8 ms·

The reason airbnb and uber exist is because the prior business models are broken with regards to a big enough portion of their potential customers. A conversat

• ageek123 11y ago
  > The way forward is ton get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that. This. Among other things, it would go a long way towards fixing the health insurance problems in the country. One of the reasons the private health insurance market is so dysfunctional is that relatively few people participate in it (most people are covered by their employers).
  • danieltillett 11y ago
    The way the rest of the world has “fixed” health insurance is to have the state involved. Even the USA does this for anyone over 65 (where most of the spending occurs) and for anyone who is a veteran. For some reason covering the young and healthy seems too hard. It is almost as though there is a huge vested interest keen on maintaining the status quo at the expense of everyone else. Given that only unions are evil this could not be true.
    • norea-armozel 11y ago
      Kevin A Carson outlined in an essay how hospitals justify their prices on everything from saline to surgery on a managerial model which treats every service/good as revenue on the accounting books. Oddly enough, they got this model from the auto industry which did the same sort of model which obviously demands consumers to use the service/good as much as possible. For example, how many patients actually need a CT scan? Not many, really, but if you dig deeper the reason they do this is to get the maximum value of of their CT scan equipment even if a patient's symptoms don't match anything that would require such a service. Equally, many hospitals also compete with each other thus duplicate services or spend their budget on the look/feel of their facilities (how many people care wth the foyer of a hospital looks like?) which leads to the higher prices. Essentially, each patient pays the full cost of the medical services rendered unlike how consumers in other industries (the price of a meal or a cell phone is not at cost, often it's lower when you factor in everything to bring it to market). I think the way to clear the system is to do a multi-tier approach which may include single payer healthcare, but if you were to install that system into our hospital system as is then expect the US to go bankrupt in less than a decade. We have to break the back of the monopolists before we can get anything close to sane market prices.
• Arainach 11y ago
  Without the bargaining power of large groups of employees, how will reasonable costs and levels of service be maintained? It's well established that people on their own without insurance get charged much higher rates than people with insurance get charged for the same procedures at the same hospitals. Presumably the same effects apply to individuals trying to obtain a price for insurance versus an employer bargaining for a group of employees.
  • brc 11y ago
    Seems to work ok in many places around the world and in different products within the us. You don't need 'group buying' for auto or home insurance, or car or home purchases. In fact group buying probably hinders the ability to get the right product/person match. Of all the problems to solve, it seems pretty easy. Even if that just means groupon for benefits.
    • rspeer 11y ago
      I'll bite. Where are these "many places around the world" that have your desired laissez-faire approach to health care? Are you talking about places like India or what? Also, I would hate to see a health care system as badly managed as Groupon.
      • brc 11y ago
        I live in Australia. I have private health insurance. It's an old policy from when I was employed with a package. The policy costs no more than when it was part of that package. That's maybe because the policy is priced based on me (age mostly) rather than the employer. I'm not 100% sure why there's no real difference between employer based policies and personal policies. Anyway point is the problem is solve able.
        • rspeer 11y ago
          I'm just getting this from Wikipedia, but: "Health care in Australia is universal. The federal government pays a large percentage of the cost of services in public hospitals." I would happily have Australia's solution in the US. It would go much farther than Obamacare.
• rtpg 11y ago
  You do realize we had a time before unions and common benefits right? What makes this time any different?
  • chaostheory 11y ago
    Well today the government (i.e. tax payers) will subsidize a good portion of health care
    • collyw 11y ago
      As a European, I'll tell you that is a great thing.
• danieltillett 11y ago
  >The way forward is to get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that. Well until you change the tax laws any such change is just going to result in a pay cut. The whole reason things like healthcare are offered as benefits rather than straight salary is because benefits are tax efficient. >Ultimate flexibility is what efficient economies are about. Unions don't like that future and understandably try and fight it. It's a futile fight in the end. Sure get rid of the unions, but let employers band together in trade associations. I am sure that these employer organisations would never collude to hold down wages. Edit. It is good to see that everyone here has forgotten about all the big tech companies banding together to hold down tech wages.
  • ikt 11y ago
    I agree with you I think there's too much idealism in here and not enough reality. For example this: > The way forward is to get rid of the concept of 'benefits' packages and just let people work for a gross pay and let themselves choose their own benefits from that. is the quickest way to lose all your benefits and gain nothing... why does he think corporations are really nice caring people who will give you a little extra pay for losing the mandated benefits, and not simply cut the benefits and keep the pay the same? Anything not mandated is optional, and if it's optional the employer doesn't have to pay it and more than likely won't. From another comment in here, I think this is the result of his flexibility: Most "associates" (your average workers) get 30 hours/week and zero benefits, except when mandated otherwise by law.
    • danieltillett 11y ago
      Even if companies wanted to do the right thing and keep the overall pay constant (history would suggest otherwise), because of the way benefits like healthcare are treated by the tax system, getting rid of benefits would make all employees worse off - basically more of your income would go in tax. I don’t think this is an ideal outcome.
      • seanflyon 11y ago
• norea-armozel 11y ago
  I don't think this is the best idea in terms of solving the labor problem. It's more likely we need to make it easier for workers to form cooperatives and/or unions to minimize the excess economic rents on labor. That way, the workers can economize better in terms of healthcare or anything else really. Benefits is just a stop gap that should've been replace by better wage regulation or worker owned businesses where a worker's daily wage doesn't come below their cost of living (housing, healthcare, and food being the core line items in it).