4 ms·

Thats THE problem with healthcare in the US, there are 4 market prices: - Actual Price - Cash Price (after you bitch about how absurd the actual price is) -

• VLM 14y ago
  "Is the free-market model even applicable to health care?" It works about as well applied to health care, as applied to police coverage, military defense, restaurant health inspections, road maintenance, and education. Not as well as when applied to a farmers market or factory widget production. Its a little harder for med because quite a bit of med care happens to medically uneducated people. Given a couple years of med school and some on the job experience, and a couple days to fully research each emergency room and cardiology department in the country, my neighbor could probably have made an intelligent free market decision when he had his heart attack. However, instead of a free market, the ambulance instead took him unconscious to the nearest ER, where they'll pretty much do what they want and then charge what they want. The true miracle of the situation is it may have been a financial disaster, but medically it all turned out OK. Decades of propaganda has taught me that only a free market can provide decent services, yet at least medical care works pretty well with a feudal system where you simply report to the nearest castle and pay whatever tax the feudal lord demands.