3 ms·

> Corporations are kept in line with proper competition, where possible. What feedback mechanism is their to keep government bureaucracy in line? Sometimes they

> Corporations are kept in line with proper competition, where possible. What feedback mechanism is their to keep government bureaucracy in line? Sometimes they have audits, but those are never detailed or frequent enough. No they aren't. This flies in the face of all the evidence right in front of you. They just form cartels and monopolies. The US where everything is private and is the most expensive (by far!!) with the least covered and worst outcomes compared to the one's we're talking about. You're ignoring ALL the evidence just to bolster your ideological nonsense.

naasking 4y ago
> The US where everything is private and is the most expensive (by far!!) with the least covered and worst outcomes compared to the one's we're talking about. You're ignoring ALL the evidence just to bolster your ideological nonsense. Do AMD and Intel have have a cartel, or do they have a healthy competition that drives down prices and improves product quality? That's direct evidence against your claim that a) I'm ignoring "ALL evidence", and b) that all corporations form cartels to avoid competition. The fact that sometimes corporations form cartels does not entail that they always form cartels. The evidence is in fact overwhelming that this usually doesn't happen, but where it does I agree that the government should enforce its competition laws. Finally, you didn't provide an argument refuting the point that government bureaucracy has an equally large problem in monotonic growth. Even if it were true that corporations always formed cartels, which it's not, it's not clear that this would always be a worse situation than that presented by monotonic growth and the inefficiencies that follow. Yes, the US has a serious healthcare problem. Other countries with privatize health insurance don't suffer from these problems, eg. consider Switzerland and Singapore.
- threatofrain 4y ago
  The previous post was making descriptive claims about US healthcare but then you responded with an abstract principle supported by an example in chips. It’s much more apt to go straight to your very last sentence.
  - naasking 4y ago
    No, I made a general point about government and private interests having different failure modes, this person responded by calling my point devoid of evidence and that private interests form monopolies and cartels and that healthcare somehow disproves my general argument, and I showed an existence proof that their single example is not generalizable and not reflective of the common case.
nradov 4y ago
The US has the best 5-year survival outcomes for most forms of cancer.
- guerrilla 4y ago
  Because so many people can't even afford diagnosis and those that do manage get help are put into debt slavery. You can't seriously think that that is comparable to what is actually available to actually everyone in Europe.
- zw7 4y ago
  I wonder how much of this reflects more screening? See Gigerenzer 2013[1] for issues with 5-year survival rates. I would be more interested in how mortality rates compare. EDIT: This[2] suggests US cancer mortality rate is lower but overall mortality rate is higher. [1]: https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f548.full https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f548.full https://sci-hub.se/10.1136/bmj.f548 https://sci-hub.se/10.1136/bmj.f548 [2]: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/mortality-rates-u-s-compare-countries/ https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/mortali...
dogma1138 4y ago
The problem with applying regular market economics to healthcare is that it doesn’t take into account the actual market conditions. Healthcare is heavily regulated and for a good reason which means that the barrier to entry and the entire playing field is controlled by the regulators. It also isn’t as scalable as other industries and extracting efficiency comes at a real human cost. You can’t deliver healthcare by offshoring it, and you can’t make it much more efficient by taking out people from the process and replacing them with automation at least not on any feasible timescale. Healthcare also has a very inelastic market people can’t go without it’s not a luxury or something you can go without. Also unlike many other industries healthcare becomes more expensive as it develops as you develop new treatments for previously untreatable conditions and people generally live longer. Whilst the private sector does have a role to play in healthcare it’s not as simple as let the market take care of it. Markets in general are pretty bad at favoring long term gains over short term ones and healthcare is really not suited for short term thinking.

naasking 4y ago

> The US where everything is private and is the most expensive (by far!!) with the least covered and worst outcomes compared to the one's we're talking about. You're ignoring ALL the evidence just to bolster your ideological nonsense. Do AMD and Intel have have a cartel, or do they have a healthy competition that drives down prices and improves product quality? That's direct evidence against your claim that a) I'm ignoring "ALL evidence", and b) that all corporations form cartels to avoid competition. The fact that sometimes corporations form cartels does not entail that they always form cartels. The evidence is in fact overwhelming that this usually doesn't happen, but where it does I agree that the government should enforce its competition laws. Finally, you didn't provide an argument refuting the point that government bureaucracy has an equally large problem in monotonic growth. Even if it were true that corporations always formed cartels, which it's not, it's not clear that this would always be a worse situation than that presented by monotonic growth and the inefficiencies that follow. Yes, the US has a serious healthcare problem. Other countries with privatize health insurance don't suffer from these problems, eg. consider Switzerland and Singapore.

threatofrain 4y ago
The previous post was making descriptive claims about US healthcare but then you responded with an abstract principle supported by an example in chips. It’s much more apt to go straight to your very last sentence.
- naasking 4y ago
  No, I made a general point about government and private interests having different failure modes, this person responded by calling my point devoid of evidence and that private interests form monopolies and cartels and that healthcare somehow disproves my general argument, and I showed an existence proof that their single example is not generalizable and not reflective of the common case.

nradov 4y ago

The US has the best 5-year survival outcomes for most forms of cancer.

guerrilla 4y ago
Because so many people can't even afford diagnosis and those that do manage get help are put into debt slavery. You can't seriously think that that is comparable to what is actually available to actually everyone in Europe.
zw7 4y ago
I wonder how much of this reflects more screening? See Gigerenzer 2013[1] for issues with 5-year survival rates. I would be more interested in how mortality rates compare. EDIT: This[2] suggests US cancer mortality rate is lower but overall mortality rate is higher. [1]: https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f548.full https://www.bmj.com/content/346/bmj.f548.full https://sci-hub.se/10.1136/bmj.f548 https://sci-hub.se/10.1136/bmj.f548 [2]: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/mortality-rates-u-s-compare-countries/ https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/mortali...

dogma1138 4y ago

The problem with applying regular market economics to healthcare is that it doesn’t take into account the actual market conditions. Healthcare is heavily regulated and for a good reason which means that the barrier to entry and the entire playing field is controlled by the regulators. It also isn’t as scalable as other industries and extracting efficiency comes at a real human cost. You can’t deliver healthcare by offshoring it, and you can’t make it much more efficient by taking out people from the process and replacing them with automation at least not on any feasible timescale. Healthcare also has a very inelastic market people can’t go without it’s not a luxury or something you can go without. Also unlike many other industries healthcare becomes more expensive as it develops as you develop new treatments for previously untreatable conditions and people generally live longer. Whilst the private sector does have a role to play in healthcare it’s not as simple as let the market take care of it. Markets in general are pretty bad at favoring long term gains over short term ones and healthcare is really not suited for short term thinking.