Shouldn’t competition eliminate over billing? It doesn’t because there isn’t much competition due to lack of supply of doctors.
Why is there a lack of supply of doctors? Because the ama deliberately lobbied congress to decrease available residency.
Why is there a lack of supply of doctors? Because the ama deliberately lobbied congress to decrease available residency.
Pick any major city in the US and tell me how an ordinary consumer can compare prices for a simple procedure like a chest xray. It’s not possible. Now how does one shop around for a cancer doctor or an ER visit?
Medicine is not a classical marketplace. Homo economicus doesn’t play his part.
There’s not enough supply. Not enough competition such that all doctors can pull off this bs.
You sound like one of those Malthusian cultists. :P
Fortunately for us all, Thomas Robert Malthus was wrong in 1798 or none of us would be here today. That he would continue to be wrong today should be no surprise. Relevant criticism of his rather gloomy take on population growth abounds: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malthusianism#Criticism
It seems to me like he didn't factor in the effects of the development and widespread application of new technologies to old problems.
And no, I am not wromg. Houston has no zoning and was able to keep growth going and build lots of new houses. Of course they did so in a flood plain. Because growth cultists are willing to sacrifice everything, even lives for growth to continue just a little longer no matter the cost.
Setting your spelling aside for the moment... You haven't said anything Malthus didn't say in 1798.
I think it's fair to say standards of living have increased since.
>standards of living have increased since
Everywhere or just in some places? There are more slaves today than in malthuses time.
People usually cite the green revolution as the refutation of malthus. I see it as an engineering tradeoff. Every 2nd order effect was sacrificed for a single KPI. An economist would call them unpriced negative externalities.
He absolutely wrote about land use and the planning thereof.
> There are more slaves today than in malthuses time.
By total number of individuals, maybe (though ChatGPT seems to think otherwise). By percentage of world population, not even close.
> I see it as an engineering tradeoff.
I see some of that. I see both negative feedback loops and virtuous cycles of positive feedback. Constructive and destructive interference. I also see an incredible explosion of education, information availability, flexible automated manufacturing, advanced material sciences, driving of food calories toward $0, lifting of disease which robbed humanity of unfathomable time and energy, and on and on. I see world solar panel production supplying world electric demand sometime in the 2030s. I see us getting better at regenerative agriculture. Mars has as much land area as Earth, and I think we can go farther if we put our minds to it.
There literally aren't limits. Except the ones we place on ourselves.
This is the most delusional take I've ever seen. Limitations are built into the universe as entropy. No limits is only a locality mirage that exists only because you don't live long enough to see the limit get hit.
That being said air is free because it's a mirage, the sun powers plants and animals to continuously recycle it but once that source runs out then we hit a limit. As a local phenomena we can treat air as if it's free even though it's not.
But air is like one of the few things that are like this. The next thing, water, people pay for water. And people pay for water because there is a limit on it. On top of that the fact that we pay for everything else means that even as a local phenomena there are limits. If you think humanity has been on a continuous quest of breaking barriers and jumping over limitations, that's false. All humanity has been doing is optimization. Best utilizing what we already have to delay the impending termination of when humans hit the final limit.
> And people pay for water because there is a limit on it.
Both exist in massive quantity in the asteroid belt. Europa has larger oceans than Earth. Your personal financial limitations aside, I was talking about what the human race can accomplish as a whole when we set our minds to it.
> All humanity has been doing is optimization. Best utilizing what we already have to delay the impending termination of when humans hit the final limit.
Final limit? Never heard of it. Is that a band name? The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kardashev_scale considers a type III civilization capturing and using all of the energy emitted by an entire galaxy. And folks have proposed larger more capable civilizations yet.
Then move to europa. I for one will stay here and enjoy the abundance of n-1.
I'm sure humans or something descended from us will, in time.
> I for one will stay here
Looks like your limits are self-imposed after all.
So for all intents and purposes, water is limited for you and your limited life time.
UK national railway is sort of free market. The state runs the network, sells the tickets and decides the routes, but provides are chosen in open tenders - lowest price wins. They get paid for operating the route for the state-owned network.
But it then usually turns out that the only operator who can bid on the new tender for the route is the existing one. After all, they have a ready supply of trains meeting the technical spec! And if, say, the drivers go on strike demanding yet another pay rise, the providers shrug their arms and ask the state for a top up. After all, the state doesn't have an alternative either.
Free markets lead to maximizing corporate profits, but it's not a given that these correlate to a positive outcome for the society.
Doctors are not part of a free market. Supply is regulated like a cartel.
Network Rail - the gov owned infrastructure, rails etc.
Rolling Stock - privately owned trains
Operators - lease rolling stock, employ staff, sell tickets
The problem we have is that the operators are barely profitable so always cutting quality/service because there is this other layer of private rolling stock company acting as landlords which are sucking all the profit out.
We have a similar problem with energy. There are the customer facing providers which are basically a brand and a call centre which are selling the power from energy generation companies. When they get trapped in some bad contract as a gamble on the energy market, they go bust.
It feels like a deliberate con that the customer facing providers, the brands the public knows about, keep going bust and earn public ire from their crap services but they are really scapegoats for a less visible layer of private company which are doing the real profiteering as landlords.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physicians_in_the_United_State....
Depending on where you live, it can take months to see a specialist.