Ideally, we’d live in a world where a physician could say: option 1 costs $200 has a 99% effectiveness rate, and X side effects, option 2 costs $50 and has a 90% effectiveness rate and Y side effects.

Until we have both patients and physicians taking ownership for the costs and benefits of healthcare choices, we’re going to have more of the same good, but increasingly unaffordable healthcare in this country.

That is absolutely not what my experience experimenting has been. EVERY doctors office I (and others I know) have called were unable to tell me how much basic services cost. I applaud you and your office for having these answers but I’m afraid you are in the minority.

DEM, I am glad to see that you are honest about not feeling any moral obligation to your fellow human being; I do think, though, that you should think about that. Historically, it never leads anywhere good.

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Oh please. That’s not what I wrote in either case, I think you know it, and if you want to leave the thread by utterly misrepresenting what I wrote, your choice. I’m happy to engage in rational discussion, which I thought we were having, but at this point I think you’ve decided to depart company on that score. I rest you”ll remain secure in your moral superority.

DEM wrote: In the end, I love the logic here, stemming mostly from the policitcal left. They say we all have a fundamental “human” right to health insurance at others’ expense. But we don’t have a human right to choose what we want to drink and eat. Some bargain.

DEM, I am glad to see that you are honest about not feeling any moral obligation to your fellow human being; I do think, though, that you should think about that. Historically, it never leads anywhere good.
More importantly, I never framed anything in terms of pity or ethics. I framed it in terms of economics, in terms of cold rational self-interest (you want to lower health care costs, here’s a way to do that that won’t cost you). But you have your own higher moral plane; you object for moral, not necessarily economic, reasons. These reasons, however, aren’t concerned with empathy. It’s something to ponder.

I wanted to poke fun at that idea but it seems almost reasonable. If we’re modifying behavior through taxes why not just go directly for the desired result?