I’m sure there’s scope to reduce costs (though e.g. if part of the problem is that Japanese medical professionals are paid much less than American ones, reducing those costs a lot would be really difficult). What I’m questioning is the assumption that what needs doing to get the costs down is to cut regulation. It might be—some regulation is very harmful—but the comparison with Japan points, if anything, exactly the other way. And I am as wary of the assumption that the solution to “X is really expensive” is “deregulate X” as I am of the opposite assumption that the solution is “put regulation in place demanding that X be cheap”.
I’m sure there’s scope to reduce costs (though e.g. if part of the problem is that Japanese medical professionals are paid much less than American ones, reducing those costs a lot would be really difficult). What I’m questioning is the assumption that what needs doing to get the costs down is to cut regulation. It might be—some regulation is very harmful—but the comparison with Japan points, if anything, exactly the other way. And I am as wary of the assumption that the solution to “X is really expensive” is “deregulate X” as I am of the opposite assumption that the solution is “put regulation in place demanding that X be cheap”.