Notes on My Chemotherapy

Firstly, emergency treatment is a tiny sliver of all healthcare, in terms of volume and cost. If you want to argue about healthcare in general based on that - nay, on the miniscule number of unconscious people admitted to hospital - be my guest, "never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" and all that.

Secondly, I think you should look into how the Japanese system works before making statements about it. Your beliefs are of no concern to truth or proper analysis, especially when they don't accord with reality.

> The issue with treating healthcare like a free market is that some people just won’t get healthcare. Free markets aren’t going to build a hospital in a small enough town because the cost can’t be justified.

The issue with treating computing like a free market is that some people just won’t get computers. Free markets aren’t going to provide computers to small businesses because the cost can’t be justified.

I think the 70s is calling and wants your argument back. Before you reply with "computing and healthcare aren't comparable" they are, in fact, incredibly comparable. Health is like computing power, the more you have the more you want and can do, and hence - due to demand and people seeking to satisfy that demand - the more you can get. Reading these forums it seems like a quite profitable endeavour that is unlikely to end soon, much like healthcare.

> Your point that the US outranks most other countries is perhaps true for some things, but completely false for baseline measures such as infant mortality, life expectancy, cost per capita, etc.

That is something we agree on because that is the accepted starting point of the discussion, not a refutation to anything I have written or proposed.

> But our system is hardly “better” than other developed nations on almost any objective measure.

Back to the black and white thinking.

It is better in several ways and yet I am not an advocate of it because it is not a free market so I might ask why you're responding to me as if I am an advocate of it, but that is black and white thinking in a nutshell so I won't.

The problem is how to get more and better healthcare to more people. Aside from the endless examples outside of healthcare, less regulated markets in healthcare have met these requirements. For example, cosmetic surgery and things like lasik, the quality has gone up, the costs have dropped, availability is widespread and even approach normal.

Yes, and healthcare is a good thing to regulate, you know, cause of all those pesky ethics and morals that get involved with human life.

brigandish 2 days ago | parent | on: Notes on My Chemotherapy

> Capitalism can't work its magic because healthcare is not a free market.

That's exactly my argument, regulatory capture precludes a market from being free.

> It has a unique set of constraints >> I fail to see how the points you list make it unique.

If you can't seen why healthcare a specifically constrained market, you're being either intentionally obtuse or incredibly naive.

> I live in Japan, I choose the hospital/clinic/doctor that I see, for everything.

Yeah, I choose my dentist, too dawg, doesn't mean that I can choose what E.R. I get dropped off at when I get in a car wreck. I can't shop around for prices on concussion doctors when I'm unconscious in a gurney. Don't be obtuse. Sure, emergency services are only a small part of the pie, but they're the ones that bankrupt people. No one went bankrupt getting their contacts done, and dental and vision are frequently separated _for the exact reason_ that they're not ever medical emergencies, and when they are, they send you to a specialist anyway.

> high barrier to entry >> For whom at with what?

This is starting to border on bad-faith. I'm not going to spell out every piece of my argument here. If you can't accept the premise that healthcare is a high barrier to entry market, then you're not familiar with the problem.

> constantly changing regulatory environment >> Yes, so deregulate and move towards a freer market.

You can't just deregulate things and hope it'll fix it. de-regulate _what_? You haven't even proposed a solution here, you've just yelled "Free market!" and "Deregulate healthcare!" But all that will do is worsen the quality that we see and encourage a bunch of snake oil companies to become even more common.

> The reason single payer systems work >> Do they?

Yes, the evidence says a resounding yes in basically every country, including the U.K., even when the NHS is underfunded. Like another poster pointed out, basically any base-line metric puts the U.S. in ranks with most third-world countries. It's embarrassing.