It is time to put the patient back in control of their health care. Over seventy percent of Americans’ health care is paid for by a third party, either by the person’s employer or by the government through Medicare, Medicaid, Obamacare, and the Veterans Administration. This fact, coupled with the lack of price transparency and competition among providers and hospitals, isolates patients from the true cost of health care and limits the ability of patients to make their own health care decisions.
There are solutions, however, that put patients in charge of their own health dollars and their own health care decisions.
Dr. Roger Stark is a visiting fellow with Mountain States Policy Center, an independent research organization based in Idaho, Montana, Eastern Washington and Wyoming. Online at mountainstatespolicy.org. A retired surgeon, Dr. Stark has authored three books including “Healthcare Policy Simplified: Understanding a Complex Issue,” and “The Patient-Centered Solution: Our Health Care Crisis, How It Happened, and How We Can Fix It.”