3 ms·
The bleeding example makes costs seems like random accidents, but most spending is on genetic illness and the elderly. A lifetime supply of insulin is much mor
by peteey 7y ago
The bleeding example makes costs seems like random accidents, but most spending is on genetic illness and the elderly.
A lifetime supply of insulin is much more expensive than setting a broken bone. We are not all equally likely to have cancer or respiratory disease.
- krupan 7y agoSupply and demand should take care of this though. A lifetime supply of food is pretty reasonable these days. A lifetime supply of common medications should be about the same, right? Too much regulation restricts supply and too much health care bureaucracy screws up demand. Of course people should still have insurance (possibly government provided?) for the very rare and expensive surprises (just like a house fire is rare and expensive).
- jwbwater 7y agoMuch easier for consumers to control food spending than drug spending. Lots of cheap food to choose from. Many chronic illnesses require medications for which there is no good substitute. Too much regulation is not responsible for high drug prices, deregulation is. Companies are allowed to buy their competitors and then raise prices.
- bhupy 7y agoOkay then what’s stopping someone from starting another company and selling the same product at a lower price?
- mvid 7y agoEntry costs, regulatory capture, intellectual property?
- bhupy 7y ago> Too much regulation is not responsible for high drug prices, deregulation is > regulatory capture, intellectual property Ostensibly would seem that relaxing regulation and (more importantly) abolishing or heavily weakening medical patents would help drive down costs. Can you imagine if tech companies could patent their products the same way medical companies do today? Uber would no longer have to worry about finding a moat, their moat would simply be their patent on "digital ride sharing provided by dynamic pricing to predict demand and position supply" (or some similar conceit). Smartphones would all be expensive and Apple would have a monopoly on multi-touch phones with capacitive displays and built-in app-stores. If food companies could patent food the same way drug companies can patent drugs that they prepare, bread would be expensive and you wouldn't have store brands and generics to keep the price of the fancy Whole Foods bread in check.