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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

#81

Post by peter422 »

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #68
peter422 wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your whole argument is that the health care system should be optimized for the most productive members of society (like you, right now). You are perfectly fine to have that belief, but the majority of people disagree with you, which is one of the primary reasons the system is designed as it is.

I think the market can do a better job of optimizing than central planning ever can - the problem is we have both the costs of capitalism and socialism concurrently with the model we have now. A worst of both worlds scenario.

A struggling business can go under.

When somebody is sick we generally save them even if the cost/benefit is poor. No market is going to solve this if you want to save sick people who don’t have a lot of money.

There is no place in the world where health care is solved, it’s one trade off vs another.

The US system is also far far from perfect but your solution is quite shallow and unlikely to fix things in a way society wants.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#82

Post by shirro »

This is a question of priorities. Identify a problem, decide to fix it, then execute. It isn't about the particular solutions. Australia's gun control would not translate to a country like the USA and perhaps neither would its health care. First decide to put a person on the moon. Then execute. Only one country did that. It isn't that they can't solve problems like school shootings or affordable healthcare. There is no real will to do so. Not sure why exactly. It is a very strange place that defies expectations of how a developed country would behave.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#83

Post by Aaronontheweb »

toast0 wrote: post #79
mhb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also not a big impact on the message, but $200/mo for a phone is a bit disingenuous.

Claiming $200/month for a phone makes one wonder which numbers are valid. I'm not saying everyone needs to make a $100 phone last 5 years and use a $15/month plan, but I'm not even sure how I would get to $200/month in phone bill, even including financing an iPhone 17 Pro Max.

I pay that at least much for my family, hence why I used it

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#84

Post by hollandheese »

Aaronontheweb wrote: post #39
teachrdan wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you explain how this would help? I'm struggling to understand where you're coming from here, besides perhaps a reflexive libertarian reaction to government.

Massive government subsidies for health care consumption not only eliminate, but disincentivize price discovery. If your biggest consumers of health care (seniors) have access to the best health insurance plan in the world (Medicare), that's going to drive costs up

You know what actually drives costs up? The fact that healthcare doesn't work as a market. I can't shop for medical care. I don't have the knowledge and it's usually extremely time sensitive. This is a ridiculous statement that's only parroted by the most market-pilled right-wing economists.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#85

Post by peter422 »

vkou wrote: post #62
peter422 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The quality of health care in the US is significantly higher than anywhere else in the world. Whether that quality is necessarily (or good) is debatable, but we are getting something for the money. You also are just completely wrong in your main point. We cannot provide the same efficacy of healthcare as we are now for 60% less. We are the richest country in the world, labor costs more here than other places.

Expenses are definitely higher, and doctors and hospital CEOs and med school CEOs do drive nicer cars and have bigger summer dachas, but I can't say the same about quality. Six month waits for a specialist, every PCP and shrink you'd want to visit not taking on new patients, ER wait times comparable with other developed nations, worse overall outcomes... Maybe the top 0.5% is getting better care, but I really wouldn'…

See what the wait times are for the specialists in other countries, if they even exist!

The US is also the 3rd biggest country in the world. It’s very hard to solve these things are such a massive scale.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#86

Post by mindslight »

While not an answer to the general problem, one pragmatic avenue OP missed is to not have gotten married. Then he can have assets including a business, while his wife-in-spirit is on-paper poor and gets a subsidized plan (which then also covers the child's initial birth as an extension of her). AFAIK this wouldn't help after the children are born though (unless maybe you're willing to leave your name off of their birth certificates, which seems like a much higher level of norm rejection and outright misrepresentation).

In general corpos spend a good chunk of resources making new legal entities to escape liability and legibility - something that is simply not available to most individuals. Getting married takes your two naturally-existing legal entities and basically collapses them into a single one - throwing away much flexibility. So it seems like a poor idea in the current legal environment which has been thoroughly corrupted to extract wealth and channel it upwards.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#87

Post by abigail95 »

JKCalhoun wrote: post #16
denkmoon wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In Australia 5 out of 5 people are covered by Medicare, and 5 of them bear the burden. (at some point in their life. assuming they become a tax payer, which seems likely for most.)

I guess your health industry is not raping you with outrageous costs?

When I was in the USA just paying for things like a GP and a single specialist didn't seem outrageous coming from Australia.

If I worked in the US, I would have health insurance and would be paying lower out of pocket costs than I would in Australia. Combined with the higher salary and cheaper housing that's a pretty good deal.

Edit:

We allegedly have universal healthcare but that doesn't cover any actually competent specialist (need private healthcare for this) so paying $400 for 25 minutes of a psychiatrist every 2 months and $95 for 7 minutes of a GP is common.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#88

Post by mhb »

estimator7292 wrote: post #63
mhb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also not a big impact on the message, but $200/mo for a phone is a bit disingenuous.

I pay about that much for a family of 2.

I pay $127/mo for a family of 4. $800 for 4 refurb iphones amortized over ~5 years so add another $15/mo.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#89

Post by matmo »

vkou wrote: post #54
snikeris wrote: post #5

Nearly 2 in 5 Americans are covered by Medicare or Medicaid. TANSTAAFL. The other 3 bear the burden. At some point Atlas shrugs and decides welfare is a better deal.

Weird, I've seen a lot more people bitch about welfare and how easy people on the dole have it, than actually give up their nice jobs and lifestyles to go try living it.

I don't think the critique is that "welfare is objectively preferable" to a high paying career, but rather that the effort:reward ratio isn't scalable to society at large (without some level of social cohesion, I guess).

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#90

Post by racl101 »

edm0nd wrote: post #70
beefnugs wrote: post #8

You are absolutely right meatbag producer! Your brand new bundle of joy is expensive, but who can put a price on love? The system is designed to keep you in debt and near poverty as long as possible. But do not fret! If the meatbag is properly trained up to a point, and no further. It will be a hard working productive member of DisneyAICORP. And after working very hard and following instructions it may someday be abl…

Cant pay your child birth bill? Easy solution! You can just name your child after one of our pre-approved corpo sponsors and we'll take care of the rest. - Cinderella - Moana - Mulan - Cruella - Mark (property of Meta™) - Ariel

Meta World Peace Jr.
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