[ChuckMcM]

When I think of the federal government 'fixing' health care, this is the sort of thing I think they can fix. Not single payer, not mandatory coverage, just good enforcement of anti-competitive practices, ways to enable innovation with patient consent Etc.

[tyree732]

Are you so sure about that? excuse-me's comment, right above yours in my view, talks about how the government has anti-competitive arrangements with big military contractors. How would the situation be different with healthcare?

[ChuckMcM]

Yes. I am sure that Congress could propose laws that prevented anti-competitive market practices with regard to health-care and that this would mitigate some of the problems we currently have with the health care system. I claim that doing so is a more effective way, or at least more efficient in terms of relative improvement, of improving health care. This claim is of course made relative to the existing efforts in the US of trying to regulate the insurance industry around health care.

[Symmetry]

I think the fix in this case would be removing the laws that encourage anti-competitive arrangements.

[tyree732]

How is the government incentivized in any way to do that? Politicians in the US receive substantial campaign contributions from established military suppliers who would stand to lose a lot from said laws. I don't see any rallying cries from the public about the competitiveness of supply arrangements government entities currently have.

[Symmetry]

Basically this is one of those areas where we can expect positive change iff there's a lot of public outcry. Sometimes the political stars align and we get actual reforms, but its not anything that we should expect that politicians would ever get up to on their own.