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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

#391

Post by CTDOCodebases »

jenadine wrote: post #329
idontwantthis wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Of course they do. Everything a parent buys for a child increases GDP.

GDP is not measuring what is bought, but what is produced.

Bingo!

Some will argue that consumption drives production but according to the common definition children don’t contribute to GDP.

Assuming governments are going to address population growth/decline then it’s a choice between incentivising births or issuing visas.

Even in countries that have free healthcare births are in decline so it’s not the cost of children alone that is causing this situation. I would argue it’s the economic crutch called immigration.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#392

Post by kmeisthax »

godsinhisheaven wrote: post #76

A lot of this is an issue of insurance no longer being "insurance" in the classical sense. Insurance covers all sorts of things, my HSA pays for all sorts of things that I never would have even considered, and while that sounds great, it helps to drive up costs. It's somewhat counter-intuitive, but if you dropped all government funding of healthcare tomorrow, healthcare plans would get cheaper. It'd also be total cha…

The cost inflation started with pharmaceutical companies buying each other out and increasing the cost of drugs. Then the hospitals consolidated so they could get better negotiating power with pharmaceutical companies... and also, raise their prices to insurance companies. Who then also had to consolidate to preserve margin.

The idea that cost inflation is downstream of subsidy is... well, it's not entirely wrong, but it's also propaganda written by the people doing the inflation. The government can't distribute economically effective subsidies if industry is conspiring to eat the subsidy and hold the consumer hostage to get more. In an unconsolidated market, the underlying actual costs don't change beyond the increased demand. Consolidation transfers the subsidy premium away from the customers, who can't consolidate. You can't give a bullied kid more lunch money.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#393

Post by SlightlyLeftPad »

teeray wrote: post #345
SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #310

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That will be uhm, $15. Have a fantastic holiday!

My point being that healthcare costs for pets are immediately calculable, where it’s a big damn mystery for months on end about how much equivalent human healthcare will end up costing. Clearly, if the former is possible, the latter should be too.

Totally agree there. I was simply demonstrating that interaction directly. For a human, it’s “we’ll bill your insurance for that Gabapentin. We’ll need pre-authorization first, assuming it’s covered, you’re out of pocket cost will be your copay of $25 plus 20% coinsurance of whatever number the insurance company decided it should cost assuming you’ve met your deductible.” Me: “what’s the cash price without insurance?” Cashier: “$30”

It’s basically the Kohl’s pricing model except there’s no hope of ever finding out what that single bottle of meds will cost until you’ve completely forgotten it 6 months later and you get a bill for $600.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#394

Post by SlightlyLeftPad »

kmeisthax wrote: post #387
SlightlyLeftPad wrote: post #309

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Did we discover a new kind of monopoly perhaps? It’s not quite full blown corruption as there still (for now) exists a somewhat adversarial relationship between insurance and hospitals. However, at the same time, they seem to be pulling each other into the abyss, and our so…

Pretty much every healthcare business unit - hospitals, pharma, insurance, and so on - are deeply consolidated. It spread like contagion, as anyone who didn't consolidate got their margin eaten. The sum of all those different vectors pulling on the same market is one unified message: "rape the consumer for all they're worth"! Because that's the only source of margin left, and everyone's got hungry shareholders who on…

It might as well be Standard oil company

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#395

Post by postflopclarity »

greenavocado wrote: post #372
giraffe_lady wrote: post #361

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Moving in a private vehicle is statistically the most dangerous activity an otherwise healthy young person routinely participates in. Your family is almost certainly at higher risk of death and serious injury now because you based this decision on your perception of safety rather than evaluating the reality of it. Speaking of "pure facts."

I have more than 200,000 miles accident free and my kids are doing fine. Living in a city with unhinged maniacs on drugs was way more dangerous.

you are not correctly evaluating the risks you take by driving. it wasn't more dangerous. but ok.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#396

Post by Aloisius »

csa wrote: post #386
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.

> 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. What are you implying with this comment? I generally enjoy reading your comments, as they provide some interesting and often unique insight. But this one… Either it’s something I don’t understand, or it has the potential to be incred…

The primary reason Japan's healthcare is affordable is because the government institutes strict price controls on healthcare providers. Every procedure, every service, every medical device and every drug has a price fixed nationally and those prices are below even what Medicaid pays.

Normally, price controls would lead to shortages, but with healthcare, there's always shortages with or without price controls and every country has to, in some way or another, ration care anyway.

If you tried to implement that here, doctors would riot (read: use their ridiculously powerful lobby to kill it or get the fee schedule increased - which they did every year for a decade when medicare dared to institute cost controls. see: medicare doc fix).

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#397

Post by machomaster »

eudamoniac wrote: post #354
machomaster wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is akin to him saying that average American needs X money for the car to participate in society, and you suggest that his numbers don't math because one could: 1. Walk around everywhere (Idaho, Iowa) 2. move to New York (with ok public transportation) Mobile phone and unlimited high-speed internet are requirements for participation in society.

> unlimited high-speed internet are requirements for participation in society I pay $7/mo (not a typo) for 1GB mobile data via US Mobile, and I have never hit that cap in many years. I just don't stream video or audio unless on WiFi, which is not a hardship. Respectfully, what on earth are you talking about?

My monthly mobile internet usage is 5-25GB. And this is me working from home using wifi, having cheap internet (slow, but unlimited) and barely being outside. Phone wifi usage is 150-250GB/month.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#398

Post by machomaster »

BeetleB wrote: post #365
machomaster wrote: post #342

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is akin to him saying that average American needs X money for the car to participate in society, and you suggest that his numbers don't math because one could: 1. Walk around everywhere (Idaho, Iowa) 2. move to New York (with ok public transportation) Mobile phone and unlimited high-speed internet are requirements for participation in society.

Not at all. Most people don't use 5 GB in data each month. Most people do drive. > Mobile phone and unlimited high-speed internet are requirements for participation in society. Sadly, I have to agree with you about mobile phones, due to 2FA. But unlimited high speed just for when you don't have Wifi a requirement? Nonsense.

Worrying about what the wifi password is for this place is such an old-school thing in America. Europeans and Asians find it baffling.

If you have internet access on your phone while you're actively moving, it should work all the time, without any traffic limits or the need to keep asking for shitty cafe wifi (because your mobile internet is even worse).

It really reminds me of the Healthcare System conversations, when Americans are justifying why their way of doing things is logical and correct, while the rest of the world shakes their heads.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#399

Post by jhorsager »

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).

"Less noticeable" are the keywords. Premiums are not paid by employers. They are paid by employees from what would otherwise be part of their salary.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#400

Post by [deleted] »

jhorsager wrote: post #399
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).

"Less noticeable" are the keywords. Premiums are not paid by employers. They are paid by employees from what would otherwise be part of their salary.

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