4 ms·

In a market with perfect competition, perhaps. Healthcare is far closer to a monopoly. Since people can't decide not to be sick, it means you can pocket the cos

In a market with perfect competition, perhaps. Healthcare is far closer to a monopoly. Since people can't decide not to be sick, it means you can pocket the cost-saving.

dgellow 25d ago
Healthcare is indeed the poster child for inelastic demand
- WalterBright 25d ago
  Not true. For every medical condition, there are a very large number of treatment options, with a wide variety of efficacy, pain, and cost. For example, I bet you could enumerate plenty of weight loss options off the top of your head.
  - dgellow 25d ago
    Let me know where I can find all that competition for surgery
    - WalterBright 25d ago
      A good doctor will present many options for you. I had hernia surgery a while ago. I went over the options with the surgeon, the varying surgical methods used, including doing nothing about it. Medicine is not "if A then B".
cucumber3732842 25d ago
>it means you can pocket the cost-saving Right up until a competing hospital that charges substantially less for "close enough it doesn't matter" quality of service opens up in the same area? Or right up until an equivalent specialist sets up shop in the strip mall across the street from you, brings the GP in house and can see people in one visit. Oh, those things don't happen you say? From do-gooders regulating right into the hands of waiting industry lobbyists to inelastic demand healthcare is an absolute poster child for perversion of the free market. High finance will put solar panels on your roof and structure it so you pay nothing. The degree to which administrative overhead is washed away by technology would have been unfathomable in 1990. A sketchy concrete crew that doesn't even speak english will show up wearing matching company attire and execute a job planned and timed to a degree of precision that was reserved for huge corporations 40yr ago. Yet healthcare has resisted all of the advances of the past 40yr. In fact we pay more for it. Every advancement is absorbed by the system. Why is that?
- slopinthebag 25d ago
  healthcare is one of the most highly regulated and state-controlled industries on the planet. surely that has nothing to do with it though. must be those damn capitalists!
  - lbreakjai 25d ago
    We should remove the red tape and let Joe down the street operate, that will surely fix everything. It has to be the regulation, not the parasitic layer of health insurance racket in the middle.
    - cucumber3732842 24d ago
      >We should remove the red tape and let Joe down the street operate, that will surely fix everything. I'll settle for just letting the vets do people. Like if you can ultrasound a cat's heart for a grand and sew up a horse for a cool five hundo then you can do the same to me for the same prices. >It has to be the regulation, not the parasitic layer of health insurance racket in the middle. They regulation and the parasitic layer have a positive feedback loop with each other.

In a market with perfect competition, perhaps. Healthcare is far closer to a monopoly. Since people can't decide not to be sick, it means you can pocket the cost-saving.

dgellow 25d ago

Healthcare is indeed the poster child for inelastic demand

WalterBright 25d ago
Not true. For every medical condition, there are a very large number of treatment options, with a wide variety of efficacy, pain, and cost. For example, I bet you could enumerate plenty of weight loss options off the top of your head.
- dgellow 25d ago
  Let me know where I can find all that competition for surgery
  - WalterBright 25d ago
    A good doctor will present many options for you. I had hernia surgery a while ago. I went over the options with the surgeon, the varying surgical methods used, including doing nothing about it. Medicine is not "if A then B".

cucumber3732842 25d ago

>it means you can pocket the cost-saving Right up until a competing hospital that charges substantially less for "close enough it doesn't matter" quality of service opens up in the same area? Or right up until an equivalent specialist sets up shop in the strip mall across the street from you, brings the GP in house and can see people in one visit. Oh, those things don't happen you say? From do-gooders regulating right into the hands of waiting industry lobbyists to inelastic demand healthcare is an absolute poster child for perversion of the free market. High finance will put solar panels on your roof and structure it so you pay nothing. The degree to which administrative overhead is washed away by technology would have been unfathomable in 1990. A sketchy concrete crew that doesn't even speak english will show up wearing matching company attire and execute a job planned and timed to a degree of precision that was reserved for huge corporations 40yr ago. Yet healthcare has resisted all of the advances of the past 40yr. In fact we pay more for it. Every advancement is absorbed by the system. Why is that?

slopinthebag 25d ago
healthcare is one of the most highly regulated and state-controlled industries on the planet. surely that has nothing to do with it though. must be those damn capitalists!
- lbreakjai 25d ago
  We should remove the red tape and let Joe down the street operate, that will surely fix everything. It has to be the regulation, not the parasitic layer of health insurance racket in the middle.
  - cucumber3732842 24d ago
    >We should remove the red tape and let Joe down the street operate, that will surely fix everything. I'll settle for just letting the vets do people. Like if you can ultrasound a cat's heart for a grand and sew up a horse for a cool five hundo then you can do the same to me for the same prices. >It has to be the regulation, not the parasitic layer of health insurance racket in the middle. They regulation and the parasitic layer have a positive feedback loop with each other.