Good discussion of Maryland’s successful all-payer rate setting approach that keeps their health care prices down in this WonkTalk episode with Sarah Kliff and Ezra Klein, starting at around the 6:00 mark. The idea is to have state government require hospitals to charge one price to everybody for each of their services. Medicaid, Medicare, private insurers and uninsured people coming in off the street all pay the same price for each service. That’s not how it works now, and it’s one reason why our prices are so high, and Maryland’s are so low.
Whichever Democratic candidate for Governor takes up this position is automatically in the running for the Keystone Politics endorsement, whatever that’s worth.
