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The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

aaronstannard.com

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Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#141

Post by jopsen »

hollandheese wrote: post #77
peter422 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of health care in the US is significantly higher than anywhere else in the world. Whether that quality is necessarily (or good) is debatable, but we are getting something for the money. You also are just completely wrong in your main point. We cannot provide the same efficacy of healthcare as we are now for 60% less. We are the richest country in the world, labor costs more here than other places.

>The quality of health care in the US is significantly higher than anywhere else in the world. Yeah, I'm gonna need a citation for that. Because it sounds like a health insurance propoganda rather than the actual truth.

I tried an American PPO with $10 co-pay and no deductibles. It was awesome :)

Nobody could tell me what anything would cost, or if the insurance would cover it. But I always ended up paying $10, whether it was a few pills or an expensive MRI I didn't need. Oh, yeah the downside is you can accidentally convince your doctor to get procedures you don't need.

Health care in Denmark is decent. But I've been told, no when I wanted to run some tests. That would never happen on an American PPO :)

I have had go wait, while unpleasant, it's fairly harmless (otherwise they don't let you wait).

So if you're on an great PPO plan in the US, healthcare is great.

Whether the outcome is better for the average Joe, is probably a different question.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#142

Post by digi59404 »

jopsen wrote: post #131

An American PPO with a $10 co-pay is pretty awesome. The only downside is that it's too easy to get a procedure you don't need :) I've tried tellings doctors in Denmark I wanted X, Y, Z test and getting told, nah, the outcome wouldn't change your treatment so we don't want to order those tests. Generally, healthcare is decent, but no doubt a good PPO plan does not compare :) Public health care seems more like HMO, yo…

That second paragraph is what scares me the most about pure public healthcare options. The following isn’t to compare/contrast systems.. it’s just a viewpoint.

My cardiologist went “tests look fine, heart looks fine, there’s no reason for you to take colchicine. No clue why you have issues, everything is fine. Just take this brand new beta blocker to manage your heart rate.”

Meanwhile, there’s no answer why my heart rate rises 30-40BPM randomly when I stand. Why my heart rate drops to a very difficult detectable rate when I sleep. No answers as to why two sips of wine causes my body to go into shock. - All resulting post-Covid.

That same doctor told me to discontinue colchicine; yet without colchicine most medications, inc. ADHD, are maybe half as effective.

These are items which deserve answers. Not an answer of “just take another pill”. Some of those “unnecessary” tests can provide inclusion/exclusion information. Yet just refusing that knowledge denies answers.

In the US I can just find new doctors. But in other systems it’s either difficult or impossible.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#143

Post by fragmede »

digi59404 wrote: post #142
jopsen wrote: post #131

An American PPO with a $10 co-pay is pretty awesome. The only downside is that it's too easy to get a procedure you don't need :) I've tried tellings doctors in Denmark I wanted X, Y, Z test and getting told, nah, the outcome wouldn't change your treatment so we don't want to order those tests. Generally, healthcare is decent, but no doubt a good PPO plan does not compare :) Public health care seems more like HMO, yo…

That second paragraph is what scares me the most about pure public healthcare options. The following isn’t to compare/contrast systems.. it’s just a viewpoint. My cardiologist went “tests look fine, heart looks fine, there’s no reason for you to take colchicine. No clue why you have issues, everything is fine. Just take this brand new beta blocker to manage your heart rate.” Meanwhile, there’s no answer why my heart…

> All resulting post-Covid

Find a long Covid specialist, those things aren't normal but are known to be effects of long Covid.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#144

Post by ErroneousBosh »

a_tartaruga wrote: post #97
hu3 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rational people do it at home all the time to this day. I had to read again 3 times. Are you serious? If there is any complication, you're risking 2 lives.

Home birth is absolutely a rational choice in many cases. The author had a very strong reason to require hospital birth but in scenarios with lower risk it is safer in some respects to avoid the hospital. It will still cost you 5 - 10k for a good midwife and you'll still want to be insured in case you need to transfer. So it only knocks off 5-10k from the total.

Why are you paying to give birth at home when there's a hospital right there, that has all the equipment in case anything goes sideways?

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#145

Post by IsTom »

throwaway150 wrote: post #104
estimator7292 wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How come other countries have better healthcare at lower real costs? Basically every developed nation has better healthcare outcomes than the US. All other nations have cheaper healthcare. America is not special, we've just brainwashed our less-observant citizens into believing that solutions the entire rest of the world uses will never and can never work here. There's nothing special about our population or economy…

As someone who has lived in several countries, I do not believe every developed nation achieves better healthcare outcomes than the United States. Many European countries, as well as Canada, offer some form of universal coverage with free general treatment but waiting times for appointments and procedures can vary widely. That said, I still think universal healthcare is preferable, as these systems tend to prioritize…

> As someone who has lived in several countries, I do not believe every developed nation achieves better healthcare outcomes than the United States.

Is that true for a median-wage earning person?

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#146

Post by beej71 »

Sparkle-san wrote: post #134
mattcantstop wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite viewpoint, and I lean heavily progressive in most of my views. Healthcare in the United States isn't a market, and that is why it is so terrible. For instance, there is no reasonable ability to compare prices of services. Prices are entirely hidden. Then there is the "with insurance" price vs cash prices. Healthcare doesn't function as a market, to our detriment.

Healthcare doesn't function as a market because the nature of it is largely at odds with the principals of an efficient marketplace and perfect competition. Not to mention the tens of billions of dollars being pocketed by middlemen every year.

In some places, free market healthcare is great. Dermatologists, dentists, chiropractors, things like that. And part of the reason it's great is because you get to shop around and people fight for your business.

In other areas, like heart attacks and strokes, you do not get to shop around. And you pay whatever they say you will pay. When those are the circumstances, there is simply no free market. And since no one is competing for your business with lower prices in that case, you do not get to see lower prices. They charge whatever they can maximally wring out of you.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#147

Post by ErroneousBosh »

losvedir wrote: post #29

Hmm, counting the insurance premiums 100% towards the birth of the child is a bit misleading. Presumably, you'd be paying those even if you didn't have the child. That said, the cost of health insurance for a family is pretty outrageous. My premiums are along the same lines as the ones here (although less noticeable since they're paid by my employer).

Why do you need to get insurance for your child to be born anyway? Isn't the hospital already insured? Isn't that kind of janky?

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#148

Post by wlerijt »

American "healthcare" is pushing many things outside the achievable range.

I have garden-variety hemorrhoids. All I need is one or two 30-minute in-office procedures to treat these things. I'm a senior software engineer working for a FAANG company with "top-tier" employer-sponsored health insurance. I've been trying to get this stuff treated for eight months. I've gone to at least seven or eight appointments with several different offices and I've already spent $3000 out of pocket, and I might actually start treatment in January. That's fucking insane.

The next time I need a minor in-office procedure, I'm seriously going to consider flying to Mexico instead of wasting almost a year of my life fucking around with the ass-wipe US healthcare system.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#149

Post by toast0 »

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #115
toast0 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you say > I pay that at least much for my family, hence why I used it and your article says > Having a $200/mo smartphone is now a participation cost for many things such as getting access to your banking information remotely, medical records, and work / school. It sounds like you're trying to communicate that you pay at least $200/month per smartphone for your family? Or you don't value precision in communicati…

> It sounds like you're trying to communicate that you pay at least $200/month per smartphone for your family? Or you don't value precision in communication. You're moving the goal posts here. You have to have service, realistically, in order to use it like a real person.

I'm trying to figure out what you're getting for $200/month.

Is it for "a smartphone" with service, and presumably financing the phone as well? Or is it the total for all of your family's smartphones, which is how many phones/lines?

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#150

Post by fancy_pantser »

mattcantstop wrote: post #102
shermozle wrote: post #56

The first sentence is your answer. The third word even. The healthcare market. MARKET Healthcare shouldn't be a market. That's why you're paying $40k.

I have the opposite viewpoint, and I lean heavily progressive in most of my views. Healthcare in the United States isn't a market, and that is why it is so terrible. For instance, there is no reasonable ability to compare prices of services. Prices are entirely hidden. Then there is the "with insurance" price vs cash prices. Healthcare doesn't function as a market, to our detriment.

> Prices are entirely hidden

Recent legal changes have made pricing more transparent. In 2020, the federal government issued the "transparency in coverage" final rule under the Federal No Surprises Act. This limited the expenses for emergency care when out-of-network and a few other things, but even more exciting is that hospitals and insurers are now required to publish a comprehensive machine-readable file with ALL items and services. They have to provide all negotiated rates and cash prices for the services and include a display of "shoppable" services in a consumer-friendly format. The machine-readable files are impractical to process yourself for comparison shopping (picture: different formats, horribly de-normalized DB dumps), but many sites and APIs have emerged to scrape them and expose interfaces to do so.

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