposition to the Medicaid plan. He said there were "technical concerns."

Among those, Benson said, is that hospitals do not have one flat rate they charge for procedures. He said different charges apply depending on whether the patient is paying his or her own bill, has coverage from an insurance company that has negotiated a discount or is a Medicaid patient.

There you have it -- a raw admission that hospitals screw people "at will" -- their charges vary not on the complexity or procedure performed but rather simply on how you pay and this is part of how they engage in that price-fixing.

We the people need to demand handcuffs.

There have been a number of comments on my previous articles related ot the Health Care scam and more than a few private emails I've received trying to cast doctors as "victims" of the medical cost-push cartel scams that run through the entire industry.

Don't fall for the Marcus Welby crap.

Nobody who is part and parcel on a willing basis to an utterly-unsustainable system should be excused, just as you cannot excuse any of the officers and directors of a big bank.

The next generation of U.S. physicians is being saddled with record debt amid a looming shortage of doctors needed to cope with a rising elderly population. The burgeoning debt burden may be turning students away from primary care, which pays about $200,000 a year, toward more lucrative specialties and scaring off low-income and minority students fearful of taking on big loans.

Median tuition and fees at private medical schools was $50,309 in the 2012-2013 academic year, more than 16 times the cost when Moy’s father became a doctor. The median-education debt for 2012 medical-school graduates was $170,000, including loans taken out for undergraduate studies and excluding interest. That compares with an average $13,469 in 1978, said Jay Youngclaus, co-author of a February 2013 report on medical school debt.

Gee, I wonder why medical costs have gone up so much?  It's all the tort bar and insurance companys' fault, right?  None of it has anything to do with an educational debt load for the average medical school student that has gone up by a factor of 10 since 1978, right?

Like hell.

Being a doctor used to be a middle-class profession.  A primary-care physician -- a generalist, in short -- is not a brain surgeon.  

Since when is $200,000 a "middle-class" income when the median family income in this nation is about $50,000?

It's not, in short.

Record numbers of students still want to become doctors. First-time applicants to U.S. medical schools rose to 33,772 in 2012 from 24,884 a decade earlier, according to AAMC. New enrollment at U.S. medical schools grew 1.5 percent to 19,517 students, the highest ever.

Of course they do. We have a cartel in the country in the form of the Medical System and if you can get inside it you too can skim off your piece of the pie, and the best part of it is that you get to scare people into paying you by using their fear of death as a cudgel.

No, I will not excuse doctors.  I will instead excoriate them and point directly to the Sherman Act for what, in my opinion, they should face:

Every person who shall monopolize, or attempt to monopolize, or combine or conspire with any other person or persons, to monopolize any part of the trade or commerce among the several States, or with foreign nations, shall be deemed guilty of a felony, and, on conviction thereof, shall be punished by fine not exceeding $100,000,000 if a corporation, or, if any other person, $1,000,000, or by imprisonment not exceeding 10 years, or by both said punishments, in the discretion of the court.