Interestingly, we already discovered a mechanism for drastically reducing the cost of healthcare back in 1986. It's a way of crowdsourcing the problem called
high copays. Basically, you have to pay out of pocket for 90% of your health care up to a (high) cap.
It turns out that patients are very good at figuring out which health care will improve health and which won't - the high copay group had no statistically significant difference in health from the low copay group, and spent about 30% less money. What a crazy magic bullet, huh?
http://www.rand.org/health/projects/hie.html
We ran a directionally similar experiment in 2008, and got much the same result: low copayment causes people to consume a lot more medicine, but with no objectively measurable improvement in health. (Subjectively, people with insurance feel healthier even if they never go to the doctor.)
https://www.nber.org/oregon/
In both cases we ignored the result because we don't like it.
It turns out that patients are very good at figuring out which health care will improve health and which won't - the high copay group had no statistically significant difference in health from the low copay group, and spent about 30% less money. What a crazy magic bullet, huh?
http://www.rand.org/health/projects/hie.html
We ran a directionally similar experiment in 2008, and got much the same result: low copayment causes people to consume a lot more medicine, but with no objectively measurable improvement in health. (Subjectively, people with insurance feel healthier even if they never go to the doctor.)
https://www.nber.org/oregon/
In both cases we ignored the result because we don't like it.