211–220 of 539 posts
Because medicine isn't paid for as a government-provided service. Insurance companies exist to profit - they defer risk. It is not a public service. I have a pre-existing condition, and I have a very mild case of Cystic Fibrosis: my healthcare at market costs about $500k a year. There's a lot of nuance to how much insurance companies actually pay out, etc, but looking at it in a simplified manner, it takes 25 familie…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Medicare/Medicaid cover more people than many single payer systems in other countries, and their costs are still outrageous I appreciate your reasonable breakdown, but I don't understand this one. I've seen many reports talking about how the costs of basic supplies and procedures are dramatically higher in the US (and vary wildly within the US). Things like X-Rays, MRIs, etc, being off by an order of magnitude or m…
I think we agree. I'm just saying it's not a single fundamental difference between the US system and other systems, it's myriad differences that combine to make things way more expensive in the US.
Or did I misunderstand and you are just saying that negotiation (or lack thereof) alone isn't responsible for all the cost headaches?
If you think health care is expensive now, wait until it's free.
That's weird because in every other OECD country that offers "free" healthcare (as in, single-payer or two-tier with national option) it's dramatically cheaper and has much better outcomes [1]. Reality doesn't line up with your pre-conceived notions. [1] https://www.oecd.org/unitedstates/Health-at-a-Glance-2017-Ke...
A close example to a region with high obesity rates would be the UK and the obesity epidemic has been straining the NHS for years: https://www.theguardian.com/society/2018/apr/04/obesity-putt...
What makes health insurance cheaper is a larger pool of people. There is no other mechanism by which costs can be reduced. This is why a single payer system is dramatically cheaper. It ensures complete coverage, reducing the cost of insurance to it's minimum. Furthermore, it leverages the collective bargaining power of all subscribers. There is no substitute for a national health insurance, and the United States slow…
That doesn't necessarily follow. Whether or not it gets cheaper or more expensive depends on how likely the new people are to get sick compared to the other people in the pool. Adding a bunch of sick people raises the costs for everyone, adding a bunch of healthy, young people (and making them pay) lowers the costs for everyone else. I agree that at this point, we'd be far better off with a single payer system, but i…
Sick people without health insurance still get healthcare. They just don't pay, go bankrupt, probably cost the system way more than if they had preventative care paid for. Then they get a medical bankruptcy, the hospital eats the cost but raises prices on everyone else to stay afloat. Now, they might have a higher mortality rate and so end up not costing as much as if they had insurance from the beginning, but I think a large amount of the cost of the uninsured is already priced in.
Yep, and what people don't always realize is that because employer health plans get more expensive every year for employers, it negatively impacts wage growth. You are paying for it even if you don't necessarily feel it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Yeah, I really wonder where that $10,000/person figure comes from when you remove obesity and smoking related illnesses, so, the two highest and most preventable causes of death in this country. I always believed you should be able to qualify for lower costs (or be charged higher) depending on how you take care of yourself. Annual physical fitness test. I'm a little sick and tired of paying high premiums for people t…
Many of us who won the genetic lottery are sick of paying for those who didn't Where do you draw this line ? If someone cannot afford to eat or live a healthy lifestyle do you kick them while they are down ?
If you take in over 3,500 calories a day of pizza, soda, cheeseburgers, or candy then follow it up with little to no exercise/movement, you are contributing to the "health insurance crisis".
The problem is that there is not a single reason that healthcare is so expensive. Even if you list the top 15 reasons, you still have to apply the "5 whys" to each of them to find root causes and possible solutions. - Doctor's are paid too much... why? - Well they need to be paid a lot because medical school debt is 250k or more... why? - Medical schools/the AMA are artificially limiting the number of students and re…
Having every person under the same plan that has the negotiating power of 327.2 million people will definitely drive costs down. Don't want to pay what the government says it is going to pay? Good luck finding customers then, because the government is bargaining on behalf of all of the customers in the US.
People who say this stuff are the same people who proclaim there is no solution to a problem that the only occurs in the US. Literally, every Industrial Nation has addressed this problem for much lower costs with better out comes.
This is absolutely the biggest story in America, and most people aren't talking about it. An entire generation is draining their savings to keep up with premium costs. Not to mention the millions of people locked into careers they would otherwise get out of, if not for the health coverage. This situation is probably going to lead to unbelievable outcomes.
> An entire generation is draining their savings to keep up with premium costs. Knock on wood but, myself and pretty much everybody I know has insurance covered ~75% through our full time employers. I think my portion of my insurance is about... $100/mo? I've never had to use it way/shape/form in the past... 5-10 years. Isn't the truth that the most unhealthy people are what drives health care costs? It'd be interest…
That is money that would otherwise be given to you in the form of salary, so, yeah, you're paying for it even if it doesn't seem like it.
Historically, the main reason for employer-provided health insurance in the U.S. is that it provided a loophole to increase effective employee compensation in a tax-free manner.
The problem is that there is not a single reason that healthcare is so expensive. Even if you list the top 15 reasons, you still have to apply the "5 whys" to each of them to find root causes and possible solutions. - Doctor's are paid too much... why? - Well they need to be paid a lot because medical school debt is 250k or more... why? - Medical schools/the AMA are artificially limiting the number of students and re…
> so they need to charge a lot... why? - I honestly don't know. Does anybody else know the answer to this? > Doctor's are paid too much... why? Are US doctors paid too much when compared to say... Japanese doctors? European doctors?
> Does anybody else know the answer to this?
They don't _need_ to. But they do charge a lot because they can -- they know that doctors can afford to pay it using future earnings. And now we're back up the stack in terms of explaining high costs.
Part of it is the Baumol effect as explained by Tabarrok et al [1]. But I believe most of it is due to the nature of the healthcare industry when there are no govt-imposed limits on prices: there is no incentive for hospitals and doctors to lower their prices, since they are not in competition with each other for patients. The insurance industry is just passing the cost to the employers. I could even argue that this explains some of the wage stagnation -- costs went into health insurance premiums.
[1] https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/06/sp...