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Absolutely, public spending on healthcare in USA is enormous. Higher than military budget. USA is unfortunately country where enormous amounts of people are sic

Absolutely, public spending on healthcare in USA is enormous. Higher than military budget. USA is unfortunately country where enormous amounts of people are sick. Mostly side effects of obesityand lack of physical activity.

lisper 8y ago
All of this is a side-effect of the uniquely American philosophy that says that if someone is making money they must be making a net positive contribution to society, because otherwise why would anyone buy their product? This approach overlooks externalities and rent-seeking. The net result is that we have a lot of people making money selling things to people that they want but makes them sick (soda, cigarettes, corn chips) and a lot of other people making money professing to make them less sick, and yet another group of people making money by professing to control the costs of the second group, and lot of other people making money lobbying politicians to keep the laws in place that maintains the status quo. So everyone's making money (except for the slackers who dare to get sick), so everything must be hunky dory. The American health care system is the broken-window theory writ large.
- nightski 8y ago
  While I do not disagree with you altogether, I have a hard time believing it would be possible to come up with some sort system that is inclusive of these externalities. Look at what a crapshow nutrition science is - do we really want government encouraging/discouraging foods more so than it already is? Look at how bad farm subsidies have affected our health in general.
s_y_n_t_a_x 8y ago
The spending is due to research and development, not because more people are sick.
- superpermutat0r 8y ago
  Not really, it's Medicaid and Medicare. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_States_federal_budget https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_S...
  - s_y_n_t_a_x 8y ago
    That's the government's spending on healthcare insurance. Which furthers my point, those insurance companies are paying the cost of development that gets tacked on to drug prices and other healthcare services.

lisper 8y ago

All of this is a side-effect of the uniquely American philosophy that says that if someone is making money they must be making a net positive contribution to society, because otherwise why would anyone buy their product? This approach overlooks externalities and rent-seeking. The net result is that we have a lot of people making money selling things to people that they want but makes them sick (soda, cigarettes, corn chips) and a lot of other people making money professing to make them less sick, and yet another group of people making money by professing to control the costs of the second group, and lot of other people making money lobbying politicians to keep the laws in place that maintains the status quo. So everyone's making money (except for the slackers who dare to get sick), so everything must be hunky dory. The American health care system is the broken-window theory writ large.

nightski 8y ago
While I do not disagree with you altogether, I have a hard time believing it would be possible to come up with some sort system that is inclusive of these externalities. Look at what a crapshow nutrition science is - do we really want government encouraging/discouraging foods more so than it already is? Look at how bad farm subsidies have affected our health in general.

s_y_n_t_a_x 8y ago

The spending is due to research and development, not because more people are sick.

superpermutat0r 8y ago
Not really, it's Medicaid and Medicare. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_States_federal_budget https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Expenditures_in_the_United_S...
- s_y_n_t_a_x 8y ago
  That's the government's spending on healthcare insurance. Which furthers my point, those insurance companies are paying the cost of development that gets tacked on to drug prices and other healthcare services.