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What are other ways to address healthcare that dont have to do with obamacare or the public option?

Obviously there are problems with out healthcare system, yet I knwo for sure that obamacare and the public option wont solve it. Bringing down prices of premiums is obviously a better way to address the situation, but what are some ways of doing it that dont involve gov't run programs?

Public Comments

1. If they would let the health insurance companies work across state lines, that would be the start of competitive bidding for our business, and probably result in lower prices. It is a well known fact that anytime the government gets involved, prices will escalate and service will suffer.
2. The biggest complaint about the current medical care situation is "It costs too much." Yet one looks in vain for anything in the pending legislation that will lower those costs. One of the biggest reasons for higher medical costs is that somebody else is paying those costs, whether an insurance company or the government. What is the politicians' answer? To have more costs paid by insurance companies and the government. Back when the "single payer" was the patient, people were more selective in what they spent their own money on. You went to a doctor when you had a broken leg but not necessarily every time you had the sniffles or a skin rash. But, when someone else is paying, that is when medical care gets over-used — and bureaucratic rationing is then imposed, to replace self-rationing. Money is just one of the costs of people seeking more medical care than they would if they were paying for it with their own money. Both waiting lines and waiting lists grow longer when people with sniffles and minor skin rashes take up the time of doctors, while people with cancer are waiting. In country after country, the original estimates of government medical care costs almost always turn out to be gross under-estimates of what it ultimately turns out to cost. Even when the estimates are done honestly, they are based on how much medical care people use when they are paying for it themselves. But having someone else pay for medical care virtually guarantees that a lot more of it will be used. Nothing would lower costs more than having each patient pay those costs. And nothing is less likely to happen. One of the big costs that have actually forced some hospitals to close is the federal mandate that hospitals treat everyone who comes to an emergency room, whether they pay or not. But those who talk about "bringing down the cost of medical care" are not about to repeal that mandate. Often they want to add more mandates. It is a great political game, but it does nothing to lower medical costs. Politicians who want a government monopoly on health insurance can easily get it, just by making it impossible for private insurance companies to charge enough to cover the costs mandated by politicians. The "public option" will then be the only option — which is to say, we will no longer have any real option. o_O