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Comment by cannonedhamster | Hacker News Reader

Right, a lack of regulations is why things are expensive. Deregulating has worked so well as a cap on prices for internet, mobile, finance, etc. If only we'd let the free market Porcupine fairy handle everything it would be better. You completely left out that Republican Congress specifically denied Medicare the ability to bring in cheaper drugs from other countries and isn't allowed to negotiate drug prices, oh and they've underfunded every single regulatory agency for ages to be able to claim government doesn't work. Why is it that other countries can somehow pay more for the same or better care of their public options and we don't. I can promise you it's not that they are less regulated in Europe. You're never going to have a cheaper private option with a profit motive on anything versus an option that doesn't require a profit motive.

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> Right, a lack of regulations is why things are expensive.

You might guess right now that I will argue the exact opposite point.

> ou completely left out that Republican Congress specifically denied Medicare the ability to bring in cheaper drugs from other countries and isn't allowed to negotiate drug prices, oh and they've underfunded every single regulatory agency for ages to be able to claim government doesn't work.

Aren't you taking into the calculations that socialized medicine will have the same political risks?

> Why is it that other countries can somehow pay more for the same or better care of their public options and we don't.

The U.S. has a specific regulatory framework that is chaoticly expensive. Regulatory capture is grotesque in the healthcare market, and you can read up what health economists say if you want details. You could aim to do a healthcare reform that just plain reduces the cost of care by 10, 20% easily by just doing less as a government.

> You're never going to have a cheaper private option with a profit motive on anything versus an option that doesn't require a profit motive.

1) Medicare is also more expensive than other countries socialized systems 2) Some of the biggest insurance companies are non-profits 3) The combined market value of the top insurance companies is less than half the yearly Medicare budget.

Without a strong profit motive would companies still have much incentive to pour 100s of millions of dollars into R&D for new drugs and treatments though? How much progress in healthcare is driven by the fact there’s a lot of money to be made, and how much does the US’s high prices basically subsidize cheaper healthcare for the rest of the world?

That is a sub-problem of the pharma industry, that while significant (15% of healthcare spending) is not the same debate as banning private insurance.

What people dont get is that private insurance fiercely competes to lower costs, while the government's only effective mechanism is to not pay anything at all. Socialized medicine in the us would usher a new era of Cash pay.

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