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> Furthermore, privately run systems should be more efficient because consumers have a choice. Don't like your current doctor? Go get a new one. You are assumi
by Nacraile 12y ago
> Furthermore, privately run systems should be more efficient because consumers have a choice. Don't like your current doctor? Go get a new one.
You are assuming an efficient market. That would imply that patients have access to perfect information about quality and cost of care, and make decisions rationally. I find this extremely questionable.
> Monopolies are bad.
I am far from convinced that the US health care system is competitive in any meaningful sense of the word.
> I've never heard of anyone being forced to wait for weeks for this kind of stuff in a normal hospital in the US.
This is not evidence that the US health care is more efficient, it is evidence that the US makes a different trade-off in cost:quality of care. Without question, a subset of the US population receives better care for non-emergency medical issues. But also without question, this improved service comes with a substantial increase in cost.
Hospital capacity is extremely expensive. A Canadian (say) hospital operates at nearly 100% utilization, nearly 100% of the time. In order to do this, it must maintain queues for non-emergency care, in order to smooth demand. By comparison, in order to avoid queueing, an American hospital must maintain capacity to satisfy peak demand, which means it does not fully utilize its capacity most of the time. Both systems maintain large bureaucracies (I have been party to Canadian health care workers marvelling at how an American hospital might dedicate an entire floor to its billing department). Which is more efficient? This is hard to say. Do Americans have the freedom to choose where they stand on the cost:quality-of-care spectrum? It seems not, to me.
- thirsteh 12y ago> Without question, a subset of the US population receives better care for non-emergency medical issues. But also without question, this improved service comes with a substantial increase in cost. I'm not convinced that even this is a given: A large percentage of those costs are the result of articial inflation that benefits pharmaceutical and insurance companies tremendously, but costs the average American a fortune. A month's worth of chemotherapy in the U.S. can easily cost ten times more than the equivalent in any European country (not factoring in insurance.) The rich getting quality care never seemed a particularly convincing argument against healthcare overhaul. It's even more ridiculous when you consider that there is world-class private healthcare in Europe as well.
- wmgries 12y agoI never said the current US system is efficient. Go back and check. In the current system, people don't chose their own medical plans - their employer does. If you lose (or leave your job), it's hard to get good, affordable health care. Further, each state has their own laws about what health care providers must provide - and people can't buy across state lines. Also, many people are on Medicare, in which the government essentially dictates that price to the hospitals/doctors that it will pay for things. What I favor is a free market system, where everything is run privately. This can be funded through taxation and income redistribution if needed, as long as people are free to choose their hospitals, their doctors, their treatments, etc. The government shouldn't make any demands on what people need to buy for health care coverage. Of course, contract law and medical safety standards still need to be enforced.