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Yes, I consider big numbers like this to be red flags. The GDP of the US is $32T. Saving $1T will essentially make 3% of the US economy vanish. You don't vanis
by GuB-42 2mo ago
Yes, I consider big numbers like this to be red flags.
The GDP of the US is $32T. Saving $1T will essentially make 3% of the US economy vanish. You don't vanish 3% of an economy without wide ranging repercussion, it would be a crisis similar in scale to that of 2008.
With such numbers we are not "saving money", these are about rebuilding an entire economy, a painful process. So either the effect will be much smaller than that, or there will be riots.
- missedthecue 2mo agoWell it wouldn't "vanish". The $1T savings (if produced) that were once spent on healthcare would instead be spent on anything else.
- GuB-42 2mo agoYes, it will, but think about the supply side. If people spend $1T less on health, health professionals will earn $1T less, it means, as GP said, layoffs, cutting salaries, etc... Not just doctors and nurses but also drug researchers, medical equipment manufacturers, etc... These people will now have to do the "something else" that will be spent on, let's say gardening. But you don't turn a nurse into a gardener just like that, that's the kind of "wide ranging repercussions" I mentioned, and the painful transition period where nurses become gardeners. "Nurse to gardener" is just a random example, it can be "drug researcher to petrochemist", and some transitions we may be happy to see, like "health insurance lawyer to burger flipper", but overall, many good people will suffer in transition, many powerful people too, which make such transition unlikely.
- chermi 2mo agoI don't understand why we always pay attention to only the jobs side of decisions like this. Why is the main concern always preserving existing jobs? The extreme version of that is obviously silly. The savings is real and lowers prices, increasing social mobility and spending elsewhere. How many people are locked out of moving for a job that matches them better, or taking some training for a better job and so on just because of medical debt leaving them no flexibility? And if we could save that trillion by eliminating jobs, doesn't that kind of imply those jobs (or at least the system requiring them) were terrible allocation of human capital?
- GuB-42 2mo agoI am not saying it is a bad thing. What I am saying is that when we are talking about trillions we are talking big changes, and big change doesn't come without suffering, and people don't like suffering. Usually big change doesn't happen without a catastrophic event, like a war, a coup, or an economic crisis, or maybe more optimistically, a technical or scientific breakthrough. So when an article mentions trillions without hinting at such an event, to me, it is incomplete, or wrong. The French revolution would be an extreme example. It is a win for freedom and democracy, but the period following it is called "the reign of terror", for good reasons.
- chermi 2mo agoI see. But I think that's kind of the same diffuse vs. visible problem that underlies a lot of impedents to progress. The jobs thing is one example. We focus on one set of workers because we can picture being in their position. We can't internalize and "feel" the diffuse but greater benefit of a more efficient healthcare system, which I'm 100% would be a net positive, just spread out over the whole population. I don't know the solution, but do you agree that the problem is basically one of individuals not being able to accurately model the tradeoffs in their head?
- SpaceNoodled 2mo agoAmericans are already suffering under the broken healthcare system. Overall suffering would decrease as a result.
- autoexec 2mo agoThe money doesn't vanish. It stays in the hands of people. People who would spend it on other things, feeding it into the wider economy instead of the pockets of a small number of corporations. There's zero reason to think this would result in anyone rioting except maybe insurance company CEOs.
- Certhas 2mo agoThe US spends more than 16% of GDP on health. The UK around 11%. Shrinking US health expenditure by 3% of GDP while roughly maintaining health outcomes is eminently, obviously doable.
- nradov 2mo agoSure, it's possible in principle. But the US also has a much higher GDP per capita than the UK. The UK is a (relatively) poor country and is increasingly being left behind.
- HDThoreaun 2mo agoThats why they used percentage of GDP instead of raw
- Certhas 2mo agoPosts like this truly boggle the mind... The US is in a class of its own when it comes to health spending. The second highest OECD country (per GDP) is Germany which is 5 points lower than the US (and BTW these figures include public and private spending). You are clutching at straws to discount clear evidence that shows just how ideologically driven the US System status quo is... "'No Way to Prevent This,' Says Only Nation Where This Regularly Happens" https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-glance-2025_8f9e3f98-en/full-report/health-expenditure-in-relation-to-gdp_6e4c2773.html https://www.oecd.org/en/publications/health-at-a-glance-2025...
- roncesvalles 2mo agoThis is broken window fallacy. The $1T not wasted on healthcare inefficiencies would be spent/invested on other things, creating jobs there. Yes, there would be churn because a good number of people involved in the bureaucracy of private health insurance would lose their job and possibly their career. But these things get smoothed out. Social supports (should) exist to dampen the effects of such churn and keep the economy agile.
- SpaceNoodled 2mo agoAt least the laid-off workers would have healthcare.
- captainbland 2mo agoThis seems a lot like the parable of the broken window but for inefficiency rather than destruction per se.
- kaibee 2mo ago> these are about rebuilding an entire economy, a painful process. "Sorry kids, can't turn off the Orphan Grinder 9000, there's a whole supply chain behind it that would have to restructure."
- chermi 2mo agoI mean there's flavors of contributions to gdp. Spending money on make work for people digging holes still counts. I wouldn't mind 1 trilly being freed up for more effective use. I imagine we could get pretty good returns on it just paying it against the debt as a simple idea, effectively a tax cut.
- tavavex 2mo agoOnly the American mind can comprehend leading to the deaths of tens of thousands of your own people for the sake of 3% of your economy. As long as the line goes up. If we're taking the $1T figure seriously, let's take the other figure seriously too. Let's slash it to be more conservative while we're at it and say it would only save 90k lives. Do you think 3% of your economy is worth sacrificing to prevent the equivalent of 30 9/11s? And that's before considering that other people here already explained how these 3% are offset by other gains - if not completely then still substantially.
- MSFT_Edging 2mo agoWe're quick to want to automate trucking, manufacturing, even knowledge jobs and say "ooh but the horse shoe maker became the tire installer" but the pointless middleman jobs making everyone's health worse seems to be the line in the sand for job automation. You can't touch the legions of people who exist to make things more expensive.