Obviously the problem is insanely complicated, but most of it stems from the fact that "we" think healthcare is a market like TVs or cars and should be operated the same way. It's not and that leads to a whole mess of unintended consequences.
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Obviously the problem is insanely complicated, but most of it stems from the fact that "we" think healthcare is a market like TVs or cars and should be operated the same way. It's not and that leads to a whole mess of unintended consequences.
What diff said is the same thing I said. If you'd like to not fund any research, it would be quite easy to spend less on healthcare. Profits are what allow for R&D at any decently run company. And, no, the federal government should not be a primary funding source for said research.
Here's an interesting example of what I am talking about: http://www.nytimes.com/2013/08/04/he...anted=all&_r=0
That article contradicts your prior post. The problem is that medicine doesn't work like cars or TVs. It absolutely should:
Quote:
The basic design of artificial joints has not changed for decades. But increased volume — about one million knee and hip replacements are performed in the United States annually — and competition have not lowered prices, as would typically happen with products like clothes or cars. “There are a bunch of implants that are reasonably similar,” said James C. Robinson, a health economist at the University of California, Berkeley. “That should be great for the consumer, but it isn’t.”
The article does not contradict my post, it depicts a cartel with a thin veneer of "competition" that would nonetheless pass the monopoly smell test. We see it in all sorts of industries. There is absolutely no reason to think that what is okay for cell phone service is okay for artificial hips.
What is ok for cell phone service would beat the shit out of what we have for artificial hips. Isn't that the point?
Huh? It's the same basic setup. A few companies dominate the industry and their moves conveniently coincide with each other.
Obviously competition isn't working here. The reason why it is cheaper to implant a hip in Belgium (not Thailand or India... Belgium) is because the government told the companies that their 97% profit margins can go to hell. Because it serves a public good in the way that fancy cell phone service does not.
Medicine is not a market like TVs or cars because of information, primarily. In emergency or desperate situations people are not going to shop around. In times when people do shop around the information is very limited due to the idiosyncracies of the human body, difficulty of measuring doctor performance, the high stakes involved, and variability in treatment. I can go read about a bunch of TVs and see what people said and expect that experience but I can't read reviews of cancer treatments and expect that to happen to me. If I buy a TV and it sucks, oh well. If I get bum treatment I could get permanently injured or worse.
I understood the point you were trying to make, but at least you can comparison shop with cell phone service and have several options from each carrier. I disagree about shopping around. At the very least, people could choose to go to hospital A versus hospitals B or C based on reputation and high level information. The absolute first (and sometimes only) thing the government should be regulating in any industry is transparency, so that consumers can make informed decisions. If people choose not to leverage that, it's on them; it's not the government's job to take care of their dumb or lazy asses.
Options within a carrier isn't really competition. In many cases its almost a form of price discrimination at the loss of ill-informed consumers.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yoshi
Either way, the cell-phone market is hardly a model of market-capitalism success.
Edit: While having information is nice (and underused), we as humans are limited by time. We could research night and day to make all of the perfectly correct choice in all of our decisions, or we could have some sort of regulating body cut out the options that are really complete shit. We don't have infinite time to make use of all the information out there in the market sadly.
I'll take my chances with limited time over trusting the federal government to make decisions for me. But in either case, information is critical. Based on Obamacare, either the information isn't available to the lawmakers either, they don't know what to do with it, or both. It's probably both.
I think the issues with the cell phone industry were the point both diff and I were trying to make. My point was that, despite those issues, it's still better than the black box we currently have around health care.
edit: Keep in mind that the same type of people that are collecting your information illegally are the ones who you are proposing should be able to make consumer decisions on your behalf. Pass.