The healthcare system in the US clearly has nothing to do with free markets considering how unbelievably opaque and regulated everything is.
- SNAP / EBT / Foodstamps for people making so little money. Add onto that, Food banks.
- Farm subsidies for many cheap foodstuffs (Corn) causing massive cheap, albeit junk food that can sustain.
- I can literally grow food in the ground for "free", put it in mason jars and save my food for a year. I can't open a fresh can of broken-arm at the fixed cost.
- Food is fungible, if I'm hungry, I can wait 2, 3, 8+ hours to eat, or have a quick snack until meal time. It's not like I need a Big Mac infusion in the next 10 seconds or else I'll die from lack of special sauce.
- You have many options of food. You can eat Soylent, rice&beans, or steak for every meal at various price points. You don't really get an ala carte when it comes to Chemotherapy.
- You can always eat monkey pellets [1]
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/moreplatesmoredates/comments/qbfkfl...
This is true only in an extremely pedantic, unrealistic kinda way. If it was easy/free everyone would be growing all their own food.
Within 5 miles, I have at least 10 different grocery stores to shop at. Each will carry hundreds of products at less than $10 each. Not only do I have tons of choices, but the pricing is completely transparent. And that's just grocery stores. Add restaurants (Both sit-down restaurants and fast food), and that number quickly reaches over 100 within a 5-mile radius.
If I'm in a medical emergency and someone dials 911, I'm likely just being brought to the nearest hospital. I have zero choice in the matter, and will come out with whatever bill they want to charge me.
Even in non-emergencies, good luck shopping on price. Doctor offices don't like giving that out.
There's competition in the food market, but not healthcare.
Where ad hominem is a hallmark of good faith discussion.
> Within 5 miles, I have at least 10 different grocery stores to shop at. Each will carry hundreds of products at less than $10 each. Not only do I have tons of choices, but the pricing is completely transparent. And that's just grocery stores. Add restaurants (Both sit-down restaurants and fast food), and that number quickly reaches over 100 within a 5-mile radius.
This makes sense if you're aware of the fact that each human being eats three meals per day.
> If I'm in a medical emergency and someone dials 911, I'm likely just being brought to the nearest hospital. I have zero choice in the matter, and will come out with whatever bill they want to charge me. Even in non-emergencies, good luck shopping on price. Doctor offices don't like giving that out.
I clearly conceded the point that you can't exit the healthcare market.
> There's competition in the food market, but not healthcare.
Are you under the impression that I disagree with this statement? Consider reading (and, ideally, understanding) the thread in which you are participating prior to commenting.
I challenge you to find the price of a cancer treatment regime protocol in the United States. I will bet you any amount of money you care to wager that no US provider exists anywhere that will give you a price quote for lung cancer treatment in writing anytime before that treatment is provided.
And even IF you could, that only covers the cases where you are still have enough health and mind to rationally evaluate the prices. If you've been in a car accident and are dragged unconscious and bleeding into the ER, you can't shop around, even if they DID give you a price, which they certainly won't until you're already treated.
With respect to ER care, it does seem impossible to 'shop around', but these cases make up a minority of healthcare expenditures. Perhaps government should cover these cases (though this could have horrible incentive problems), or this type of insurance should be separated from the rest, and somehow priced clearly and in advance (according to level of care) by a cartel arrangement or state regulated rates.
Believe it or not, it would be way easier politically to implement Medicare For All than to do piecemeal reforms.
I hear this argument, but I don't buy it. What's the incentive exactly?
That people will hurt themselves, so they can go to the ER for free? That's nonsense. Nobody wants to get hurt, nobody wants to get sick, getting hurt or getting sick is not a good. The fact that they don't have to pay to "get hurt" isn't an incentive. Perhaps a few people feel this way and are insane, but those people probably need to get help at government expense either way, before the government ends up paying for them to be in prison or institutionalized anyway.
Ahem. Regulatory capture would like a word.
Free markets are the most efficient way for information to be transferred throughout the system.
Stricter campaign finance laws, ending revolving-door politics, etc.
But putting the blame on free markets seems like a mistake.
You can't on the one hand tout the "free market", while on the other complain that we don't have the "right" kind of governmental interference.
Even if you could square that circle, it still sounds disingenuous to argue that we could have the most efficient system if only we were to eliminate _thing that said system actively encourages_. The failure is baked into the game, my friend.
I don’t take such a libertarian view myself, by the way. Just pointing out that I don’t think you can pick apart the argument of the person you replied to in that way.
Markets exist by virtue of laws created by governments - property law being the primary example - expecting actors in a free market who aggregate enough wealth to affect those governments not to just strikes me as unrealistic. It reminds me a bit of gaming. Everyone agrees that in a competitive game the most fun part is early on before a 'meta' can be established. But of course that meta will always end up established and it's basically dumb to be mad at people for metagaming or to otherwise expect them not to.
I'd sign up for a significant increase in my taxes if the US system were replaced by the system that I experienced in Belgium for the first 30 years of my life.
And by successfully, I mean: everybody, irrespective of income or status, can expect to get the care they need.
If it was as easy as paying out way out of the problem we'd have done it already.
Nobody is claiming that the US should copy the system of some specific country verbatim. But it's equally dumb to dismiss the common traits of these other systems, and say "nah, let's do just the opposite."
Well you literally said "I'd sign up for a significant increase in my taxes if the US system were replaced by the system that I experienced in Belgium for the first 30 years of my life" so why don't you tell me how that was supposed to be interpreted?
America shares a very long border with a nation with a functional healthcare system and we generally prefer to compare to them.
What all those systems have in common is that they are a mix of free market and strong regulation. The opposite of "let's do even more free market than what we have now."
I don't know how the US can get there. It's probably impossible, just like school shootings and the "No Way To Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens" argument.
Would such a market allow NDAs?
What do you think of VC-funded "growth" companies that lose money for years while providing products/services at below cost? Is this a case of the free market working or of it being subverted?
The industry is an onion and in order to understand why it is the way it is today you need to peel back all of the layers that have been added by the govt over time and the unintended consequences of those.
[1] https://www.npr.org/2020/10/07/921287295/history-of-employer...