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Nope, this is clearly wrong. Cost of labor and standard of living alone can't account for the cost difference. Average net-adjusted household disposable income

by wyager 10y ago

Nope, this is clearly wrong. Cost of labor and standard of living alone can't account for the cost difference. Average net-adjusted household disposable income is (per OECD) only 3x higher in the US than Mexico. GDPPC is 5x higher. Medical care in the US is drastically more expensive than these numbers would suggest. Claiming "it's because Mexico is poor" is a lazy argument that falls apart very quickly. > doctors will want to be paid US wages, not Mexican or Indian wages. And then you'll find the cost of their services much less affordable. Doctors already get paid US wages. Not really sure what you were thinking when you wrote that. You're also wrong on two counts here; one, the primary cost sinks in the US that they don't have in Mexico are increased regulatory costs (meaning huge administrative staff), red tape (mostly around excessive malpractice and CYA requirements) leading to incredibly overpriced line items (e.g. $1500 to hook you up to an oxygen tank), and a weird incentive scheme where it makes economic sense for doctors to waste money on pointless CYA tasks like uneccesary medical scans and specialist consultations. Two, fully private doctors in the US are actually vastly cheaper if you pay in cash. I have shitty major medical insurance, so I just pay in cash for routine medicine (checkups, prescriptions, etc.). It ends up being a fraction of the cost of what I would pay with insurance at a public hospital. There are a lot of reasons it's so much cheaper, but the biggest is that getting money out of insurance companies is itself a huge money sink for doctors. Insurance companies can't afford to be good or easy anymore.

int_19h 10y ago
I don't dispute that care in US is more expensive for a variety of reasons. But your post stated that the only, or at least the biggest, reason why that difference exists between US and Mexico is because of less regulation in the latter, and more healthy private market resulting from that. I point out that a large part of that difference does have to do with standard of living. It's not true just for healthcare - the same goes for most other things. It's why people from US often retire to those countries. > Doctors already get paid US wages. Not really sure what you were thinking when you wrote that. Of course, but they get paid out of your insurance. You were, again, comparing that system to going to a place like Mexico, and paying out of pocket. If you were to pay out of pocket here in US for those wages, it wouldn't really be affordable.

by wyager 10y ago

int_19h 10y ago

I don't dispute that care in US is more expensive for a variety of reasons. But your post stated that the only, or at least the biggest, reason why that difference exists between US and Mexico is because of less regulation in the latter, and more healthy private market resulting from that. I point out that a large part of that difference does have to do with standard of living. It's not true just for healthcare - the same goes for most other things. It's why people from US often retire to those countries. > Doctors already get paid US wages. Not really sure what you were thinking when you wrote that. Of course, but they get paid out of your insurance. You were, again, comparing that system to going to a place like Mexico, and paying out of pocket. If you were to pay out of pocket here in US for those wages, it wouldn't really be affordable.