undefined | Better HN

0 pointsjoe_the_user15y ago0 comments

What explains the rapid and sustained rise in costs?

Health care might have cost thirty years ago but not the same degree.

Further, Health care is approaching twenty percent of GDP where once is was less than five. Wouldn't that be large factor in costs? And doesn't that seem a tad less than necessary?

0 comments

3 comments · 1 top-level

Groxx15y ago· 2 in thread

Part of the rapid and sustained rise in costs comes from that a) more things are being treated that existed before but got no treatment, and b) more availability of new drugs, because we're now able to create ones which were impossible / inconceivable back when costs were 5%.

Would you rather go back to colloidal silver someone sold you as a wonder-drug out of the back of their wagon? Or use the significantly more tested drugs the (fairly problematic and corrupt) FDA lets through? Antidepression drugs, for all their overprescribing (IMO, that's a debate for elsewhere), didn't exist before, and psychotherapy was largely viewed as in the realm of quackery and going to one was considered shameful (still is, but not as much).

Not that it accounts for all of the change. Or even a large portion. Just that the rise isn't entirely due to waste.

joe_the_userOP15y ago

Not that it accounts for all of the change. Or even a large portion.

Then what is your argument??

Just that the rise isn't entirely due to waste.

No one argued that.

Even the most egregious health insurance policy abuses are generally something more than waste. Often, there's been an effort to enhance "choice" and "responsibility" but generally without understand that the average person simply has limited horizon for navigating such things.

It's not mere waste, it's mere corruption but a combination of multiple "perverse incentives" - effort to fuse government and private industry which aim for the best of all possible worlds but end in the worst.

"It begins with a blessing, it ends with a curse. Making life easy by making it worse 'My mask is my master', the trumpeter weeps But his voice is so weak, as he speaks from his sleep" Soft Machine

We face a challenging world today...

Groxx15y ago

Not a whole lot of an argument, admittedly. A bit of a jump to a conclusion based on your 5% starting point, which was in a very different world than today. Since the rest of the G8 seems to be around 10-ish%, start comparing there; I'm not sure why America is so much higher than that, but higher than 5% is pretty easy to account for.

Not that 10% is the best it can be, but I find it unlikely to go significantly lower as long as people refuse to do what's best for themselves, health-wise. ie, ever. (maybe Americans are worse at preventing health problems? no idea, just musing)

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse