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US cities pay too much for buses

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Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#521

Post by BobbyTables2 »

moduspol wrote: post #408
qgin wrote: post #398

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a $6500 deductible. I definitely care what things cost because my insurance almost never actually helps pay for anything unless I have an unbelievably bad year. The problem is that literally nobody can tell me how much anything is going to cost until I get the bill in a month. Not even because they don't want to tell me. Nobody at the desk even knows what my price is going to be because it's all numberwang.

Not defending insurance but theoretically you do also get a better rate than the uninsured rate just by having it go through the health insurance. I say “theoretically” because I’ve also heard they’re often willing to cut some pretty good deals if you don’t have insurance and pay cash. And I mean “good” relative to the initially billed amount, not “good” relative to what it should actually cost.

I always view the initial billed amount as the MSRP for a really shady industry.

While it’s often 2x-3x the allowed amount, I’ve even seen it closer to 20x-40x one — an amount for a simple outpatient procedure the would lead to financial ruin if it had to be paid in full.

I really don’t understand why there is any math in the initial amounts.

Why don’t they just bill $1M for every single item and then see what they get?

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#522

Post by reliabilityguy »

avar wrote: post #325
RobKohr wrote: post #202

"Federal funding typically covers 80% of bus purchases, with agencies responsible for the remainder." Well, there is your answer. The one making the purchase isn't the one primarily paying for the purchase. This makes them less sensitive to pricing. Kinda like how expensive healthcare is since it is paid for by insurance. Or how you don't care how much you put on your plate or what you choose to eat at an all you can…

> The second you detach the consumer from the > price of something, even through an > intermediary such as health insurance, that > is when they stop caring about how much > something costs, and so the price jumps. In reality, this claim doesn't survive a cursory glance at the OECD's numbers for health expenditure per capita[1]. You'll find that (even ignoring the outlier that is the US health care system) that in so…

These reports tend to ignore how fast you can get a specific service or test done. There is plenty of anecdotal data out there that in US you can get CT or MeI the next day, while in many countries in the EU you have to wait months.

I think looking only on the spending per capita tells us nothing about accessibility of service, and its quality. Once you start to consider those things, imo, the whole thing is not as a clear cut as it looks.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#523

Post by adabyron »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #499
AnthonyMouse wrote: post #443

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It takes more than just misaligned incentives to get a banking crisis -- you have to have structural corruption preventing the transfer of the loss gradient back to the "misaligned" decision makers. Nah, you can do it just on the basis of information asymmetries. Banks can sell mortgages. People think buying mortgages is safe, because banks don't loan money to people they don't think can pay it back, and even if th…

Let me tell you something about people... You can sit them down and explain precisely why buying something, like a new car, is a bad financial decision and that they cannot afford it anyway, and then watch them go buy it anyway. To the point where I have seen people laugh about how dumb of an idea it is, while in the act of doing it. The "I wish someone explained to me..." that comes later when it all falls apart is…

Most humans have to learn the hard way no matter the age.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#524

Post by baggy_trough »

cmxch wrote: post #393
baggy_trough wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We solved that several generations ago with cars.

And broke it with congestion pricing so that only the few have the freedom to go where transit won’t or doesn’t.

Nobody goes there any more, it’s too crowded?

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#525

Post by Aunche »

meinersbur wrote: post #348
Aunche wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Modern MBA videos are like ChatGPT. They sound reasonable when he's talking about something you don't know, but you'll notice him getting basic facts wrong in topics that you're familiar with. For example, he diagnoses the growth of public storage as people from single family homes to apartments in big cities and having no place to store their things, citing that America's urbanization rate has increased. However, th…

What is your alternative explanation for why people rent public storage space? Urban growth and growth in suburbs are not mutually exclusive.

> What is your alternative explanation for why people rent public storage space?

People buying a lot more stuff. The mutually exclusive part is saying that home sizes decreased when they actually decreased.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#526

Post by chithanh »

crote wrote: post #491
Symbiote wrote: post #450

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Buses in places like Ireland, Scotland, much of Scandinavia, etc will never need air conditioning. Places a little warmer (England, Denmark, Netherlands, northern Germany) might be warm enough for a few days per year, but the cost of purchase and maintenance of A/C might not be worthwhile.

How many of those places have you been to? They might not need year-round A/C like some other countries, but the increasingly-common heat waves definitely require them. The buses are almost intolerable with air conditioning, there's no way in hell they'd ever purchase them without it. The additional purchase cost is a rounding error, and you're far worse off if cooking people alive during the summer means losing cust…

Here in Germany many passengers are even against air conditioning in buses and open the windows in summer so the AC doesn't work.

The windows often contain labels like "Fahrzeug klimatisiert" (Vehicle is air conditioned) so it is not that people are unaware.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#527

Post by simianwords »

mellow_observer wrote: post #515
simianwords wrote: post #455

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are right but in a roundabout way. It’s true that most problems in US can be explained by this but it’s also true that the west and US particularly are successful because they can bypass the principal agent problem to an extent. You just have to look at India or Africa a bit to understand the severity to which this problem permeates day to day in these countries.

That's an interesting line of thought. How would you say the US/west are able to bypass this problem more effectively?

No matter how poorly one thinks of westerners and their leaders, it is clear that in general they can look beyond themselves and their immediate surroundings when optimising their impact.

The same cannot be said about Indians and other poor people from poor countries. Their optimisation lies solely on themselves or immediate family. This has consequences at every level and even at the political level.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#528

Post by silvestrov »

jeroenhd wrote: post #482
grafmax wrote: post #479

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Kinda like how expensive healthcare is since it is paid for by insurance. If your argument were correct, socialized medicine would lead to higher costs, but it usually does the opposite. Insurance profit margins are a small portion of the overall cost in the US. In inelastic markets, when profit is removed, often you can see lower costs because profit by itself is purely extractive and in an inelastic market compet…

One of the controlling factors for socialized healthcare is that prices are negotiated down by the people paying for the medicine. In countries where private healthcare is extremely rare, pharmaceutical companies can choose between "less profit" or "no sales in that country at all". Sometimes they bluff and in rare cases that means public healthcare has to go without certain medication or certain vendors, but on the…

A more important factor is that socialized healthcare often acts like a single buyer instead of each hospital being a buyer.

This can make even small countries into relatively large buyers which can make better and more long term deals.

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#529

Post by Aloisius »

hackernewds wrote: post #431
Y_Y wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And congratulations to any of today's lucky ten thousand who are just learning of the Principal-Agent Problem. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principal%E2%80%93agent_proble...

there's no reason to be patronizing or condescending

It's an xkcd reference. Sadly, not explicitly mentioning it is xkcd sends the exact opposite message to the one in the comic to those unaware of it.

https://xkcd.com/1053/

Re: US cities pay too much for buses

#530

Post by DudeOpotomus »

In many municipalities, it would be cheaper to run on demand van service for people than run busses. Not only would it get people to and from their actual homes and work, vans are cheap and readily available. Paying more drivers is cheaper than buying and maintaining multi million dollar busses that are empty a lot of the time.

In most of CA, most homes are far from bus lines. Making their use prohibitive for all but those who must use them. I know they do something like this in LA. People love it.

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