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Elective procedures work well in a free market system. That is not surprising at all, nor is it incredibly meaningful when trying to look at the health care ind

Elective procedures work well in a free market system. That is not surprising at all, nor is it incredibly meaningful when trying to look at the health care industry as a whole. > Nonsense. The important question is: 'would a "truly free market health care system" be more ethical than the current system'. If you want to be overly semantic, which you clearly do, that's actually not "the important question" since it actually tells you less than my original question. You care about "a truly free market health care system's" relative ethicality not just in relation to the current system, but also in relation to (all) other potential alternative health care system (like a single payer system)...

com2kid 9y ago
> Elective procedures work well in a free market system. Dental work is only semi-elective, and prices are driven down thanks to transparent pricing. Likewise, one can argue that vision services are also non-elective (e.g. people need to see), and prices go through a very large range. Many medical conditions are not "emergencies". And even so, I often get referrals from my doctor to external imaging services. If those prices were transparent, I imagine a downwards pressure on prices would happen quite quickly. To give an example, ultrasounds for pregnancies cost ~$250, ultrasounds for almost anything else are 50% to 100% higher in price. In a similar vein, x-rays at the dentist are next to nothing (despite involving a cool robot that rotates around my head, and a digital x-ray sensor that lets me look at images right away!), x-rays for anything else can end up in the hundreds. Hospitals would also benefit from transparent pricing, if there was a legal mandate that all suppliers be open and honest, prices would drop for everyone. When a hospital sees that other hospitals in the area can offer the same service at a lower cost, meeting the same quality standards, then they can start pushing their vendors to lower prices.

com2kid 9y ago

> Elective procedures work well in a free market system. Dental work is only semi-elective, and prices are driven down thanks to transparent pricing. Likewise, one can argue that vision services are also non-elective (e.g. people need to see), and prices go through a very large range. Many medical conditions are not "emergencies". And even so, I often get referrals from my doctor to external imaging services. If those prices were transparent, I imagine a downwards pressure on prices would happen quite quickly. To give an example, ultrasounds for pregnancies cost ~$250, ultrasounds for almost anything else are 50% to 100% higher in price. In a similar vein, x-rays at the dentist are next to nothing (despite involving a cool robot that rotates around my head, and a digital x-ray sensor that lets me look at images right away!), x-rays for anything else can end up in the hundreds. Hospitals would also benefit from transparent pricing, if there was a legal mandate that all suppliers be open and honest, prices would drop for everyone. When a hospital sees that other hospitals in the area can offer the same service at a lower cost, meeting the same quality standards, then they can start pushing their vendors to lower prices.