Medicare-for-all

Listen to “Coburn: Health Care Solutions Are Very Simple” on Spreaker.

Republican struggled and failed to overhaul Obamacare.  Many Democrats want the government to run health care entirely.  But former Oklahoma Sen. Tom Coburn says health care costs would plummet and choices would flourish if we simply bring transparency to the system.

A longtime doctor before entering the political arena, Coburn says patients would benefit enormously from price transparency and knowing the results that other patients have had from various providers.  He says all sides agree that health care costs consume 20 percent of the nation’s GDP, but he says there’s a much better way to address this than putting the government in charge of everything.

“We have multiple studies by reputable groups that said anywhere from $500 billion to a trillion dollars a years doesn’t help anybody get well and doesn’t prevent anybody from getting sick.  So how do you fix that?

“You fix that with what was proposed by the Trump administration, calling first for price transparency for everybody in health care.  Because once net prices are published, you’re going to have 100,000 people making apps to show people how to get the best deal.

“Once you have price transparency, then you’re going to have outcome transparency because what will happen is all the prices will settle down to the most competitive.  Then the differentiating factor will be, ‘What are your outcomes?  What’s your infection rate?  What’s your major complication rate?  What’s your average hospital stay for this?  What’s your re-operation rate?'”

“All of a sudden we will start buying health care like we buy everything else in the country,” said Coburn.

The fight for transparency won’t be easy.  Coburn says there are a lot of powerful entities who have incentive to keep the bloated system in place.

“Who’s opposed to that?  All the hospitals, all the big insurers, all the drug companies, all the pharmacy benefit managers, and everybody else that’s a middle man in health care that sucks money out but doesn’t add value,” said Coburn.

But is this just theory or are these ideas actually working somewhere? Listen to the full podcast as Coburn explains how price and outcome transparency is proving wildly successful in his home state.  He also explains why our education system is utterly failing the young people clamoring for government-run care.