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Are you sure the employer provided health insurance is a notable cause of the disaster of the current system?

by avmich 10y ago

brightball 10y ago
Not letting individuals deduct it directly created the system that removed health insurance from the consumer market, which removed health care from the market, which created the meteoric rise in costs. Anytime people are removed from the cost of a thing, the price goes up. Housing, education, healthcare. Even buying groceries people spend more than twice as much with a credit card vs cash.
- steveklabnik 10y ago
  Many countries which provide socialized healthcare do it for much, much cheaper than we do, even without being based on a market. If removing something from the market led directly to massively inflated costs, we'd expect those systems to be the most expensive, but that's just not true.
  - brightball 10y ago
    In the US it's removed from the market without a price constraint. Elective services like dermatology and cosmetic have managed to keep prices in line with what people can afford to pay out of pocket. The other inflators in the US has been emergency room visits for people with no coverage at all, which are 10x more expensive than simply visiting a primary care physician. Plans pushing for funded HSAs would totally eliminate this problem as even the poorest people would have a reason to go where they could get more cost effective care.
    - kasey_junk 10y ago
      > Elective services like dermatology and cosmetic have managed to keep prices in line with what people can afford to pay out of pocket. I want to mention one very specific thing about this though, these services are very different than other medical services not just because of the difference in insurance markets, but also because unlike many, many procedures they are elective. The health market is so interesting because one of the normal recourses available to market participants normally, that is doing without, is not available in certain situations int he health market.

Are you sure the employer provided health insurance is a notable cause of the disaster of the current system?

by avmich 10y ago

Are you sure the employer provided health insurance is a notable cause of the disaster of the current system?

Not letting individuals deduct it directly created the system that removed health insurance from the consumer market, which removed health care from the market, which created the meteoric rise in costs. Anytime people are removed from the cost of a thing, the price goes up. Housing, education, healthcare. Even buying groceries people spend more than twice as much with a credit card vs cash.

steveklabnik 10y ago
Many countries which provide socialized healthcare do it for much, much cheaper than we do, even without being based on a market. If removing something from the market led directly to massively inflated costs, we'd expect those systems to be the most expensive, but that's just not true.
- brightball 10y ago
  In the US it's removed from the market without a price constraint. Elective services like dermatology and cosmetic have managed to keep prices in line with what people can afford to pay out of pocket. The other inflators in the US has been emergency room visits for people with no coverage at all, which are 10x more expensive than simply visiting a primary care physician. Plans pushing for funded HSAs would totally eliminate this problem as even the poorest people would have a reason to go where they could get more cost effective care.
  - kasey_junk 10y ago
    > Elective services like dermatology and cosmetic have managed to keep prices in line with what people can afford to pay out of pocket. I want to mention one very specific thing about this though, these services are very different than other medical services not just because of the difference in insurance markets, but also because unlike many, many procedures they are elective. The health market is so interesting because one of the normal recourses available to market participants normally, that is doing without, is not available in certain situations int he health market.