Who's to blame for high health care costs? Lazy Americans!

The author says high health care costs in the US are due to a lazy, greedy, entitled public who can't be bothered with cost comparisons and who mysteriously love to stick it to health insurance companies.

But while there are a few worthwhile nuggets here (broader behavioral issues play a role in "wasted" resources, and Americans are much more disdainful of or hostile to health insurance companies than, say, auto insurance providers), Conover seems more than happy to simply pitch the "American consumer" under the bus (where she will be responsible for a careful analysis of the best hospital the EMTs should trundle her to).

Two arguments in particular jar:  First, when people are sick or in pain, or when their loved ones are, that's not the moment for quiet judgment about relative expenses. Is an MRI much more expensive than a CT scan?  Is it any more effective?  The latter is the question that people will tend to ask, if they ask any at all.  It's a matter of survival, much moreso than other insurance providers are involved in. 

Americans do make quiet, careful, cost-oriented decisions regarding health care spending — when choosing between coverage plans from an employer, or when looking at some anticipated major cost that insurance won't cover.  But Conover's nostalgia for days when patients and doctors dealt with each other on a cash basis so consumers literally counted every penny are gone for a wide variety of reasons; health insurance controls fundamental access to medical care, not convenient cost responsibility avoidance.

This leads to the argument that Americans are more hostile to health insurers, which is accurate, but begs the issue of why.  Conover claims it's laziness and selfishness, abetted by the "chattering classes" and a zany Obama administration that passed the ACA instead of cutting Medicare.  How convenient.  But the hostility toward health insurers is fundamentally founded on health coverage being much more pervasive in our lives than house or auto insurance.  Most people can go years without any sort of house insurance claim (though when they have to file one, they want it handled quickly and compassionately).  Ditto for auto insurance, and even there it's purely a financial transaction ("I paid premiums; you pay for repairing my car.")

Health insurance is fundamentally different: something people (who have it) draw upon frequently, and usually at a time when there's significant emotion involved because of disablement, suffering, and Not Feeling Well. And frequent encounters with the for-profit health insurance industry flies directly in the face of what is sought after — treatment and payment restrictions based, not on what is effective or helpful, but on what will keep hold of maximum margin for the insurer. Anyone who's spent time on the phone begging an insurance company to cover a treatment that seems necessary and is recommended by a doctor is not being a vengeful spendthrift but is seeing the very real and adversarial nature of our private insurance industry, that isn't interested in wise consumer spending but in maximizing shareholder profit.

Reshared post from +George Wiman

Chris Conover, corporate shill, 'splains why you are responsible for the high cost of health care – you don't comparison shop! Because, you know, health care pricing is so transparent, and different health institutions share information so well, and because buying medical tests when you are sick is ever so practical…