The current problem is the pricing is completely non-transparent hence consumers cannot choose based upon price. No one knows what anything costs until a bill arrives much, much later. In addition, it is extremely opaque how the numbers on the bill are arrived at.
Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right
21–30 of 77 posts
Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right
#22The article does raise an interesting point in that most people don't necessarily see food as an inalienable right that people shouldn't need to pay for. But to counter that point our government has set up a system of farm subsidies and management to ensure affordable food is available to pretty much anyone... and even those who don't have the money get food stamps. Seems like the government tries to do the same thin…
There is no right to food in the US. But there sure as hell is in the majority of the world [0]. It is widely agreed that you shouldn't need to pay for the minimum amount of food to survive, the rest is gravy.
As for the way costs are different in the health sector :-
With food it is a very simple supply demand structure with limited demand and low and predictable skill required for supply.
Health has a near unlimited demand, high and unpredictable skill is required for supply.
Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right
#23"People need a lot of things. You’ll die without food long before you’ll die without health care, and yet few people say we need to “take the profit motive out of farming”." "Why is health care Special" I tell you why healthcare is special. You cannot buy healthcare at the cost of food. I can buy ramen noodles and survive for cheap. Sure it is not the best but I won't frikin die. But If I get cancer and cannot afford…
Try to eat ramen noodles for the rest of your life and see how your health goes. Most health issues today are directly related to diet. However, processed food and snacks are much cheaper (ramen noodles) than healthy alternatives. McDonald's is a lot cheaper than going to the store and cooking a meal. So no, food is not cheaper when you try to compare it against healthcare.
Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right
#24The current problem is the pricing is completely non-transparent hence consumers cannot choose based upon price. No one knows what anything costs until a bill arrives much, much later. In addition, it is extremely opaque how the numbers on the bill are arrived at.
That's not the only problem. For example, another problem is that consumers cannot choose based upon price because they are frequently in an emergency situation. Another is that they can't choose based upon price because they are locked into a health insurance plan which negotiates reasonable prices only with preferred providers.
Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right
#25The article does raise an interesting point in that most people don't necessarily see food as an inalienable right that people shouldn't need to pay for. But to counter that point our government has set up a system of farm subsidies and management to ensure affordable food is available to pretty much anyone... and even those who don't have the money get food stamps. Seems like the government tries to do the same thin…
Farm subsidies aren't a bad idea, either. There are advantages to retaining food production within your borders, and without them, you'd probably be importing a lot more of what you eat and there are security risks there. Food has downward pressure on pricing due to external markets, and subsidies address that.
Healthcare has no such external downward pressure on pricing. The vast majority are not going to import their medical care from Mexico, South America or Asia because it's expensive at home. If you as a government want to increase access by reducing prices on healthcare, you simplistically have two ~~options~~ (edit: methods). One, increase the supply side, more facilities, doctors, and critically, more training for those new doctors (that's a big bottleneck now, since residencies are almost all funded by medicare, and that limits how many med school slots can exist initially). Two, create a taxpayer funded single payer system - a monopsonist, who is by definition not a price taker. Realistically you need to implement both options, since #2 can only impose price up to some economic limits, and those limits are determined by #1 since the current health system can't actually service everyone without significant sacrifices around wait. If you implement #2 fully and #1 to the point where you have capacity to treat everyone that objectively needs care in a timely manner, then you've implemented a functioning right to health care.
Lots of economic handwaving in there for sure, but that's how you extend the farm subsidy parallel to healthcare, and realize it's much more complicated for healthcare.
Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right
#26There are no free markets where price transparency doesn't exist.
Even surgeons can't predict what prices will be for a procedure.
Healthcare, because of the complexity of understanding how the body works, is a natural local monopoly.
Are you going to shop around for a better deal on a quadruple bypass when you already trust your surgeon? How would you know if the cheaper surgeon was as good?
Healthcare insurance suffers from the classic agency problem and has no incentive to keep costs low over the long term because they take ~7% off the top for a pass through transaction.
Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right
#27The conclusion of the article is a bit ridiculous. tl;dr healthcare isn't a right because we can only spend a finite amount. Yeah, ok, but that dismisses priority entirely. Scarcity is still in play, so you treat the immediate needs first. I think we do have capacity in the healthcare system to do it that way. The author of the article basically bucketed a sprained ankle and a stroke in the same category, and conclud…
I agree the author makes the wrong inferences from the situation, but her points do often go overlooked in the debate: people make a big deal about "omg, someone died because they couldn't afford [more] health care", even though this will always be true, in every system, even the best ones -- you can't save everyone.
(Similarly, the rhetoric around "death panels" was toxic made this insight harder to accept.)
Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right
#28The article does raise an interesting point in that most people don't necessarily see food as an inalienable right that people shouldn't need to pay for. But to counter that point our government has set up a system of farm subsidies and management to ensure affordable food is available to pretty much anyone... and even those who don't have the money get food stamps. Seems like the government tries to do the same thin…
I thought that was an interesting point as well. I'm having trouble coming up w/ full argument but one point is that there's huge differences btwn food and healthcare. When you only have $20 to spend on food for the week, you don't need to go to the government for help. You can cook and eat rice and beans all week. That's what I did in college. The difference w/ healthcare is there's no rice and beans of cancer treat…
See my reply to the same comment. And I think the rice and beans of medical treatment is to pour some 'tussin on it.
Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right
#29Despite any implementation problems, I don't believe that someone should have a worse chance of keeping their life in the face of disease just because they are not as wealthy. That alone means that society is considering some people's lives more important than others, which is not a society that I would like to live in.
>That alone means that society is considering some people's lives more important than others No it doesn't. Healthcare does not happen through some fictitious consensus of "society". It happens through individuals interacting one with one another and forming a natural order. To claim that healthcare is a "right" ultimately means healthcare providers are slaves.
"To claim that healthcare is a "right" ultimately means healthcare providers are slaves."
So teachers are slaves? As are judges? etc.
Re: Health Care Is a Business, Not a Right
#30This is absolutely spot on.
Health care is not a right, neither is education, food, or access to the internet.
These are all things that people at some point or another have claimed as "inalienable human rights".
There is always a cost benefit analysis here. Should we perform this extremely expensive treatment to give somebody a few days in agonizing pain, or maybe save a few dozen other people with a simple, straightforward procedure?
The painful part is realizing that no matter what, people with more resources (money or otherwise) will have better (and longer) lives on average then people without resources. There is no way to legislate that away. See Venezuela for an example of that.