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From Wikipedia: >Groups will have, in addition to GPs, at least one registered nurse and a doctor who is a secondary care specialist. Doctors and clinicians d

From Wikipedia: >Groups will have, in addition to GPs, at least one registered nurse and a doctor who is a secondary care specialist. Doctors and clinicians deciding just how much they're going to get paid. Not subject to any kind of market or competitive force that may work toward an equilibrium based on supply and demand. The government has said "Here's a massive amount of money, fight among yourselves about who gets how much, good luck". Politics is very much at play here, as it is in any system where the prices are determined by committees or small groups instead of the free market. This includes the current system in the US, which is effectively controlled by a handful of paper pushers in the insurance industry, leeching billions out of our system each year without providing any value and ever-inflating the costs for the patient. There's no reason health care has to be a distorted market. Free market principles are applicable in health care as they are in any other field. While it's true that people need medicine to survive in many cases, people also need food and groceries to survive, but we haven't had to nationalize a grocery chain heretofore. There is enough competition in the space to keep prices low. There would be ample competition in the medical space if we could break the insurance cabals that currently exist. The powers that be rather like our current system, and they love it now that the ACA has made it a crime to not purchase their product. They would certainly also enjoy the "print money til the doctors are happy" system proposed by many left-leaning persons. The one thing they're most afraid of is the one thing that restores equilibrium and stops their ability to gouge, which is real competition and a true free market undistorted by unfair practices and insurance company leeches. Non-catastrophic medical insurance should be outlawed and clients should have to pay their doctors directly, forcing doctors to charge a reasonable amount of money or have no clients, forcing suppliers to charge a reasonable amount of money or have no customers, forcing medical schools to charge a reasonable amount of money or have no students. We can't just keep saying "The expensive way of doing this is easy and great, so let's just have the government pay for it." Things must be self-sufficient.

DanBC 12y ago
> Doctors and clinicians deciding just how much they're going to get paid. Not subject to any kind of market or competitive force that may work toward an equilibrium based on supply and demand. How do you get to that conclusion? There is plenty of tendering happening in NHS. > The government has said "Here's a massive amount of money, fight among yourselves about who gets how much, good luck". > We can't just keep saying "The expensive way of doing this is easy and great, so let's just have the government pay for it." Things must be self-sufficient. You know that the English government pays less per capita than the US government for health care and we have better health outcomes, right?
dalke 12y ago
I don't want a free market in my health care. I am not competent enough to judge if the pills I purchase actually contain penicillin and only the inert ingredients listed on the label. We know from the less regulated dietary supplement industry that many manufacturers lie about the contents. I have no reason to believe that the pharmacological drug industry is fundamentally more honest. There used to be a free market for health care. The FDA started as a political response to the adulteration and misbranding of food and drugs in that market. The early 1900 saw the rise of popular patent medicines containing radium, with so-called "radioactive quackery." A true free market would have no restrictions on Doramad Radioactive Toothpaste, on the sale of snake oil made of petroleum, or of Bonnore's Electro Magnetic Bathing Fluid as a cure for cholera. The free market of that era produced Elixir sulfanilamide, which killed more than 100 people. The owner of the company justified it because they were "supplying a legitimate professional demand." A free market needs no more justification than that. Anything else is politics, yes? I don't want to return to that sort of free market. What is your most convincing evidence or argument that your proposed free market will lead to an overall improvement in health consequences? Especially knowing the history of bad actors in the health care era. You commented that "people also need food and groceries to survive, but we haven't had to nationalize a grocery chain heretofore." You omitted that we have nationalized oversight of the food production system supplying the grocery chains. Again, the FDA started because the free market system of the late 1800s couldn't handle the food safety concerns. People did die because of the adulterated food they ate. They still do, as you know from various E. coli outbreaks, or the 2008 Chinese milk scandal with an estimated 300,000 victims. Your argument regarding grocery chains therefore at best means that governments shouldn't own hospitals, not that the state and federal governments should get rid of the 'committees or small groups' which develop the regulations for the hospitals. All of the examples you gave appear to assume that only the current actors - licensed doctors, regulated medicines, hospitals with government inspections - will be part of the free market system. However, an apolitical free market system must allow anyone to claim to be a doctor, anyone to claim to produce a medicine, and any barbershop, plumber, or auto shop to provide hospital services. How does an apolitical free market prevent these known historical problems, including deaths, from becoming more common again? Why didn't the free market of the late 1800s come up with a free market solution?
- 12y ago

DanBC 12y ago

> Doctors and clinicians deciding just how much they're going to get paid. Not subject to any kind of market or competitive force that may work toward an equilibrium based on supply and demand. How do you get to that conclusion? There is plenty of tendering happening in NHS. > The government has said "Here's a massive amount of money, fight among yourselves about who gets how much, good luck". > We can't just keep saying "The expensive way of doing this is easy and great, so let's just have the government pay for it." Things must be self-sufficient. You know that the English government pays less per capita than the US government for health care and we have better health outcomes, right?

dalke 12y ago

I don't want a free market in my health care. I am not competent enough to judge if the pills I purchase actually contain penicillin and only the inert ingredients listed on the label. We know from the less regulated dietary supplement industry that many manufacturers lie about the contents. I have no reason to believe that the pharmacological drug industry is fundamentally more honest. There used to be a free market for health care. The FDA started as a political response to the adulteration and misbranding of food and drugs in that market. The early 1900 saw the rise of popular patent medicines containing radium, with so-called "radioactive quackery." A true free market would have no restrictions on Doramad Radioactive Toothpaste, on the sale of snake oil made of petroleum, or of Bonnore's Electro Magnetic Bathing Fluid as a cure for cholera. The free market of that era produced Elixir sulfanilamide, which killed more than 100 people. The owner of the company justified it because they were "supplying a legitimate professional demand." A free market needs no more justification than that. Anything else is politics, yes? I don't want to return to that sort of free market. What is your most convincing evidence or argument that your proposed free market will lead to an overall improvement in health consequences? Especially knowing the history of bad actors in the health care era. You commented that "people also need food and groceries to survive, but we haven't had to nationalize a grocery chain heretofore." You omitted that we have nationalized oversight of the food production system supplying the grocery chains. Again, the FDA started because the free market system of the late 1800s couldn't handle the food safety concerns. People did die because of the adulterated food they ate. They still do, as you know from various E. coli outbreaks, or the 2008 Chinese milk scandal with an estimated 300,000 victims. Your argument regarding grocery chains therefore at best means that governments shouldn't own hospitals, not that the state and federal governments should get rid of the 'committees or small groups' which develop the regulations for the hospitals. All of the examples you gave appear to assume that only the current actors - licensed doctors, regulated medicines, hospitals with government inspections - will be part of the free market system. However, an apolitical free market system must allow anyone to claim to be a doctor, anyone to claim to produce a medicine, and any barbershop, plumber, or auto shop to provide hospital services. How does an apolitical free market prevent these known historical problems, including deaths, from becoming more common again? Why didn't the free market of the late 1800s come up with a free market solution?

12y ago