31–40 of 415 posts
america, unsatisfied with spending vastly more privately on healthcare than the rest of the world, while also spending more publicly on healthcare than the rest of the world, continues to find ways to make healthcare yet more expensive and ruinous for its citizens.
Maybe true but, for the rest of the world, you're still the 'go-to' place where medical miracles can happen. Money had something to do with this.
- you forgot that part there
While such regulation may have been imposed to try to increase safety, quality, and consistency, for example, it also ends up interfering with the incentives of the participants.
The lack of real competition, combined with the introduction of significant unnecessary costs and other overhead, encourage and enable the participants to act in ways that may not be beneficial to the patients.
The truly unfortunate part is that such regulation often takes options and choices away from the patients, preventing them from accessing alternatives that may help mitigate or avoid the perverse incentives introduced by regulation.
america, unsatisfied with spending vastly more privately on healthcare than the rest of the world, while also spending more publicly on healthcare than the rest of the world, continues to find ways to make healthcare yet more expensive and ruinous for its citizens.
Maybe true but, for the rest of the world, you're still the 'go-to' place where medical miracles can happen. Money had something to do with this.
When possible, I prefer people who work for me to have incentives that are aligned with mine. PE-owned medical practices and even many private practices throw that out the window, with financial incentives to do procedures or run tests. I was talking to my wife’s obstetrician about this last week and he also feels strongly about it. He’s paid a flat salary and gets no financial benefit for a c-section vs. an inductio…
> gets no financial benefit for a c-section I don't think that's typical anywhere. The incentives they face are less concrete. It may be more inconvenient or uncomfortable for the doctor. If something goes wrong and there is a legal risk, it's difficult to retroactively justify not immediately changing strategies.
When possible, I prefer people who work for me to have incentives that are aligned with mine. PE-owned medical practices and even many private practices throw that out the window, with financial incentives to do procedures or run tests. I was talking to my wife’s obstetrician about this last week and he also feels strongly about it. He’s paid a flat salary and gets no financial benefit for a c-section vs. an inductio…
One nasty way that can manifest is to under test because if you don’t find anything you don’t have to do anything.
PE is essentially buying all needs of a first world human. Medicine, homes, essential services, farmland, in an attempt to extract margin from the last possible places they can. It feels like we’ve re entered the 80s again but worse where now we have 100 billionaires buying up farmland under the guise of it being better that they own it rather than the farmers for… reasons. I think this is essentially late stage capi…
>It feels like we’ve re entered the 80s again but worse where now we have 100 billionaires buying up farmland under the guise of it being better that they own it rather than the farmers for… reasons. I don't get it. Are the billionaires buying the land from the farmers at gunpoint? If it's so disastrous for the farmers to sell, why did they sell in the first place?
I'm sure it'll be fine as long as your account doesn't get cancelled.
I’m the furthest thing from having any knowledge here, but it feels like it should kind of be like how law firms can only have lawyers be owners with the idea that owners need to be aligned with codes of professional conduct/ethical obligations to clients etc
That model works well for professional services (eg. lawyers, accountants, consultants) because require very little capital. Everything from the office they work in, to the computers they type on can be leased. The same can't be said for hospitals, which cost hundreds of millions to build and equip. How are you going to raise all that capital from only the doctors? They're rich, but not that rich. Moreover, the payba…
When possible, I prefer people who work for me to have incentives that are aligned with mine. PE-owned medical practices and even many private practices throw that out the window, with financial incentives to do procedures or run tests. I was talking to my wife’s obstetrician about this last week and he also feels strongly about it. He’s paid a flat salary and gets no financial benefit for a c-section vs. an inductio…
The balancing act of this is that oversight is (typically) by qualified medical professionals who can judge whether a given procedure, test, surgery, etc. was medically indicated or not.
Reminds me of "Does Private Equity Investment in Healthcare Benefit Patients?" [1]. > Our estimates show that PE ownership increases the short-term mortality of Medicare patients by 10%, implying 20,150 lives lost due to PE ownership over our twelve-year sample period. This is accompanied by declines in other measures of patient well-being, such as lower mobility, while taxpayer spending per patient episode increases…
As they acknowledge, this factor is extremely difficult to isolate from demographics, geography, religion, etc.
No? They used "a within-facility differences-in-differences design to address nonrandom targeting of facilities" so they're measuring the change in outcomes at the same facility before & after takeover.
I’m the furthest thing from having any knowledge here, but it feels like it should kind of be like how law firms can only have lawyers be owners with the idea that owners need to be aligned with codes of professional conduct/ethical obligations to clients etc
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-britain-politics-labour-b...
The business lobbies freaked out when that was proposed, in spite of it being fairly moderate. It was one of the reasons for the character assassination extravaganza (anti semitism, "terrorist friends", etc).