> I don’t believe you will be choosing which hospital you go to if you’re unconscious, or facing a serious acute medical concern placing you in desperation. Coincidentally, those tend to be the times when costs also skyrocket.
Firstly, emergency treatment is a tiny sliver of all healthcare, in terms of volume and cost. If you want to argue about healthcare in general based on that - nay, on the miniscule number of unconscious people admitted to hospital - be my guest, "never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" and all that.
Secondly, I think you should look into how the Japanese system works before making statements about it. Your beliefs are of no concern to truth or proper analysis, especially when they don't accord with reality.
> The issue with treating healthcare like a free market is that some people just won’t get healthcare. Free markets aren’t going to build a hospital in a small enough town because the cost can’t be justified.
The issue with treating computing like a free market is that some people just won’t get computers. Free markets aren’t going to provide computers to small businesses because the cost can’t be justified.
I think the 70s is calling and wants your argument back. Before you reply with "computing and healthcare aren't comparable" they are, in fact, incredibly comparable. Health is like computing power, the more you have the more you want and can do, and hence - due to demand and people seeking to satisfy that demand - the more you can get. Reading these forums it seems like a quite profitable endeavour that is unlikely to end soon, much like healthcare.
> Your point that the US outranks most other countries is perhaps true for some things, but completely false for baseline measures such as infant mortality, life expectancy, cost per capita, etc.
That is something we agree on because that is the accepted starting point of the discussion, not a refutation to anything I have written or proposed.
> But our system is hardly “better” than other developed nations on almost any objective measure.
Back to the black and white thinking.
It is better in several ways and yet I am not an advocate of it because it is not a free market so I might ask why you're responding to me as if I am an advocate of it, but that is black and white thinking in a nutshell so I won't.
The problem is how to get more and better healthcare to more people. Aside from the endless examples outside of healthcare, less regulated markets in healthcare have met these requirements. For example, cosmetic surgery and things like lasik, the quality has gone up, the costs have dropped, availability is widespread and even approach normal.
Computer has Moore's law, but healthcare hasn't. What is worse, it's labor-intensive work so very difficult to optimize even compared to other industry. Possibly robots can replace human but I don't think it moving forward without public health insurance. (Gov has incentive to develop technology to reduce healthcare cost)
Healthcare relies on Moore’s law. You’re also going to receive, this year, a vaccine that will be among the fastest ever developed. The number of services and treatments that didn’t even exist 10 years ago is increasing year on year, and the efficiency of them increases too - and would increase faster and hence become cheaper if they were deregulated.
Firstly, emergency treatment is a tiny sliver of all healthcare, in terms of volume and cost. If you want to argue about healthcare in general based on that - nay, on the miniscule number of unconscious people admitted to hospital - be my guest, "never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" and all that.
Secondly, I think you should look into how the Japanese system works before making statements about it. Your beliefs are of no concern to truth or proper analysis, especially when they don't accord with reality.
> The issue with treating healthcare like a free market is that some people just won’t get healthcare. Free markets aren’t going to build a hospital in a small enough town because the cost can’t be justified.
The issue with treating computing like a free market is that some people just won’t get computers. Free markets aren’t going to provide computers to small businesses because the cost can’t be justified.
I think the 70s is calling and wants your argument back. Before you reply with "computing and healthcare aren't comparable" they are, in fact, incredibly comparable. Health is like computing power, the more you have the more you want and can do, and hence - due to demand and people seeking to satisfy that demand - the more you can get. Reading these forums it seems like a quite profitable endeavour that is unlikely to end soon, much like healthcare.
> Your point that the US outranks most other countries is perhaps true for some things, but completely false for baseline measures such as infant mortality, life expectancy, cost per capita, etc.
That is something we agree on because that is the accepted starting point of the discussion, not a refutation to anything I have written or proposed.
> But our system is hardly “better” than other developed nations on almost any objective measure.
Back to the black and white thinking.
It is better in several ways and yet I am not an advocate of it because it is not a free market so I might ask why you're responding to me as if I am an advocate of it, but that is black and white thinking in a nutshell so I won't.
The problem is how to get more and better healthcare to more people. Aside from the endless examples outside of healthcare, less regulated markets in healthcare have met these requirements. For example, cosmetic surgery and things like lasik, the quality has gone up, the costs have dropped, availability is widespread and even approach normal.