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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

#271

Post by MathMonkeyMan »

potato3732842 wrote: post #249
emmelaich wrote: post #49

Related: Car Seats as Contraception https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/731812 > We estimate that these laws [mandating safety seats] prevented fatalities of 57 children in car crashes in 2017 but reduced total births by 8,000 that year and have decreased the total by 145,000 since 1980.

Car seats as contraception is just a specific enumeration of the general. "busybodies as contraception" problem wherein the "has so few real problems they stop minding their business and mind other's business" classes try to force priorities on the rest of society that the rest of society can't yet afford to have. And it's not just contraception or kids. Pretty much everything in our economy gets shot in the foot by…

Contraception is a bargain deal for any class, assuming you were not intending to have a kid.

I also question the idea that safety regulations (let's call them that) are the result of a class of people who have "so few real problems they stop minding their business and mind other's business." I get the idea, but couldn't the high cost of obstetrics and child car seat requirements be due to the wishes and decisions of people outside of this supposed class?

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#272

Post by fuzzfactor »

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.

Sounds like you are looking at it from a consumer's point of view.

The US "market" is between the drug companies, hospitals, practitioners' groups, insurance companies, and government.

They are the ones that have market participation, the patient's not involved with that, their primary duty is to provide justification for the transaction.

>Healthcare doesn't function as a market, to our detriment.

So true, but even worse than that, the market that is there is predatory to a cumulative detriment worse than when simply dropping the ball makes things go wrong :\

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#274

Post by tptacek »

potato3732842 wrote: post #251
autoexec wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> but if you dropped all government funding of healthcare tomorrow, healthcare plans would get cheaper. I doubt it. Hospitals charge $15 for a single pill of Tylenol because they know insurance will pay for it, and that includes private insurance. The best thing we could do is ditch the private healthcare industry to the extent that the rest of the first world has and cover everyone with government plans. Those plans…

You don't need the insurance industry sticking their dick in most of the business they do. Insurance is for the foreseeable but unforecastable, not for routine things. The additional overhead is substantial and adds huge marginal cost for routine things and say nothing of the principal-agent problem

You could zero out every dollar American insurers make and not materially alter consumer health care economics; their share of the health care pie is almost literally a rounding error.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#275

Post by maxerickson »

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #147
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?

Birth injuries are insured by the ob/gyn, which is part of the very high cost of delivering a baby in the US (because such injuries often lead to a lot of care).

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#276

Post by tptacek »

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #264
codingdave wrote: post #260

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not defending it. I'm correcting your misinformation. You are claiming that ACA plans do not cover childbirth. They do. You are claiming that this event alone costs 40K, which is not accurate. It hits your out of pocket max, exactly as designed. It sounds like you have never looked at an ACA silver plan, which is the lower deductible/out of pocket max option. I also have a family of 5, and have a $1800 per year o…

Dude, you don't even have your own facts straight and you are embarrassing yourself. It's clear you have no experience, don't understand your own sources you provided, or any clue how child birth actually works from a medical billing standpoint. Edit: what do I have to gain from spreading "misinformation?" I just want better / more options?

I don't know what you have to gain from it, but you're wrong. 42 U.S. Code § 18022, (b)(1)(D). ACA plans are required to cover childbirth.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#277

Post by avgDev »

BeetleB wrote: post #193
avgDev wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem is the healthcare cost is insane. You will go through $40k after a good injury that may need a major surgery or few smaller surgeries. Average cost for hip replacement is $40k. I've had a sports hernia and the bill was about $30k.

> I've had a sports hernia and the bill was about $30k. And what the OP is pointing out is that if your injury is $30K, insurance covers nothing , because the premium + deductible is $40K.

OP was talking about a family for $30k.

Imagine 2 people get injured in a year, you are now at $60k. Plus, $150 a visit for primary and $300+ for specialist.

My 5 year old has been to the hospital 3 times, stitches once. US healthcare will ruin you if you don't have insurance. A cancer treatment can bankrupt a millionaire.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#278

Post by tptacek »

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.

If that's true, explain surgical center pricing, which often beats health chain prices by over 50%.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#279

Post by potato3732842 »

tptacek wrote: post #274
potato3732842 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You don't need the insurance industry sticking their dick in most of the business they do. Insurance is for the foreseeable but unforecastable, not for routine things. The additional overhead is substantial and adds huge marginal cost for routine things and say nothing of the principal-agent problem

You could zero out every dollar American insurers make and not materially alter consumer health care economics; their share of the health care pie is almost literally a rounding error.

The magic of the system is that it's structured so that people like you can say things like that and not even be lying in any provable way.

Sure, it's not the actual insuring that's costing that much but the massive breakdown of incentives from increasingly vertically integrated healthcare companies (some of whom are insurers, some of whom own insurers) owning increasingly large shares of everything is clearly causing cost to spiral. The industry is making work for itself at out expense. Whether that work happens in the insurer's office or the billing office of the clinic that's owned by the insurer isn't really material. And of course everyone in the process gets a cut so they fight for their bit of it. Doctors used to drive the same crappy cars and live in the same modest houses as the rest of us. Nurse didn't used to be the "made it in life" job for people who come from poor backgrounds.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#280

Post by tptacek »

potato3732842 wrote: post #279
tptacek wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could zero out every dollar American insurers make and not materially alter consumer health care economics; their share of the health care pie is almost literally a rounding error.

The magic of the system is that it's structured so that people like you can say things like that and not even be lying in any provable way. Sure, it's not the actual insuring that's costing that much but the massive breakdown of incentives from increasingly vertically integrated healthcare companies (some of whom are insurers, some of whom own insurers) owning increasingly large shares of everything is clearly causin…

Dial it back a bit. I just made an extremely banal and citable claim about US health care. I agree with you (trivially verifiable from the search bar at the bottom of this page) about the practitioner compensation racket.

https://nationalhealthspending.org/

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