There’s near-infinite demand for healthcare and a constrained (mostly artificially) supply.
Insurance, people and government can’t solve the problem of the supply and demand by throwing money on it.
You either expand supply or remove demand. Given removing demand is... not desirable. The only alternative to fix the issue is remove regulation and expand supply. That’s it.
Insurance makes the issue worse by increasing demand and in a way limiting supply through requirements and procedures.
Government limits supply through regulation AND expands demand by paying for procedures.
An approach is to deregulate, such as removing government licensing, remove Medicare, etc.
Imo Prices would drop >95% within a 2-5 years (to India or Mexico levels).
I worked in medical billing for a few years and the issues are beyond obvious.
The problem is a large swath of the population that believe in all earnestly that squeezing profit is some magical tool for a functioning economy.
Too bad US is so good at PR, this mind virus is wreaking havoc all over the world.
In france your public insurance allows you to walk in a private clinic or hospital too, as a relative did and they cover her post-cancer treatment better than in the public hospital (by her account at least).
So yeah, "free market deregulation" may be an oversimplification but you have a problem in the US that's also far more than just being for-profit. We have for-profit over here and it works.
And that includes private & public institution doing medical R&D and selling their products to the national health services and private clinics, like quite a bunch of spanish companies do, for example. I say this becase it weirdly pops as an argument when it's totally unrelated, and it may be only a tiny fraction of the total cost.
Most healthcare in the west is subsidized by the US. The US market is far more lucrative, so companies do R&D and make capital from the US. The US also subsidizes in terms of both military and energy almost every western country. Even then, Europe has a higher tax rate and on average is far poorer.
I’m well educated on this subject and worked in this area in the US and spent time in other countries. You have no idea what you’re taking about.
These claims are outrageous and totally unsubstantiated. How does US subsidise energy of France or Japan?
"Most healthcare in the west is subsidized by the US." "The US market is far more lucrative, so companies do R&D and make capital from the US. "
You are subsidising the companies, not my healthcare. And they pay out this money in dividends to shareholders. I am sure they are very gratefull, maybe you should ask them for a rebate.
Stop subsidising them and overpaying - do you think healthcare costs in Europe will rise? If you do, I've got a wager.
The US is broken because we somehow believe that a highly regulated market is "free" as long as the government isn't paying for it. We literally have the worst of both worlds.
In my opinion, healthcare has reached the state where the people who receive the benefit are too far removed from the people who pay for it and given there is no "victim" of price gauging, the prices will just keep going up up and way.
I defer to those wiser than me for the solution. I don't like complaining without being constructive so here is my ignorant pass at it. This will require a few key steps: 1) Yes, we need more supply (by deregulating the profession) 2) I personally think a more effective solution would be to gradually eliminate insurance except for catastrophic risk (like emergency medical care from a car accident). #2 will shift responsibility to the individual and the system will be capped at what they can charge based on the average person's ability to pay for it (which is how it works in many parts of the world).
I agree with you and the quote above is because of insurance. Medicare will pay 10% of that total and your father would be charged 2-5%. If he has private insurance you’ll see something different, maybe 15% and your father would be charged 3-6%. If he’s going out of network could be 100%. Hospitals / practices charge insane bills because people pay just a small fraction typically. It really impacts those without insurance or private insurance the worst. It is insane.
This is why I have suggested deregulation, particularly around licensing. It drives down the cost. Insurance may cover doctor X, but if nurse Y can do it for 5% the price... well use the nurse. All doctors would have to reduce prices and insurance would have to raise the coverage amount to compete. It’s what is done elsewhere in the world.
So it looks like software development? Are you comfortable for your life to be in the hands of a rando who just finished a 6-months bootcamp?
This worked so well for Rosemary Kennedy when she could be prescribed an ice pick lobotomy. And so well for Eben Byers when his doctor prescribed him radioactive water, and he drank so much his jaw rotted off. It works brilliantly for this woman[1] and her cheap Turkish dentist work leaving her in pain. And for, well all of this junk: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_unproven_and_disproven...
Deregulation is what we had when things were terrible. Regulation and licensing is what we use to block the most obvious junk 'treatments' and the worst con artists.
> "Given removing demand is... not desirable."
Removing demand is enormously desirable. Regulate the shit out of CocaCola, Marlboro, and all the other health destroying parasites and their advertising, tax them, rework town and city planning to remove driving as the primary transport in life and all the associated exhaust fumes, rework public schooling and rebuild trust in the government and medics so people aren't anti-health-advice on principle, rework employment so that employees have some rights and aren't stressed out all the time with no sick breaks. Rework medical access so people can see medical professionals, and sickness can be caught and treated early, which reduces demand on seeing much sicker people later.
> "Insurance makes the issue worse by increasing demand and in a way limiting supply through requirements and procedures."
Insurance makes the issue worse by driving up costs to patients and at the same time driving down pay to medical staff, by insurance taking as much as possible. Without insurance, supply and demand could remain the same, medical staff earn more, patients pay less, and services be more efficient with less time wasted fighting insurance companies and filling in insurance paperwork.
[1] https://old.reddit.com/r/northernireland/comments/ua9me9/eas...
