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People forget that demand isn't the only thing that decides prices. The other player is supply, and the problem with healthcare is quite clearly supply. I hate

People forget that demand isn't the only thing that decides prices. The other player is supply, and the problem with healthcare is quite clearly supply. I hate to go all free market evangelist on HN, but the American healthcare economy is about the furthest thing from a market economy you'll see in the US and saying things like >the healthcare system in a market economy easily expands to the point where people are working their whole lives to the point where the healthcare system can ultimately confiscate all of that value back is ludicrous. Healthcare systems in market economies expand to fill a respectable but manageable share of people's budgets. You can tell by looking at literally any other country with a market economy (most of them) and checking what they charge for an ambulance.

lamontcg 5y ago
Everywhere else has government cost controls on healthcare on the insurer/payer side.
quadrangle 5y ago
While I agree with the gist of your point, the free market approach to health care doesn't account for consumers' short-term thinking. The market doesn't operate well on the scale of decades, it only responds to current activity. My point is: given a population of health-conscious, long-term thinking consumers, a free market to serve their needs is likely to work out pretty well… except for potentially getting flooded by long-term promises that aren't actually held up over the long-term. But if the population isn't focused on health and is short-term focused, we'd see market failure here, and yet the population and economy overall will still face all the costs of people not choosing to get the preventative care they need and thus spreading disease or other social costs long-term.
- solveit 5y ago
  I agree with you, and am actually for certain state interventions to correct for this (like mandated health insurance that actually works as insurance and not the perverse chimera it is now), but even a naive free market would be so much better than what the US has now that I can't bring myself to care so much about the second-order corrections.
  - quadrangle 5y ago
    Oh sure, I will readily accept market failure as an improvement over regulations that are actively corrupt or otherwise specifically working against the public interest.

lamontcg 5y ago

Everywhere else has government cost controls on healthcare on the insurer/payer side.

quadrangle 5y ago

While I agree with the gist of your point, the free market approach to health care doesn't account for consumers' short-term thinking. The market doesn't operate well on the scale of decades, it only responds to current activity. My point is: given a population of health-conscious, long-term thinking consumers, a free market to serve their needs is likely to work out pretty well… except for potentially getting flooded by long-term promises that aren't actually held up over the long-term. But if the population isn't focused on health and is short-term focused, we'd see market failure here, and yet the population and economy overall will still face all the costs of people not choosing to get the preventative care they need and thus spreading disease or other social costs long-term.

solveit 5y ago
I agree with you, and am actually for certain state interventions to correct for this (like mandated health insurance that actually works as insurance and not the perverse chimera it is now), but even a naive free market would be so much better than what the US has now that I can't bring myself to care so much about the second-order corrections.
- quadrangle 5y ago
  Oh sure, I will readily accept market failure as an improvement over regulations that are actively corrupt or otherwise specifically working against the public interest.