Subject: Re: Trump To Allow Crypto In 401K's...
That's great, since no one has.

But hasn't that been your argument? Since markets are good and are capable of functioning for most goods, then surely they're good and capable of functioning for medical services? Rather than directly respond to my observations about health care markets, you keep pointing to things like hundreds of years of other markets or millions of other products. So if you're not claiming that medical services markets are functionally similar to typical markets, why do you keep doing that?

It will make a difference by merely exposing misaligned value propositions and highlighting inefficiencies.

Why? The people who actually pay for health care services - the insurers - are extremely aware of all of these cost differences and varying charges. That information is already extremely well known to all the people who actually make the purchasing/reimbursement decisions. It's already exposed to all the market participants who would act on it. So what difference would it make to additionally expose that information to patients, who are never going to act on it (they don't pay the prices) and are not going to invest any resources into learning about them?

And there's a growing pile of literature out there with studies galore...

Again, that study shows exactly what I'm telling you! Look at the passage you cite: they're talking about drugs (a fungible physical item whose characteristics and quality do not vary from provider to provider) among high-deductible plans (where consumers are directly paying their own costs rather than relying on third-party payment) where there is little to no information acquisition costs (patients know exactly what the service is and don't have to have any medical expertise to know whether there might be additional procedures or costs associated with getting it). And guess what? It's already very easy for consumers to obtain that information. If you have a scrip for a drug, you can call around to various pharmacies and they'll tell you exactly what they would charge you to buy it if you're paying for it yourself.

That's not where there's any existing problems with pricing transparency. The projections and estimations and speculations that are mentioned in the report you cited, trying to apply estimates of cost savings due to price availability in other markets to those for medical services, are not going to work for the types of medical services that make up the overwhelming majority of U.S. health expenditures. Because those services are paid for by insurance, and therefore will be almost entirely unaffected by pricing information given to the patient.