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0 pointsiwwr15y ago0 comments

The point being? Sorry if I'm being dense, but no market is truly elastic.

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3 comments · 1 top-level

danssig15y ago· 2 in thread

Not true. I don't have to buy a smart phone, for example. I can live a wonderfully productive life with a normal cell phone. This means the price we see for a smart phone tracks very close to its value. You cannot do without health care. If you get sick you will pay any and every price to get well. If you die, your money is worthless anyway. A market you cannot opt out of is inelastic and normal free market forces wont be able to find the correct price as they would in a more elastic market.

gjm1115y ago

You cannot do without food either, but food markets are pretty elastic because you can do without food from any particular seller. If there's a variety of healthcare providers of reasonable quality then the usual market mechanisms can work.

Which isn't to say either (1) that they actually do work well in, say, the USA, or (2) that some less free-market-based system mightn't work better. (I'm in the UK; the situation in the US looks absolutely horrifying to me. I don't know what an ideal healthcare system looks like, but it surely can't be that.)

vannevar15y ago

An individual's need for food is generally stable, predictable, and bounded (eg, 2500 calories/day). An individual's need for health care is unpredictable and unbounded, meaning that you can be financially ruined by it in a sudden and catastrophic way. Having a variety of providers doesn't address this crucial difference.

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