Which firms profit most from America’s health-care system (2018)
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Re: Which firms profit most from America’s health-care system (2018)
#2from Wikipedia:
The classic example of rent-seeking, according to Robert Shiller, is that of a feudal lord who installs a chain across a river that flows through his land and then hires a collector to charge passing boats a fee to lower the chain. There is nothing productive about the chain or the collector. The lord has made no improvements to the river and is not adding value in any way, directly or indirectly, except for himself. All he is doing is finding a way to make money from something that used to be free.
Re: Which firms profit most from America’s health-care system (2018)
#3What's missing is the Bender solution: "I'll make my own system! With blackjack! And hookers!"
Barriers to entry are too high for a really free market to emerge.
Re: Which firms profit most from America’s health-care system (2018)
#4Re: Which firms profit most from America’s health-care system (2018)
#5> Every year America spends about $5,000 more per person on health care than other rich countries do. Yet its people are not any healthier.
I think part of the reason Americans spend more on healthcare is precisely because they're unhealthy. According to the American CDC the obesity rate has reached a staggering 42.4% of adults[0], which brings with it a slew of health problems. This accounts for an additional $147 billion in healthcare spending, or $1,429 per person (with obesity).
Re: Which firms profit most from America’s health-care system (2018)
#6> Everyone hates pharmaceutical firms, but their share of health-care rent-seeking is relatively trivial, especially once you include the many midsized and small firms that are investing heavily.
This article misses the point.
People hate pharmaceuticals because of ridiculously high drug costs, and that's about it. If they can't produce drugs at profit without gouging potential end users then it should be nationalized or subsidized.
Re: Which firms profit most from America’s health-care system (2018)
#7> Every year America spends about $5,000 more per person on health care than other rich countries do. Yet its people are not any healthier. I think part of the reason Americans spend more on healthcare is precisely because they're unhealthy. According to the American CDC the obesity rate has reached a staggering 42.4% of adults[0], which brings with it a slew of health problems. This accounts for an additional $147 b…
Obesity, CHF, smoking, poisoned by air pollution or ground water waste, cancer due to the above...sedentary lifestyle, non examined mental life, glued to the TV and basing all opinions on cable news, no exercise and crappy diets...it's not a good way that many americans live.
Re: Which firms profit most from America’s health-care system (2018)
#8Just got the bill yesterday for my "free" Covid test. $250, insurance pays $105, you owe $145. (The test was free, the office visit was not.)
Re: Which firms profit most from America’s health-care system (2018)
#9> Every year America spends about $5,000 more per person on health care than other rich countries do. Yet its people are not any healthier. I think part of the reason Americans spend more on healthcare is precisely because they're unhealthy. According to the American CDC the obesity rate has reached a staggering 42.4% of adults[0], which brings with it a slew of health problems. This accounts for an additional $147 b…
A counter argument I see sometimes is that the reason Americans spend more on healthcare compared to other rich countries is that American consumers spend more on just about everything than most other rich countries (and also earn more money). I don’t really know how much merit the argument has.
Re: Which firms profit most from America’s health-care system (2018)
#10The U.S. health system is what happens when corruption goes on so long you just call it the culture. "All professions are a conspiracy against the layman." was said by either G.B. Shaw or Ambrose Bierce, depending on your reference point.
It's a form of business that is orthogonal to producing things people want, where instead it's mainly in the business of depriving people of what they need. Rent seeking is what professions and institutions are designed to do, to create scarcity in exchange for a promise of quality, but somehow that latter part gets lost.
Some years ago when "disruption" was the popular idea, I put together a list of vulnerable industries. The sharing economy was an attack on businesses whose profits depended on a regulatory bar to entry (Uber/AirBnB etc.) The list was based on the presence of labour unions and professional associations, using the hypothesis that their existence creates a price premium that tips the economics of their industry in favour of automation, or at least in favour of economic substitution away by customers to a new tech that meets %80 of their need. Maybe we have the technology now to create an economic rentier map that lays out parts of the economy that have artificially propped up rent-seeking groups, as a means to develop new tools to avoid them.
Regarding the rentierism of the health business, I've noticed an anecdotal trend among some aging boomers who are rejecting that system altogether, and choosing palliative care and to die at home instead of in the hallway of a hospital, or worse, spending years in a long term care home. The best thing that could happen to healthcare is that instead of seeing it as broken, we should recognize that it looks like that because works for someone where we can't see who or how, and the goal is not to problematize and fix it, but to make it work for everyone else.