Ask HN: What’s something that has no right being as expensive as it is?

Looking in from another country it appears three, maybe four, problems drive this:

1) cost of avoiding litigation of large proportions, or even the spectre of it when possibly unwarranted

2) excessive cost of even basic medical supplies, partly due to (1) above, and parly due to the clubiness of the whole affair

3) excessive cost of developing drugs and the practices that allow minor repackaging of delivery systems to extend patents on existing drugs (no one wants to be the guinea pig, but the balance between risk and reward seems a little skewed when overall benefits to society are accounted for and people are dying from certain diseases anyway)

4) Overpayment of some medical staff, and underpayment of others, you can probably guess who. I get it, you want the best doctors and they should be incentivised to choose medicine and do well, but a doctor saves/kills one patient a time, usually, see (3) above. It is just as difficult and time consuming to become, say, a specialist engineer making key decisions where a mistake might kill dozens or hundreds of people. In my country there is only one job in government where the professional society gets total control over pay outside of regular guidelines, you guessed it doctors, and the relative amounts involved are frankly obscene.

When I see that medical misadventure is the third highest cause of death in USA now, it starts to appear hard to see how anyone can hink that the high salaries for some and the large amounts of money spent to keep people "safe" is not working, so why not spend that money in other ways.

It seems Obama got it wrong, the issue wasn't with insurance, it was with costs and general approach by the medical care providers. Many of these providers I am sure would desperately like to provide optimum care, but are just part of the juggernaut that seems to have no circuit breaker.

I would happily accept any criticism or correction of my views, as I am only relaying distant perceptions, some or all of which may be incorrctly founded.

Well, I believe the meta-question here is: why aren't we experiencing Moore's Law rates of efficiency in all aspects of human life? Doubling in performance every two years or so. Even if pricing remains relatively constant. I think it's sort of the basis of "Progress Studies". Look to areas that have kept up with Moore's Law (such as GPUs) and try to work backwards. Competition, R&D spend, relentless focus on innovation in consumer products, global distribution and the willingness to foster talent required to achieve those relentless milestones. Seems to be lacking almost everywhere except computational architectures (and perhaps payloads to low earth orbit) ;)

Rent. (I'm in Sydney)

Also, public transport should be free.

Depends on how far your willing to go and/or if you buy into the "Audiophile" scene. For me the price that I am willing to pay for a pair of Headphones comes down to quality of sound, build and ease of repairability. The Beyerdynamic DT770's meet all of those markers for me at £130. There are other who will spend thousands.