3 ms·

What we have is not a free market. We have a system that has been consolidated and pushed towards high inefficiencies by pharma companies, insurance companies a

What we have is not a free market. We have a system that has been consolidated and pushed towards high inefficiencies by pharma companies, insurance companies and hospital conglomerates. A free market would be one where government hospitals exist alongside private for profit hospitals. A free market would have insurance as an optional convenience, not a mandatory one. A free market would have one price for medicine regardless of how you pay for it, where paying with insurance wouldn’t cost $34 when paying out of pocket and using GoodRx costs $2. A free market would be one where opening a private practice for a doctor would not be prohibitively expensive for family medicine because they need to hire 5 administrators to deal with the entangled mess of insurance payments.

derbOac 3y ago
Not to mention all the territorial regulatory capture on the provider side. I'm supportive of greater "publicizing"(?) of healthcare but I also agree that there are many, many, many ways in which competition could be increased to actual improve free market dynamics.
poncho_romero 3y ago
I’d love to see evidence supporting the claim that a free market would make these things come to pass. Otherwise, this comes across as a list of things you’d like to see, with “the free market” standing in as the just-so story that will magically right all that is wrong
- darth_avocado 3y ago
  I’d like to see evidence supporting it doesn’t work. If something hasn’t been done before, it’s really hard to provide evidence without actually doing it. I unfortunately cannot change it by my own, so I cannot provide evidence on what would hypothetically happen if we ban lobbying, get politicians motivated to allow a competitive free market, have the government participate in healthcare and do bunch of other things. I can provide examples of different models of public/private healthcare existing in the same market, if health insurance and healthcare being more accessible and being cheaper across the world. All of these systems have more than one aspect of my “wishlist” if not all. https://www.news-medical.net/health/Healthcare-Systems-Around-the-World.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/health/Healthcare-Systems-Aroun...
- verall 3y ago
  I wanted to say that the charitable interpretation is that these things are basically prerequisites for the market to be "free" enough for any invisible hand efficiencies to arise - low barrier to entry, consumers are cost-conscious and have free choice, no anti-competitive bundling between provider, pharmacy, and insurance services. But then I hit F5 and see that they explicitly feel these things will just come about given a "free market". Oh well.
kevin_b_er 3y ago
The freest market is one that consolidates. The highest profits are made by controlling all the resources, after all.
- darth_avocado 3y ago
  Yes that is correct. In theory, in the freest market, there would only be one company that does everything and generates infinite profits. I’m responding to the “free market” that most “free market” advocates refer to: a market where companies are free to do whatever they want as long as it makes them money and also have regulations only when it benefits them.

derbOac 3y ago

Not to mention all the territorial regulatory capture on the provider side. I'm supportive of greater "publicizing"(?) of healthcare but I also agree that there are many, many, many ways in which competition could be increased to actual improve free market dynamics.

poncho_romero 3y ago

I’d love to see evidence supporting the claim that a free market would make these things come to pass. Otherwise, this comes across as a list of things you’d like to see, with “the free market” standing in as the just-so story that will magically right all that is wrong

darth_avocado 3y ago
I’d like to see evidence supporting it doesn’t work. If something hasn’t been done before, it’s really hard to provide evidence without actually doing it. I unfortunately cannot change it by my own, so I cannot provide evidence on what would hypothetically happen if we ban lobbying, get politicians motivated to allow a competitive free market, have the government participate in healthcare and do bunch of other things. I can provide examples of different models of public/private healthcare existing in the same market, if health insurance and healthcare being more accessible and being cheaper across the world. All of these systems have more than one aspect of my “wishlist” if not all. https://www.news-medical.net/health/Healthcare-Systems-Around-the-World.aspx https://www.news-medical.net/health/Healthcare-Systems-Aroun...
verall 3y ago
I wanted to say that the charitable interpretation is that these things are basically prerequisites for the market to be "free" enough for any invisible hand efficiencies to arise - low barrier to entry, consumers are cost-conscious and have free choice, no anti-competitive bundling between provider, pharmacy, and insurance services. But then I hit F5 and see that they explicitly feel these things will just come about given a "free market". Oh well.

kevin_b_er 3y ago

The freest market is one that consolidates. The highest profits are made by controlling all the resources, after all.

darth_avocado 3y ago
Yes that is correct. In theory, in the freest market, there would only be one company that does everything and generates infinite profits. I’m responding to the “free market” that most “free market” advocates refer to: a market where companies are free to do whatever they want as long as it makes them money and also have regulations only when it benefits them.