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Comment by johngalt | Hacker News Reader

Taking everything this article says at 100% face value:

1. You will get expensively sick when you get old

2. Insurance carrier will try to kick you out and not pay for hospital stays.

If getting old and having $500k operations are certain for everyone, then wouldn't a better bet be for everyone to save their money? If all of this is a certainty why have the insurance as the middle man? Save your own money, and then don't deny yourself coverage.

More realistically, what alternatives exist? There is nothing that changes the cost of the expensive operation. A single payer NHS doesn't change the amount of money operations cost.

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A single payer NHS actually does change the overall cost of healthcare: the UK pays about half as much per person as the US does for its healthcare system as a whole with no noticeable difference in measured effects.

The reason is simply market forces: people import drugs to the US from Canada because the power of single payer there changes what pharmaceutical companies can charge Canadians for drugs. The UK pays less for drugs, doctors, the whole shebang. Operations are cheaper in the UK and Canada (not to mention the rest of the world, which is more extreme in general), period.

The takehome point is simple: pretending that consumers must be price-takers for any good as vital as healthcare entitles producers to arbitrary profit. I hope not to spend all my savings on healthcare and my best hope is to get some kind of market power, be that from an insurance company or the government.

I don't believe adding more layers of bureaucracy between me and the person/company providing my care will ever result in better treatment net.

Countries that do use the Walmart approach to healthcare are piggybacking on innovations that wouldn't happen otherwise. Pfizer may not fund a new drug if every government in the world thinks it should sell at 10% above costs.

Additionaly there are other regional differences in pricing between the US/UK. A better comparsion would be the performance of the federal health programs we have now. What kind of treatment are patients at the VA hospitals getting?

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