The problem with Free essential benefits

There's a lot going on with the health care bill. Right after President Trump took office people were criticizing Speaker Ryan like crazy for not repealing Obamacare right away as promised. Now they're criticizing him for not taking enough time. He's probably kicking himself for acceding to the pressure to take this job.

However, I think the conservatives who are resisting the present bill have a point about the essential health benefits idea. It is short sighted to have the concept that there are some medical care items that are so important that they should be exempted from any financial restrictions like deductibles.

Take colonoscopies for example. The socialist-thinker says that we want to encourage people to get colonoscopies so we should make them "free". So there's no misunderstanding I also strongly recommended to all my patients that they have screening colonoscopies. But colonoscopies are not free and making them "free" actually raises the price which we eventually pay indirectly. If colonoscopies are subject to the same deductible as every other procedure people will prefer to have theirs at the out-patient center instead of at the hospital where the price is much higher. And soon some enterprising person will set up a colonoscopy center where this screening procedure, which has become very routine, is done in large numbers very efficiently, perhaps even by trained PA's, and thereby really cut the price.

When colonoscopies are "free" such forces do not operate. When they are "free" they are a liability to third party payers who then regulate them so that we are told who can have them and how often.

I will not even mention the added cost of paying for the regulators, the administrators, the billers, the coders, the IT personnel, all the hangers on who are needed to make this procedure "free".

The same reasoning applies to all the other "essential benefits" that some wish to exempt from deductibles, things like pregnancy care, drug rehab, etc. Surely it is appropriate to help those who truly cannot pay, but why continue to push medical prices higher and higher by making things "free".