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Comment by gph | Hacker News Reader

The article does raise an interesting point in that most people don't necessarily see food as an inalienable right that people shouldn't need to pay for.

But to counter that point our government has set up a system of farm subsidies and management to ensure affordable food is available to pretty much anyone... and even those who don't have the money get food stamps.

Seems like the government tries to do the same thing with the health sector, yet it still costs more than most people can reasonably afford. It seems like there are clear market pressures and competition in food production that drives the price down to a minimum. That does not seem to be the case with health care.

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Farm subsidies aren't a bad idea, either. There are advantages to retaining food production within your borders, and without them, you'd probably be importing a lot more of what you eat and there are security risks there. Food has downward pressure on pricing due to external markets, and subsidies address that.

Healthcare has no such external downward pressure on pricing. The vast majority are not going to import their medical care from Mexico, South America or Asia because it's expensive at home. If you as a government want to increase access by reducing prices on healthcare, you simplistically have two ~~options~~ (edit: methods). One, increase the supply side, more facilities, doctors, and critically, more training for those new doctors (that's a big bottleneck now, since residencies are almost all funded by medicare, and that limits how many med school slots can exist initially). Two, create a taxpayer funded single payer system - a monopsonist, who is by definition not a price taker. Realistically you need to implement both options, since #2 can only impose price up to some economic limits, and those limits are determined by #1 since the current health system can't actually service everyone without significant sacrifices around wait. If you implement #2 fully and #1 to the point where you have capacity to treat everyone that objectively needs care in a timely manner, then you've implemented a functioning right to health care.

Lots of economic handwaving in there for sure, but that's how you extend the farm subsidy parallel to healthcare, and realize it's much more complicated for healthcare.

First of all some people do think food is a right ! Second generally speaking all but the poorest can at least find some kind of food to purchase or get donated even if it's not perfect

For healthcare it's totally different with treatments costing thousands of of dollars plus, doctor visits out of the question without insurance for many (and even with) and monopolies on drugs and treatments contributing to vastly higher prices in the US than many other countries.

We may not have "death panels" but we definitely have insurance "no-men" aplenty (and high deductibles) to effectively deny people (especially the poor) decent care

This article is pretty wrong IMO there is no example in the US of "free-market" care to compare anything to.

There is no right to food in the US. But there sure as hell is in the majority of the world [0]. It is widely agreed that you shouldn't need to pay for the minimum amount of food to survive, the rest is gravy.

As for the way costs are different in the health sector :-

With food it is a very simple supply demand structure with limited demand and low and predictable skill required for supply.

Health has a near unlimited demand, high and unpredictable skill is required for supply.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_to_food

I thought that was an interesting point as well. I'm having trouble coming up w/ full argument but one point is that there's huge differences btwn food and healthcare.

When you only have $20 to spend on food for the week, you don't need to go to the government for help. You can cook and eat rice and beans all week. That's what I did in college.

The difference w/ healthcare is there's no rice and beans of cancer treatment or ER visits. People aren't regularly given a decision between death and going to a fancy restaurant.

See my reply to the same comment. And I think the rice and beans of medical treatment is to pour some 'tussin on it.

It's pretty easy to institute the life changes needed for you to go from not having enough food to survive on a daily basis to having enough to survive.

You can't go from not having enough to treat cancer to having enough to treat cancer easily or ever in many cases. This is like saying FEMA should be a for profit institution. Getting cancer is no different than having a tornado level your home. No amount of picking yourself up by the bootstraps will get you back on track. This is why we have a social safety net. Healthcare is no different.

I would say the government is doing something similar, but still mostly different. The overwhelming majority of food decisions still involve end users economizing on resources and providing quick feedback, etc. People mostly understand what they can do to reduce their food costs, and what the tradeoffs are, and obviously-inefficient providers are quickly spotted and competed away.

While not some kind of "pure" free market, it retains the basic form of one, where the government adjustments are the exception, not the rule.

In contrast, the government's role in health care is pretty much defining the system, and you don't have most of the market mechanisms that exist in health care: where people are "doing it wrong", it's not obvious at all, but hidden behind various layers people just accept as given.

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