4 ms·
People forget that fundamentally, these are services that become relatively more expensive over time (as other things get relatively cheaper). Both healthcare a
by naijaboiler 3y ago
People forget that fundamentally, these are services that become relatively more expensive over time (as other things get relatively cheaper). Both healthcare and education don't really benefit from cost-reduction from scaling. At the end of the day, its still one service provider to few service consumers. Productivity in that sense is unchanged in 30 years. Meanwhile, consumer goods can continue to drop precipitiously with technology and scale. As technology improves productivity in other sectors, Net result over time, is that things like healthcare and education and other services which don't scale will continue to get relatively even more expensive (i.e. grow faster than inflation).
- ed312 3y agoHopefully AI starts to bend the cost curve. Just like a huge chunk of doctor visits could be handled by a nurse/NP, probably AI could do a lot of triage work and/or improve labor productivity.
- abeppu 3y agoI'm actually confused about the healthcare situation -- is it actually getting more expensive relative to the benefits? I've heard so many times that a bunch of surgeries that used to have really long recovery times can now be done on an out-patient basis, or laproscopically, and that some things which used to require surgery can now be treated with medication. Isn't that productivity growth? Even if the cost per day in the hospital goes up, if the same or better patient outcomes can be achieved with fewer/shorter hospital stays, that sounds like patients are "winning"?