U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T • Hacker News Board

Re: U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T

#31

Post by kelseyfrog » Thu, Jun 25, 2026, 8:30 PM UTC

adjejmxbdjdn wrote: post #30

kelseyfrog wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We could end the Triffin dilemma by no longer maintaining the dollar as the unit of international reserve. This would eliminate the biggest driver of the trade deficit and via a reversing of the Baumol effect, lower the price of health care and education. The only problem? No one has the political will to do it. > Someone is charging way too much for goods and services It's more money chasing meager supply. They're c…

What’s the problem with the trade deficit? Americans are getting actual products and services in return for depreciating IOUs. It’s like a loan where the lender pays interest. Why would anyone be against that? Note: This is different from the strategic interest in maintaining domestic industries. That’s very defensible. But I don’t understand the fear of a trade deficit denominated in your own currency (other countri…

The US imports more goods than it exports. It also exports more services than it imports. The US Department of Commerce breaks down the numbers for import and export by goods and services[1].

Sure, the US benefits by having cheap goods. This means precisely that there's more money chasing services. It's why we have cheap televisions(yay!) but expensive healthcare, education, housing. Those things cannot be made elsewhere and imported into the US to benefit from the power of trade imbalance.

1. Page 14 of 56. https://www.bea.gov/sites/default/files/2026-06/trad0426.pdf

Re: U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T

#32

Post by silexia » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 1:26 PM UTC

The problem is the artificial restrictions on doctors to drive up prices and the artificial restrictions on medical equipment (patents) to drive up prices.

Re: U.S. health spending on pace to hit $6T

#33

Post by jmaha » Fri, Jun 26, 2026, 4:05 PM UTC

alex0015 wrote: post #19

vitally3643 wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"AI will solve this deeply rooted social problem" is, and forgive my bluntness, is one of the most idiotic AI opinions I've seen this week. The only thing that will fix American healthcare is absolute abolishment of private insurance. That's it. No amount of gentle incentive tweaking or whizbang technology is going to solve the fundamental problem of human greed and immorality. Allowing private health insurance to ex…

How exactly do you propose to "remove profit from medicine?" If someone wants to have a procedure done and their insurance doesn't want to pay, they can still pay the doctor to get it done themselves. And it will still be very expensive because doctors in the US are used to charging very high salaries and using medical equipment and medicines that cost a lot of money. Insurance companies are required by law to use 80…

In addition to all of the stuff insurance denies, they also won't pay for anything considered elective care (and that's a pretty broad brush). There are ways around this but that's neither here nor there for this discussion.

Like the other commenter suggested, medical tourism is a viable answer. Most Americans have probably heard of Turkey for hair transplants, but the truth is that certain countries specialize in specific procedures, and are the BEST in the world at performing them, and with the best outcomes.

I've done several procedures abroad and saved 70-80% vs the US cost, and that's including the travel and vacation portion. Yes, medicine costs a lot, but most people are ignorant to where most of that money is going to pay for, and how expensive the "system" makes things in the US.