Wait, what? Does that mean they can just take your money and reject your request to cover treatment until you die even if you had every right to do so?
https://www.propublica.org/article/blue-cross-proton-therapy...
And talking about a "free" market is a red herring. There's no reason to believe that the current industry actually wishes to converge on uniform prices with upfront transparency - they could just start publishing such prices at any time currently, but rather continue to benefit from heavy price discrimination. So getting to a functioning healthcare market would actually take a lot of regulation that actively undoes the cancerous behemoth that's been slowly grown. Try asking any doctor how much something might cost and most of the time they will scoff - the rejection of any market dynamics has become pervasive by the entire system.
Also to have an actual free market we'd need to eliminate things like mandatory pharmaceutical prescriptions and patents, which there is unfortunately very little support for doing.
Adam Smith himself noted that capitalists seek rent. That doesn't mean that capitalism is all bad. The healthcare industry almost certainly does not want a free market, but so what, it's about whether the state makes it so there's a free market anyways or else makes deals with the industry it ought to regulate.
Regulatory capture is a thing, a very real thing, and a very big deal.
> Also to have an actual free market we'd need to eliminate things like mandatory pharmaceutical prescriptions and patents, which there is unfortunately very little support for doing.
Patents are not the problem. Though I'd be happy to see patent terms shortened, especially for software patents.
Once the health "insurance" cartels are put out of business, providers are legally required to publish uniform price schedules and ahead of time quotes, pharmaceuticals can be freely bought across borders, mandatory prescriptions are eliminated, residencies are funded privately, etc, then maybe there is a chance at a freed market fostering a functioning market. But not one step before then.
Also go listen to one of the latest episodes of Odd Lots where they interview Lena Khan about anti-trust. Private equity has been rolling up medical companies for decades, essentially doing things like buying up all the anesthesiology clinics in an area so they can jack up prices. Some of the bloat is due to regulations but a lot of the bloat is due to over-financialized bullshit like private equity buying up providers.
Then it takes hours on the phone for every prescription to finally get one approved. Rinse and repeat every 3 months.
Wonder if we’re “beneficiaries” of the AI revolution. Or just an “if” statement triggering off a random number.
Basically I'm just going back to cash pay and negotiation for everything either before the visit, or at the facility. Then using alternatives to health insurance for the original purpose of insurance (lol), to cover unexpected events.
For some reason health insurances and hospitals can get away with practices that no other business would get away with. They can commit fraud and when they get caught, all they have to do is to say "oops" and fix the mistake. No other consequences. It's pretty crazy