>>It's inconceivable to me that those nubile young pharma reps whom the MD's whisk into their offices while paying patients wait are there to discuss the latest advances in nuclear chemistry.

Nubile pharma reps visit doctors all over the First World, so your chosen narrative does not explain uniquely massive US costs. Unless your view is that US doctors, over 33% of whom are now female according to Kaiser, are uniquely susceptible to nubile charms? Sorry but your "common sense" contains truth, but not an explanation.

>>Do you think it's a coincidence that MD's never argue with me about how I should be taking over the counter drugs, but go on nonstop about how I should be taking high priced meds that make billions for big pharma?

Depends what the drug is and why you need it. Of course it's science to disconnect inflated US pharma prices from clinical need. If you want to see the opposite end of this pendulum, check out Pharmac in NZ. US regulators abhor Pharmac and its practice of tendering for single suppliers of equivalent drugs for 3 years at a time which drives intense competition. The reason why is the start of the reason why things are so expensive in the US.

JR>For this to be true you'd need to demonstrate bumper income increases for providers.
>>No, I really don't.
>>Common sense rules.
>>-Given today's tech, how can a 15 minute X-Ray possibly cost $1,500?
>>20 years ago, nurses and MD's spent hours writing medical records by hand. Now they're digitally assisted.
>>Do you really want to get into a discussion of what spending a day in the hospital costs now vs 20 years ago?

Just for clarity, you're not just paying to have an X-Ray taken, you're also paying for an opinion from a radiologist (MD specializing in interpretation of xrays and scans) plus the power to sue him/her for millions if things turn sour and you can find a mercenary colleague to disagree with the opinion. Not that this fully justifies the $1.5K price for a plain xray- which is actually cheap for the US, fwiw.

Apart from that: do I want to argue with "it's obvious" and anecdote? Not particularly. Especially when spending a day in a hospital today, is very different from 20 years ago. My final point would be that "common sense" effort to reduce costs, e.g. by introducing physician assistants, automation or EHR (electronic health records) often leads to increased costs. The jury is still out on whether Obamacare's massive subsidy of electronic records is a time-saver, neutral or a slow-down: my own anecdote is trying unsuccessfully to persuade US physicians not to copy and paste information from elsewhere in the record to create their own mini-records for future efficiency and I'm participating in a study at non-US St Elsewhere that concludes that EHR means one fewer patient can be seen per clinic session. Sometimes common sense causes more harm than it helps.