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Find me another market where people need to urgently make choices that affect their life and death, or that of their loved ones. The comparison isn't laughable

• dsfyu404ed 7y ago
  That herring is so red it may as well be a cooked lobster. The overwhelming majority of medical care is not urgent care. The overwhelming majority of medical costs are costs that can be foreseen long enough in advance to shop around. Even if you think you might have skin cancer you're still in a position to choose where you go to get your tests.
  • empath75 7y ago
    Hospitals won’t tell you the costs of treatment ahead of time, even for easily predictable items like baby delivery. It’s impossible to shop around. https://youtu.be/Tct38KwROdw https://youtu.be/Tct38KwROdw
    • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
      Yes. And that's exactly the problem I'm complaining about and challenging you to find an example of in a loosely regulated market.
      • empath75 7y ago
        There’s no regulations preventing them from quoting prices to you.
        • dsfyu404ed 7y ago
          There's regulations that prevent them from being undercut by entities that are willing to have transparent pricing. The problem here is not lack of regulation. It is a lack of competition. Regulation forces providers to adopt a particular business model and that model allows the kind of pricing shenanigans we see. At the end of the day everything comes down to dollars and a lack of pricing information means it is not possible to compare like services across providers. Being able to compare supposedly interchangeable goods/services is a core part of the free market and it is missing from healthcare in the US.