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Health care is turning into a consumer product

economist.com

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Re: Health care is turning into a consumer product

#21

Post by refurb »

neuro_image2 wrote: post #15
refurb wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There can be instances where physicians are paid the same or more outside the US (I've heard family practice can pay better in Canada), but overall US physicians earn much more . https://www.physiciansweekly.com/how-do-us-physician-salarie...

I guess it depends on your comparison - that article didn't include Australia, NZ or Canada. Also if you factor in earnings and expenses over a lifetime (including cost of studying and the fact that many of the countries mentioned have free healthcare and education and far lower insurance requirements) it evens out substantially. More importantly, even the highest physician salaries are orders of magnitude less than…

I’ve got several friends who specifically moved to the US from Canada because the pay was so much better. No doubt it varies by circumstance, but docs ive known in the US pay off their $500k in student debt pretty quickly if they specialize.

And sure insurance CEOs are paid more, but there are also a several magnitude more doctors than insurance CEOs. You could pay all the CEOs $1 and the cost of healthcare isn’t going to budget much.

Re: Health care is turning into a consumer product

#22

Post by nathias »

Reichhardt wrote: post #5
neuro_image2 wrote: post #4

The greatest healthcare improvements in the US could be brought about by: - Dismantling the insurance/big hospital complex that milks the US population for the enrichment of c-suite executives. - Removing the capacity for lobbying by insurance companies, large hospital groups, device and pharma companies (so they're less able to price gouge consumers). - Price transparency on all links of the chain of healthcare deli…

The simplest changes we could make would be to ban the addition of sugar to certain mainstream food categories (drinks, bread, sauces), and also to require nutritional information to be listed as per 100g, not per serving size. Follow that by banning burning of coal and oil, we also remove a significant amount of noise and air pollution. Next we can ban any hormone-disrupting chemicals (including as plastic additives…

seems symptomatic that you would rather give away some really basic freedoms and be treated like cattle just to avoid making the healthcare system public

Re: Health care is turning into a consumer product

#23

Post by diordiderot »

amelius wrote: post #16
neuro_image2 wrote: post #4

The greatest healthcare improvements in the US could be brought about by: - Dismantling the insurance/big hospital complex that milks the US population for the enrichment of c-suite executives. - Removing the capacity for lobbying by insurance companies, large hospital groups, device and pharma companies (so they're less able to price gouge consumers). - Price transparency on all links of the chain of healthcare deli…

> Its very typical of modernism (especially in the US) to think that the way to address everything is a nice app with a better UI. I'd be happy if the app could show medical expenses before the treatment.

Yes check the app while your limp unconscious body is shoved into the back of an ambulance. Type in appendectomy near me while you're writhing in pain in the passenger seat and decided, the hospital the next town over is a better deal

Re: Health care is turning into a consumer product

#25

Post by rscho »

refurb wrote: post #21
neuro_image2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on your comparison - that article didn't include Australia, NZ or Canada. Also if you factor in earnings and expenses over a lifetime (including cost of studying and the fact that many of the countries mentioned have free healthcare and education and far lower insurance requirements) it evens out substantially. More importantly, even the highest physician salaries are orders of magnitude less than…

I’ve got several friends who specifically moved to the US from Canada because the pay was so much better. No doubt it varies by circumstance, but docs ive known in the US pay off their $500k in student debt pretty quickly if they specialize. And sure insurance CEOs are paid more, but there are also a several magnitude more doctors than insurance CEOs. You could pay all the CEOs $1 and the cost of healthcare isn’t goi…

And, in the US, you could pay all doctors $1 and you'd still be left with more expensive healthcare than most western countries...

Re: Health care is turning into a consumer product

#26

Post by rscho »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #19
CryptoPunk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've seen, subsidies and regulations are the primary cause of inefficiency in healthcare: https://www.athenahealth.com/knowledge-hub/practice-manageme... >>Here's some food for thought: The number of physicians in the United States grew 150 percent between 1975 and 2010, roughly in keeping with population growth, while the number of healthcare administrators increased 3,200 percent for the same time period.…

Regulations and subsidies do not seem to make other countries' systems inefficient. They make it so that folks are safe and that they can actually get health care. I really want regulation in health care. I do not want medication to be a free-for-all like supplements are in the US. I'm not a doctor, after all, and they are slow to take supplements off the market even if they are harming or killing folks (take a look…

The big difference up to now has been that US hospitals have been run by a huge layer cake of administrators for a long time, while in other western countries healthcare workers have had much more direct control over how things are run.

This is changing fast though, and Europe is migrating to the US model at a rapid pace, with growing administrative layer and loss of control over prices. Interestingly, european politicians are also telling everyone that the problem is that docs earn too much and people tend to believe them.

Re: Health care is turning into a consumer product

#27

Post by roenxi »

qwerty456127 wrote: post #10
Griffinsauce wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"- Removing the capacity for lobbying by insurance companies, large hospital groups, device and pharma companies." This should be step one, always. While those perverse incentives exist everything else is an uphill battle.

This probably also is the hardest part. And the most alien to the whole American model of which lobbying is an integral part. IMHO you can only counter lobbying by allocating more to fact checking so it would be harder for them lobby things which are objectively wrong.

Why would fact checking have an influence on lobbying? Everyone knows what is going on. It isn't like the politicians, lobbyists, technical experts or public are in the dark about what is happening.

If anything, a fact checking organisation has incentives to align with or even become a lobby group. We've seen what happens to "fact checking" in the political sphere.

Re: Health care is turning into a consumer product

#28

Post by CryptoPunk »

Broken_Hippo wrote: post #19
CryptoPunk wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From what I've seen, subsidies and regulations are the primary cause of inefficiency in healthcare: https://www.athenahealth.com/knowledge-hub/practice-manageme... >>Here's some food for thought: The number of physicians in the United States grew 150 percent between 1975 and 2010, roughly in keeping with population growth, while the number of healthcare administrators increased 3,200 percent for the same time period.…

Regulations and subsidies do not seem to make other countries' systems inefficient. They make it so that folks are safe and that they can actually get health care. I really want regulation in health care. I do not want medication to be a free-for-all like supplements are in the US. I'm not a doctor, after all, and they are slow to take supplements off the market even if they are harming or killing folks (take a look…

>>Regulations and subsidies do not seem to make other countries' systems inefficient.

Other countries' healthcare systems are growing increasingly more inefficient as well, with the proportion of GDP expended on healthcare rapidly rising, with many seeing it double over the last 40 years. [1]

And they face critical shortages, like this case of a woman in Canada who had to wait two years to get a test that diagnosed her with cancer, because of a shortage of state-licensed doctors:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/doctor-shortage-cancer-video-...

>>I really want regulation in health care. I do not want medication to be a free-for-all like supplements are in the US.

I think the best of both worlds would be most regulations being opt-in, while disclosure regulations are mandatory.

More specifically, I think healthcare would benefit from legalizing the provision of medical service by un-certified individuals, as well as providing more than one tier of certification, where people who can't afford fully certified practitioners, but would like the assurance of some certification, have that option.

Instead of making it illegal for individuals who don't possess full certification to practice medicine, the law could instead require medical practitioners to disclose their level of certification, and any warnings the state provides in relation to that.

So for example, an uncertified doctor/nurse may be required to disclose not only that they are uncertified, but also the warning that the state strongly advises against using uncertified medical practitioners.

Why providing these options is critically important is that sometimes the prescribed institutions fail, and an escape hatch is a life saver, as in the case of a woman in Canada mentioned above.

>>I do not want average folks to be able to get antibiotics willy-nilly because I want to be able to take them when I'm old.

If the negative externalities of irresponsible antibiotic use is your concern, maybe you could advocate specifically regulations on antibiotic use.

When you advocate wholesale centralized gatekeeping of all manner of healthcare interaction, you deny people a way to escape failures of over-regulation, like regulations that prevent people from accessing life-saving medical products/services in a timely manner [2][3] or deny people access to a vaccine due to a risk from side effects that is orders of magnitude lower than the risk the vaccine mitigates. [4]

[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Healthcare-spending-as-a...

[2] https://www.propublica.org/article/this-scientist-created-a-...

[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...

[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/us/politics/johnson-johns...

Re: Health care is turning into a consumer product

#29

Post by neuro_image2 »

refurb wrote: post #21
neuro_image2 wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess it depends on your comparison - that article didn't include Australia, NZ or Canada. Also if you factor in earnings and expenses over a lifetime (including cost of studying and the fact that many of the countries mentioned have free healthcare and education and far lower insurance requirements) it evens out substantially. More importantly, even the highest physician salaries are orders of magnitude less than…

I’ve got several friends who specifically moved to the US from Canada because the pay was so much better. No doubt it varies by circumstance, but docs ive known in the US pay off their $500k in student debt pretty quickly if they specialize. And sure insurance CEOs are paid more, but there are also a several magnitude more doctors than insurance CEOs. You could pay all the CEOs $1 and the cost of healthcare isn’t goi…

This simply isn't true.

https://www.beckershospitalreview.com/payer-issues/what-5-he...

And its not just the CEOs - its all the parasites in the c-suite.

And these people contribute less than nothing to the health of patients, quite the opposite.

Re: Health care is turning into a consumer product

#30

Post by amcoastal »

diordiderot wrote: post #23
amelius wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Its very typical of modernism (especially in the US) to think that the way to address everything is a nice app with a better UI. I'd be happy if the app could show medical expenses before the treatment.

Yes check the app while your limp unconscious body is shoved into the back of an ambulance. Type in appendectomy near me while you're writhing in pain in the passenger seat and decided, the hospital the next town over is a better deal

You use an absurd scenario, not sure why, but we both know there are tons of times you go to a medical provider where if you could pay less for a slightly longer car ride, you'd do it. But that information isn't even available now. The only fucking industry that is allowed to sell you stuff without telling you how much it will cost.
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