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It is just one other indicator of the flaws of the free market approach to everything in the US. Whether it is health care or education, treating it as a produc

It is just one other indicator of the flaws of the free market approach to everything in the US. Whether it is health care or education, treating it as a product or service sold to consumers creates perverse incentives. The market has become a religion in the US. It is taken as dogma that it is always the most efficient way to do things. When it is stunningly inefficient. I've used health care in the US a number of times, at it is quite grotesque how they treat it as a sales transaction dishing out as much pills and treatment as they can, almost like a car salesman trying to get you to buy add-ons. My US doctor insisted on giving me anti-biotics despite the fact that I had the common cold and protested that this does not work for a virus infection. Whatever you issue is they attempt to give you the most expensive treatment even if something cheaper would do. And there is in an unhealthy obsession with unnecessary frills. Anything to get the customer to keep coming back. I quite liked American university, but it was extremely lax. They gave students endless opportunities to fix their grades. Again anything to make the customers happy. Grades was rather pointless as it only seemed like A's mattered.

WalterBright 10y ago
Before Obamacare, 1 out of every 2 dollars spent on health care in the US was spent by the government. It is hardly a free market. The education business has heavy government financial involvement, too. On the other side, check the software business. It's a powerful engine for growth and wealth in this country, despite having driven prices for software literally to zero. And the software business in the US is the most free market industry in the country - no licenses, permits, subsidies, tariffs, regulations, etc.
- calibraxis 10y ago
  Government subsidy (and occasional gov't supported monopolies like Bell Labs) is responsible for the software industry. This is very well-documented. Public takes the biggest risks, then rewards are privatized. Hence the economic importance of programs like DARPA. http://marianamazzucato.com/the-entrepreneurial-state/ http://marianamazzucato.com/the-entrepreneurial-state/
  - awt 10y ago
    How do you know tech wouldn't be more advanced than it is now if the public hadn't been forced to pay for government science?
    - lunchTime42 10y ago
      True free market approach would be to have two variants of running buisnesses run against one another.
      - hypeibole 10y ago
        Isn't that mostly what happened? US pushing science and education during the Cold War to compete against the USSR?
  - WalterBright 10y ago
    Hmm, I've been in the software industry for 40 years. Never got a dollar in subsidy.
    - drauh 10y ago
      Because anecdote == data?
      - WalterBright 10y ago
        What significant subsidies did Microsoft/Google/Apple/Oracle/etc. get? Also, Edison invented the vacuum tube upon which it is all based. I read a biography of him, and he never got a subsidy. Shouldn't he get all the credit?
        hobs 10y ago
        Google started university research project with NSF grants helping them to create the goliath we see today, they probably would not exist otherwise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Early_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Early_histor... Also I would call most of the government projects that Oracle is on subsidies considering how little value they deliver and how much they cost.
- lunchTime42 10y ago
  Its never free enough. And if it where, it was the customers fault. And if the customers behaved flawless and it would not work. There would be traitors, sabbotaging a perfect system. In a closed worldview critque acceptance is not even possible anymore. Anything brought up is not evaluated but instantly deflected. There is no - "Lets measure this" and compare (Lets call it the free market approach to ideas ;) just offense and defense. Thanks for proving the Pa-OP right.
  - AnthonyMouse 10y ago
    When you define "free market" as "absence of government regulation" then you can get whatever result you want, because you can build something that looks like a government inside it, not call it a government, and have it do the thing you need a government to do. And then if you get one of those things which is doing the bad things governments do, you do call it a government and it isn't a free market anymore. The lesson from this is not "free markets are bad," it's "simplistic ideologies are useless." We know that private actors are bad at some things, like funding basic research and building roads and utilities. We also know that governments are bad at some things, like making consumer products. So let the government build the roads and let GE make the washing machines. The worst alternative is to have the government do half of something. This is the US healthcare system. Single payer has problems, but it works. The complete absence of government in healthcare would have different problems but would also work. What we have doesn't work. It's a corrupt mechanism for funneling public money into drug companies. Here's the test for whether the government should do something: Does it make sense for the government to pay for this and then give it away for absolutely no money whatsoever to every citizen of the country? If not, the government shouldn't do it. Notice that the answer for healthcare is then not obvious, but the thing we have is not a valid answer.
  - jerf 10y ago
    The point is not that making health care more free market would necessarily improve it. The point is that using the US healthcare system to beat up on free markets is fallacious, because the US healthcare system is not a free market in the first place. Cards on the table, I do think that more freedom in the market would be good for the entire system, from top to bottom. But I can find myself in total agreement with those who think it should be more socialized that what we have now is a really crazy, chaotic system that seems to manage to combine the worst of both worlds. As a result, it's every bit as valid to claim that socialized health care is a disaster because the US health care system proves that it doesn't work... which is to say, an entirely invalid and fallacious claim.
- soundwave106 10y ago
  The issue with health care and free markets, is that a fully free health care market would not morally sit well with a lot of people, and some sectors of health care lack the ingredients that make free markets work. EG: in a free market, if someone has a healthcare emergency, yet cannot afford to pay for the service required, the free market would say -- dump this person in the street. Not exactly a morally pleasing choice. Free markets assume a rational and informed consumer; a person having a medical emergency is not always going to be a rational and informed consumer. Not to say there is plenty of scope for a competitive marketplace in healthcare (there is, particularly for less critical care and wellness etc.), but certain portions really don't fall in scope in my opinion. The problem with the US healthcare market is that it kind of pretends to be this "free market healthcare" system, while in reality being a half-baked socialized medical system built in bits and pieces over time. Some people are covered by the government (Medicare and Medicaid). The government relies on companies to provide much of the remainder (with tax incentives), but heavily regulates the type of health care that can be offered (eg HMOs). Since not everyone is employed by a large company, this leaves many gaps where people have no de facto health coverage at all. Except for emergency rooms, which (thanks to some notorious emergency street dumping instances in the 1980s) will accept anyone these days. It's a mess. "Obamacare" merely plugged a couple of gaps. Much greater reform is needed, IMHO. But there does seem to be a chorus of people who, with their strong belief in free markets, believe that the US healthcare system is a free market one (it's not) and consequently believe that the US healthcare system is the best in the world (anyone who has traveled knows how laughable this statement is). It's hard to get meaningful reform as long as this belief persists.
  - neonhomer 10y ago
    > EG: in a free market, if someone has a healthcare emergency, yet cannot afford to pay for the service required, the free market would say -- dump this person in the street. So before the EMTALA was passed in 1986 people were dying in the street? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...
    - soundwave106 10y ago
- xenadu02 10y ago
  Healthcare is not and cannot ever be a free market. There is a massive asymmetry because everyone will need it at some random point not of their choosing and when they do need it the consequences of not having it can be death. Healthcare is not a fungible good. If you have aggressive cancer you can't just switch to a phsychiatrist because he/she is a "cheaper good" than your oncologist. Delaying purchase of your heart surgery may mean death.
  - rqebmm 10y ago
    Not to mention the inability to negotiate. "Excuse me sir, I know I might be having a heart attack, but can you please provide me a quote for this ambulance ride? I'd like to do some due diligence." Said exactly no one.
    - deleted 10y ago
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    - deleted 10y ago
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- fbonetti 10y ago
  Software is essentially a luxury item though. I know that we engineers like to think we're the gods of the universe, but nobody needs software to survive. People survived just fine without software for literally all of human history.
danieltillett 10y ago
Grade inflation is a very good example of why the institution offering the education should not be in charge of testing if the education was effective.
- tonyedgecombe 10y ago
  In the UK we have examination boards for school level exams, I'd love to see that extended to degree qualifications as well.
  - danieltillett 10y ago
    Didn't you have a major problem with schools choosing the examination board that marked the easiest?
    - red_admiral 10y ago
      Yes, and we also have grade inflation - we used to mark on an A-E scale but now we have an A* too. BBC article, with interesting graphs: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11012369 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11012369
    - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
      Yes, but I don't think that is too difficult to resolve.
      - danieltillett 10y ago
        Yes don't let the schools choose who is going to be assessing if their teaching is effective.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
- Jach 10y ago
  The institution offering the education must be able to test if their education is effective, education doesn't work well without tight feedback loops. Neither teachers nor students are drones whose behavior can be measured by some perfect third party process or human(s). That said what passes for education at most places works best when you do start treating teachers and students as drones. The logical conclusion of that is something like Khan Academy with spaced repetition, and the savings in time and money worldwide would be tremendous if that system were to be embraced by the US department of education. What passes for education is definitely worthwhile for some things, but it's not really in the traditional spirit of education.
chjohasbrouck 10y ago
I used to read about countries where it was a common practice to pay bribe money to be given a job, and think how awful that was. Now I live in a country that buries its youth in debt that can't be discharged through bankruptcy, to pay for an increasingly ineffective education, to get a job almost anyone could do, that lists higher education as a requirement when it really doesn't have to. If you zoom out to the big picture, it's almost as if employment in the US is becoming a pay-to-play system.
- Jach 10y ago
  For your first bit, do you mean things like fathers paying some shop owner some money to give their sons a chance at a job over some other kids that went through a hiring process, or do you mean things (still going on) like politicians backing certain regulations that just so happen to mightily benefit the corporation they become a highly paid member of when they lose their reelection or retire? Pay-to-play, spending money to make money, has usually been the rule even if you're born rich. The trick is always on how to spend less money than other people at your level to make the same or more -- your required piece of paper, while still more expensive than it used to be, isn't unavoidably crippling-debt expensive, and so with a little forethought you can get in the game with a lot less expense than some of your peers. If basic income can somehow work economically we might turn into a free-to-play system, I don't know if that would actually be better overall though.
  - thaumasiotes 10y ago
    >> I used to read about countries where it was a common practice to pay bribe money to be given a job > For your first bit, do you mean things like fathers paying some shop owner some money to give their sons a chance at a job over some other kids that went through a hiring process, or do you mean things (still going on) like politicians backing certain regulations that just so happen to mightily benefit the corporation they become a highly paid member of when they lose their reelection or retire? I assume he's talking about neither of those, but rather the common practice of buying a job for yourself. For example, you might go to a highly-placed English functionary with a big bag of cash and purchase a post as customs inspector for a port somewhere in the Empire. Historically this was more the norm than the exception in colonial Europe. (Fun fact: the customs inspector position was generally a lot more expensive than notionally better jobs like "governor" (also for sale). That's because the customs inspector was ideally placed to take bribes himself.)
neonhomer 10y ago
> What caused the most recent bout of grade inflation? Some point to the rise in tuition—and educational debt... One of the largest reasons for skyrocketing tuition is the US government's guaranteed student loans. And those loans are very difficult to discharge by declaring bankruptcy, which makes the loans less risky to the schools. This is the farthest thing from free market capitalism.
cpursley 10y ago
Calling the American healthcare system "free-market" is disingenuous at worse and hilarious at best. It's probably the most regulated and convoluted sector of the US economy. In contrast, the pet healthcare system in the US is much less regulated. As a result, getting care for my pets is so much easier to navigate (you can actually get price quotes!) and much multitudes cheaper than human healthcare, despite the similar medical procedures and training required of doctors.
- brianwawok 10y ago
  Okay this is the worst argument for an unregulated healthcare system I have ever heard. 1) How much money goes into pet medicine research vs human? 2) What happens when a pet is sick and the cost of care exceeds money of owner? You want a health care system where you use 15-20 year old medicine with no research, and most bills > $1000 lead to euthanasia? Sure that would be a cheap healthcare system...
  - refurb 10y ago
    You want a health care system where you use 15-20 year old medicine with no research What? Animal health is a huge industry. Zoetis was spun off of Pfizer and is making money hand over fist. Lots of new animal drugs are approved each year.
  - xkcd-sucks 10y ago
    Animal drugs are the same as human drugs, plus all the human drugs which fail fairly late in the development pipeline. Animal physiology re: absorption, toxicity, metabolism etc. is pretty well studied because most mammals are used for drug testing/as models of human disease.
  - crpatino 10y ago
    You have packed a large number of biases in a single line: > You want a health care system where you use 15-20 year old medicine with no research, and most bills > $1000 lead to euthanasia? Sure that would be a cheap healthcare system... 15-20 year technology (and I hope you agree modern medicine is, broadly speaking, a form of technology) is not old; it is robust and time tested. Today, building business critical operations in Fortune 500 companies on top of Linux is a no brainer, but not so much in 1996; and whoever told you otherwise back then was both unprofessional and self-deluded with evangelist zeal. Your claim that veterinarian medicine has "no research" does not hold water either. Sure, there might be less money being expended in researching animal health care than human health care, but this does not mean that the science behind veterinarian medicine is any less valid. If anything, it's probably more valid because there are so many less emotional hot-button issues and underhanded political agendas lurking around it. About the $1k bills, there are two ways to see it. You claim that it is a bad thing that most >$1K procedures end up with pacient death. I, on the other hand, would like to point out that this is a proof that it is possible for a whole calss of modern health care professionals to charge <$1k for procedures that solve most non life-threatening conditions and remain gainfully in business. Note this argument is valid regradless of your position on human euthanasia. Finally, your use of "cheap" healthcare system is used as a double-entendre. You are conflating "affordable" with "stingy" in that single word. As exposed above, you can clearly see that the first not necessarily implies the second.
snarfy 10y ago
If it were a free market, you would see prices advertised. This is how you know it's not a free market. This is true in a lot of markets, not just healthcare.
- neonhomer 10y ago
  Good point, there's only one medical center I've heard in the US that actually advertises their prices: http://surgerycenterok.com/pricing/ http://surgerycenterok.com/pricing/
micahbright 10y ago
"...the free market approach to everything in the US"...It's almost as if you believe there is a free market in education or healthcare or...almost anything in the US.
Shivetya 10y ago
The only flaw with free market economies is assuming the US actually has one. The regulation of commerce is so extreme in some areas as to border on near fascism (don't equate the term with NAZI) : where government dictates prices for goods and services without risking anything of its own. Politicians setting rates and guarantees that are not driven by market need. grade inflation exists because of this unwillingness to offend people and telling people they are not the best if offensive. hence why colleges like affirmative action is that they will get candidates not used to being at the top of their class and be more willing to accept lower grades (go look it up, it does exist and been studied) the US health care system, well it only got into the condition it was in because of over regulation. preventing insurance from crossing state lines pretty much doomed it
refurb 10y ago
My US doctor insisted on giving me anti-biotics despite the fact that I had the common cold and protested that this does not work for a virus infection. Your doctor doesn't make any money when they prescribe something. They make money off the office visit. There was absolutely zero financial gain for the doc prescribing you antibiotics.
specialist 10y ago
"flaws of the free market approach" But, but, (sputters), but the Patriotic American Baby Jesus loves Freedom Markets™.

WalterBright 10y ago

Before Obamacare, 1 out of every 2 dollars spent on health care in the US was spent by the government. It is hardly a free market. The education business has heavy government financial involvement, too. On the other side, check the software business. It's a powerful engine for growth and wealth in this country, despite having driven prices for software literally to zero. And the software business in the US is the most free market industry in the country - no licenses, permits, subsidies, tariffs, regulations, etc.

calibraxis 10y ago
Government subsidy (and occasional gov't supported monopolies like Bell Labs) is responsible for the software industry. This is very well-documented. Public takes the biggest risks, then rewards are privatized. Hence the economic importance of programs like DARPA. http://marianamazzucato.com/the-entrepreneurial-state/ http://marianamazzucato.com/the-entrepreneurial-state/
- awt 10y ago
  How do you know tech wouldn't be more advanced than it is now if the public hadn't been forced to pay for government science?
  - lunchTime42 10y ago
    True free market approach would be to have two variants of running buisnesses run against one another.
    - hypeibole 10y ago
      Isn't that mostly what happened? US pushing science and education during the Cold War to compete against the USSR?
- WalterBright 10y ago
  Hmm, I've been in the software industry for 40 years. Never got a dollar in subsidy.
  - drauh 10y ago
    Because anecdote == data?
    - WalterBright 10y ago
      What significant subsidies did Microsoft/Google/Apple/Oracle/etc. get? Also, Edison invented the vacuum tube upon which it is all based. I read a biography of him, and he never got a subsidy. Shouldn't he get all the credit?
      - hobs 10y ago
        Google started university research project with NSF grants helping them to create the goliath we see today, they probably would not exist otherwise. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Early_history https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Google#Early_histor... Also I would call most of the government projects that Oracle is on subsidies considering how little value they deliver and how much they cost.
lunchTime42 10y ago
Its never free enough. And if it where, it was the customers fault. And if the customers behaved flawless and it would not work. There would be traitors, sabbotaging a perfect system. In a closed worldview critque acceptance is not even possible anymore. Anything brought up is not evaluated but instantly deflected. There is no - "Lets measure this" and compare (Lets call it the free market approach to ideas ;) just offense and defense. Thanks for proving the Pa-OP right.
- AnthonyMouse 10y ago
  When you define "free market" as "absence of government regulation" then you can get whatever result you want, because you can build something that looks like a government inside it, not call it a government, and have it do the thing you need a government to do. And then if you get one of those things which is doing the bad things governments do, you do call it a government and it isn't a free market anymore. The lesson from this is not "free markets are bad," it's "simplistic ideologies are useless." We know that private actors are bad at some things, like funding basic research and building roads and utilities. We also know that governments are bad at some things, like making consumer products. So let the government build the roads and let GE make the washing machines. The worst alternative is to have the government do half of something. This is the US healthcare system. Single payer has problems, but it works. The complete absence of government in healthcare would have different problems but would also work. What we have doesn't work. It's a corrupt mechanism for funneling public money into drug companies. Here's the test for whether the government should do something: Does it make sense for the government to pay for this and then give it away for absolutely no money whatsoever to every citizen of the country? If not, the government shouldn't do it. Notice that the answer for healthcare is then not obvious, but the thing we have is not a valid answer.
- jerf 10y ago
  The point is not that making health care more free market would necessarily improve it. The point is that using the US healthcare system to beat up on free markets is fallacious, because the US healthcare system is not a free market in the first place. Cards on the table, I do think that more freedom in the market would be good for the entire system, from top to bottom. But I can find myself in total agreement with those who think it should be more socialized that what we have now is a really crazy, chaotic system that seems to manage to combine the worst of both worlds. As a result, it's every bit as valid to claim that socialized health care is a disaster because the US health care system proves that it doesn't work... which is to say, an entirely invalid and fallacious claim.
soundwave106 10y ago
The issue with health care and free markets, is that a fully free health care market would not morally sit well with a lot of people, and some sectors of health care lack the ingredients that make free markets work. EG: in a free market, if someone has a healthcare emergency, yet cannot afford to pay for the service required, the free market would say -- dump this person in the street. Not exactly a morally pleasing choice. Free markets assume a rational and informed consumer; a person having a medical emergency is not always going to be a rational and informed consumer. Not to say there is plenty of scope for a competitive marketplace in healthcare (there is, particularly for less critical care and wellness etc.), but certain portions really don't fall in scope in my opinion. The problem with the US healthcare market is that it kind of pretends to be this "free market healthcare" system, while in reality being a half-baked socialized medical system built in bits and pieces over time. Some people are covered by the government (Medicare and Medicaid). The government relies on companies to provide much of the remainder (with tax incentives), but heavily regulates the type of health care that can be offered (eg HMOs). Since not everyone is employed by a large company, this leaves many gaps where people have no de facto health coverage at all. Except for emergency rooms, which (thanks to some notorious emergency street dumping instances in the 1980s) will accept anyone these days. It's a mess. "Obamacare" merely plugged a couple of gaps. Much greater reform is needed, IMHO. But there does seem to be a chorus of people who, with their strong belief in free markets, believe that the US healthcare system is a free market one (it's not) and consequently believe that the US healthcare system is the best in the world (anyone who has traveled knows how laughable this statement is). It's hard to get meaningful reform as long as this belief persists.
- neonhomer 10y ago
  > EG: in a free market, if someone has a healthcare emergency, yet cannot afford to pay for the service required, the free market would say -- dump this person in the street. So before the EMTALA was passed in 1986 people were dying in the street? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_and_Active_Labor_Act https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emergency_Medical_Treatment_an...
  - soundwave106 10y ago
xenadu02 10y ago
Healthcare is not and cannot ever be a free market. There is a massive asymmetry because everyone will need it at some random point not of their choosing and when they do need it the consequences of not having it can be death. Healthcare is not a fungible good. If you have aggressive cancer you can't just switch to a phsychiatrist because he/she is a "cheaper good" than your oncologist. Delaying purchase of your heart surgery may mean death.
- rqebmm 10y ago
  Not to mention the inability to negotiate. "Excuse me sir, I know I might be having a heart attack, but can you please provide me a quote for this ambulance ride? I'd like to do some due diligence." Said exactly no one.
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
  - deleted 10y ago
    [deleted]
fbonetti 10y ago
Software is essentially a luxury item though. I know that we engineers like to think we're the gods of the universe, but nobody needs software to survive. People survived just fine without software for literally all of human history.

danieltillett 10y ago

Grade inflation is a very good example of why the institution offering the education should not be in charge of testing if the education was effective.

tonyedgecombe 10y ago
In the UK we have examination boards for school level exams, I'd love to see that extended to degree qualifications as well.
- danieltillett 10y ago
  Didn't you have a major problem with schools choosing the examination board that marked the easiest?
  - red_admiral 10y ago
    Yes, and we also have grade inflation - we used to mark on an A-E scale but now we have an A* too. BBC article, with interesting graphs: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11012369 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/education-11012369
  - tonyedgecombe 10y ago
    Yes, but I don't think that is too difficult to resolve.
    - danieltillett 10y ago
      Yes don't let the schools choose who is going to be assessing if their teaching is effective.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
Jach 10y ago
The institution offering the education must be able to test if their education is effective, education doesn't work well without tight feedback loops. Neither teachers nor students are drones whose behavior can be measured by some perfect third party process or human(s). That said what passes for education at most places works best when you do start treating teachers and students as drones. The logical conclusion of that is something like Khan Academy with spaced repetition, and the savings in time and money worldwide would be tremendous if that system were to be embraced by the US department of education. What passes for education is definitely worthwhile for some things, but it's not really in the traditional spirit of education.

chjohasbrouck 10y ago

I used to read about countries where it was a common practice to pay bribe money to be given a job, and think how awful that was. Now I live in a country that buries its youth in debt that can't be discharged through bankruptcy, to pay for an increasingly ineffective education, to get a job almost anyone could do, that lists higher education as a requirement when it really doesn't have to. If you zoom out to the big picture, it's almost as if employment in the US is becoming a pay-to-play system.

Jach 10y ago
For your first bit, do you mean things like fathers paying some shop owner some money to give their sons a chance at a job over some other kids that went through a hiring process, or do you mean things (still going on) like politicians backing certain regulations that just so happen to mightily benefit the corporation they become a highly paid member of when they lose their reelection or retire? Pay-to-play, spending money to make money, has usually been the rule even if you're born rich. The trick is always on how to spend less money than other people at your level to make the same or more -- your required piece of paper, while still more expensive than it used to be, isn't unavoidably crippling-debt expensive, and so with a little forethought you can get in the game with a lot less expense than some of your peers. If basic income can somehow work economically we might turn into a free-to-play system, I don't know if that would actually be better overall though.
- thaumasiotes 10y ago
  >> I used to read about countries where it was a common practice to pay bribe money to be given a job > For your first bit, do you mean things like fathers paying some shop owner some money to give their sons a chance at a job over some other kids that went through a hiring process, or do you mean things (still going on) like politicians backing certain regulations that just so happen to mightily benefit the corporation they become a highly paid member of when they lose their reelection or retire? I assume he's talking about neither of those, but rather the common practice of buying a job for yourself. For example, you might go to a highly-placed English functionary with a big bag of cash and purchase a post as customs inspector for a port somewhere in the Empire. Historically this was more the norm than the exception in colonial Europe. (Fun fact: the customs inspector position was generally a lot more expensive than notionally better jobs like "governor" (also for sale). That's because the customs inspector was ideally placed to take bribes himself.)

neonhomer 10y ago

> What caused the most recent bout of grade inflation? Some point to the rise in tuition—and educational debt... One of the largest reasons for skyrocketing tuition is the US government's guaranteed student loans. And those loans are very difficult to discharge by declaring bankruptcy, which makes the loans less risky to the schools. This is the farthest thing from free market capitalism.

cpursley 10y ago

Calling the American healthcare system "free-market" is disingenuous at worse and hilarious at best. It's probably the most regulated and convoluted sector of the US economy. In contrast, the pet healthcare system in the US is much less regulated. As a result, getting care for my pets is so much easier to navigate (you can actually get price quotes!) and much multitudes cheaper than human healthcare, despite the similar medical procedures and training required of doctors.

brianwawok 10y ago
Okay this is the worst argument for an unregulated healthcare system I have ever heard. 1) How much money goes into pet medicine research vs human? 2) What happens when a pet is sick and the cost of care exceeds money of owner? You want a health care system where you use 15-20 year old medicine with no research, and most bills > $1000 lead to euthanasia? Sure that would be a cheap healthcare system...
- refurb 10y ago
  You want a health care system where you use 15-20 year old medicine with no research What? Animal health is a huge industry. Zoetis was spun off of Pfizer and is making money hand over fist. Lots of new animal drugs are approved each year.
- xkcd-sucks 10y ago
  Animal drugs are the same as human drugs, plus all the human drugs which fail fairly late in the development pipeline. Animal physiology re: absorption, toxicity, metabolism etc. is pretty well studied because most mammals are used for drug testing/as models of human disease.
- crpatino 10y ago
  You have packed a large number of biases in a single line: > You want a health care system where you use 15-20 year old medicine with no research, and most bills > $1000 lead to euthanasia? Sure that would be a cheap healthcare system... 15-20 year technology (and I hope you agree modern medicine is, broadly speaking, a form of technology) is not old; it is robust and time tested. Today, building business critical operations in Fortune 500 companies on top of Linux is a no brainer, but not so much in 1996; and whoever told you otherwise back then was both unprofessional and self-deluded with evangelist zeal. Your claim that veterinarian medicine has "no research" does not hold water either. Sure, there might be less money being expended in researching animal health care than human health care, but this does not mean that the science behind veterinarian medicine is any less valid. If anything, it's probably more valid because there are so many less emotional hot-button issues and underhanded political agendas lurking around it. About the $1k bills, there are two ways to see it. You claim that it is a bad thing that most >$1K procedures end up with pacient death. I, on the other hand, would like to point out that this is a proof that it is possible for a whole calss of modern health care professionals to charge <$1k for procedures that solve most non life-threatening conditions and remain gainfully in business. Note this argument is valid regradless of your position on human euthanasia. Finally, your use of "cheap" healthcare system is used as a double-entendre. You are conflating "affordable" with "stingy" in that single word. As exposed above, you can clearly see that the first not necessarily implies the second.

snarfy 10y ago

If it were a free market, you would see prices advertised. This is how you know it's not a free market. This is true in a lot of markets, not just healthcare.

neonhomer 10y ago
Good point, there's only one medical center I've heard in the US that actually advertises their prices: http://surgerycenterok.com/pricing/ http://surgerycenterok.com/pricing/

micahbright 10y ago

"...the free market approach to everything in the US"...It's almost as if you believe there is a free market in education or healthcare or...almost anything in the US.

Shivetya 10y ago

The only flaw with free market economies is assuming the US actually has one. The regulation of commerce is so extreme in some areas as to border on near fascism (don't equate the term with NAZI) : where government dictates prices for goods and services without risking anything of its own. Politicians setting rates and guarantees that are not driven by market need. grade inflation exists because of this unwillingness to offend people and telling people they are not the best if offensive. hence why colleges like affirmative action is that they will get candidates not used to being at the top of their class and be more willing to accept lower grades (go look it up, it does exist and been studied) the US health care system, well it only got into the condition it was in because of over regulation. preventing insurance from crossing state lines pretty much doomed it

refurb 10y ago

My US doctor insisted on giving me anti-biotics despite the fact that I had the common cold and protested that this does not work for a virus infection. Your doctor doesn't make any money when they prescribe something. They make money off the office visit. There was absolutely zero financial gain for the doc prescribing you antibiotics.

specialist 10y ago

"flaws of the free market approach" But, but, (sputters), but the Patriotic American Baby Jesus loves Freedom Markets™.