My Article about Reducing Health Care Costs

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ThomasHobbes
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Re: My Article about Reducing Health Care Costs

Post by ThomasHobbes »

GE Morton wrote: August 1st, 2018, 11:54 am
ThomasHobbes wrote: August 1st, 2018, 5:07 am
Socialism splits up monopolies. You need government control to prevent monopolies.
In a free market you don't need government to split up monopolies. They self-destruct. If a firm acquires a monopoly it raises prices until reaching the point of diminishing returns.
That gets the silliest comment of the weak award.

Big companies force out the smaller, and scoop them up.
What planet are you from?
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: My Article about Reducing Health Care Costs

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GE Morton wrote: August 1st, 2018, 12:07 pm
ThomasHobbes wrote: August 1st, 2018, 5:10 am
The USA's problem is that private medicine and insurance acts like a parasite on the government which is in any event made up of the same individuals that benefit from cheating the system.
Well, that is a classic example of Newspeak. A parasite is an organism that subsists by appropriating, by force or stealth, nutrients produced by others, or the products of others' labor. In health care the products are medicines, various types of instruments, and provider services, most of which are produced or delivered by "private medicine." The only social institution that appropriates those products and services, or the earnings therefrom, by force, that I know of, is government. Who, exactly, is the parasite here?
The government is occupied by THE SAME people who own the businesses who provide health care in many cases, otherwise those same companies have the politicians bought and paid for.
The guys writing the checks are the same ones who cash them.
That is how US medicine is so corrupt and expensive.
It's like you people are living with your heads in the sand.
We are witnessing the same thing happen in the UK over the last 20 years, sadly.
GE Morton
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Re: My Article about Reducing Health Care Costs

Post by GE Morton »

ThomasHobbes wrote: August 1st, 2018, 4:52 pm
The government is occupied by THE SAME people who own the businesses who provide health care in many cases, otherwise those same companies have the politicians bought and paid for.
Er, no, it is not. In a brief search I could find no members of the US House of Representatives or Senate who had any substantial interest in or were employed by any health care organization. Health care organizations do contribute to the campaigns of many politicians, of course, as does every other interest group.

Your claim is factually false.
GE Morton
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Re: My Article about Reducing Health Care Costs

Post by GE Morton »

ThomasHobbes wrote: August 1st, 2018, 4:48 pm
Big companies force out the smaller, and scoop them up.
Yes, they sometimes do that. They force out the smaller companies by undercutting their prices. But when they gain monopoly status they begin to raise those prices, and the dynamic I outlined comes into play: the high profits attract new competitors and spur innovation, and the monopoly soon ends.
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Sy Borg
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Re: My Article about Reducing Health Care Costs

Post by Sy Borg »

GE Morton wrote: August 1st, 2018, 1:26 pm
Greta wrote: July 31st, 2018, 10:50 pm Funny thing that the US has less public health coverage yet also suffers much higher medical costs than other western nations.

Logically, if government involvement was anything more than just an excuse then the opposite would be the case.
The amount of "public health coverage" is not the determinant. It is the total fraction of health care paid by 3rd-party payers, of which the government is only one.

Health care costs in the US are high because prices for everything involved are high --- from drugs to laboratory tests to CT and MRI scans to physicians', nurses', and technicians' salaries to bedpans and bandages.
Generally supplies are far cheaper in the US than where I live, but we still have greater longevity, better health results, cheaper services for patients and will less budget drain. Why? Because the corporate parasitism is less here than in the US.

I accept that you argue from a basis of assumption as a libertarian, so you are ideologically opposed to public healthcare per se, and thus will always find a way of distorting the situation to make your system appear to be optimal. Trouble is, the US system is famously poor value for both patients and taxpayers as compared with every other western health systems in Europe and Australasia, who tend to deal with far more expensive overheads than in the US.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: My Article about Reducing Health Care Costs

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GE Morton wrote: August 1st, 2018, 6:39 pm
ThomasHobbes wrote: August 1st, 2018, 4:48 pm
Big companies force out the smaller, and scoop them up.
Yes, they sometimes do that. They force out the smaller companies by undercutting their prices. But when they gain monopoly status they begin to raise those prices, and the dynamic I outlined comes into play: the high profits attract new competitors and spur innovation, and the monopoly soon ends.
The world is full of massive corporation and growing monopolies.
Your claim is factually false.
GE Morton
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Re: My Article about Reducing Health Care Costs

Post by GE Morton »

Greta wrote: August 1st, 2018, 9:21 pm
Generally supplies are far cheaper in the US than where I live, but we still have greater longevity, better health results, cheaper services for patients and will less budget drain. Why? Because the corporate parasitism is less here than in the US.
Some supplies will be cheaper here because they are produced here, while Australia must import them. But provider salaries and the price of services (such as laboratory tests, CAT scans & MRIs, etc., are costlier here than almost anywhere else --- primarily because governments in other countries impose arbitrary limits on prices. See the links in my previous post. With respect to drug prices, I'm not sure what is Australia's policy, but in Canada drug prices are much cheaper, because the Canadian government allows US manufacturers to charge only the costs of production plus a fixed markup. Recovery of R&D costs --- which are huge for most drugs --- is not allowed. Hence US consumers must subsidize Canadians' shares of those costs.

Please amplify on this "corporate parasitism" you mention. In what does that consist? What form does it take? Could you provide some examples?
I accept that you argue from a basis of assumption as a libertarian, so you are ideologically opposed to public healthcare per se, and thus will always find a way of distorting the situation to make your system appear to be optimal.
What do you think I have "distorted"?
Trouble is, the US system is famously poor value for both patients and taxpayers as compared with every other western health systems in Europe and Australasia, who tend to deal with far more expensive overheads than in the US.
I agree that health care in the US is a poor value. It is also a poor value elsewhere, though not quite as poor as here. It will never be a good value, here or elsewhere, until the industry is fully market-controlled, not politically controlled, just as with every other good. The high costs are not due to "corporate parasitism." They are due to the relentless, pervasive government interference in that market.
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Re: My Article about Reducing Health Care Costs

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This topic can be approached from several angles. The current one is: why does a unit of medical care cost more in the US than other places? The answer is multi-factorial: 1) pharmaceutical houses and supply houses charge much more in the US than the same products in other countries. Why? Because they can. 2) there is actual wasteful/unnecessary care, one portion because of fee-for-service incentives and another big one because of the "defense" practice of medicine, ie to bolster the ability to defend against potential lawsuits and 3) because a portion of the care provided costs nothing (or next to nothing) to the patient, ie insurance covers the costs, thus the patient over-demands those services. In more recent times, the move to online surveys/ratings is also causing docs to cave in patient demands for care that the doc knows is of little to no value. However, the largest is that the cost of care for those who can pay (the insured) is artificially high to compensate for the uncompensated care provided for the uninsured (and the under-insured, ie Medicare patients)
"As usual... it depends."
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: My Article about Reducing Health Care Costs

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LuckyR wrote: August 2nd, 2018, 11:09 am This topic can be approached from several angles. The current one is: why does a unit of medical care cost more in the US than other places? The answer is multi-factorial: 1) pharmaceutical houses and supply houses charge much more in the US than the same products in other countries. Why? Because they can. 2) there is actual wasteful/unnecessary care, one portion because of fee-for-service incentives and another big one because of the "defense" practice of medicine, ie to bolster the ability to defend against potential lawsuits and 3) because a portion of the care provided costs nothing (or next to nothing) to the patient, ie insurance covers the costs, thus the patient over-demands those services. In more recent times, the move to online surveys/ratings is also causing docs to cave in patient demands for care that the doc knows is of little to no value. However, the largest is that the cost of care for those who can pay (the insured) is artificially high to compensate for the uncompensated care provided for the uninsured (and the under-insured, ie Medicare patients)
All good except the last point. This might be the case if the hospitals provided care for free. Generally they do not. County hospitals are paid for by the state and they are also screwed by high medical costs. And medicare stumps up from taxation.

By contrast there is no insurance system in the NHS and this means that even before you measure the economies of scale, medical costs are already 20% lower as there is no insurance infrastructure.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: My Article about Reducing Health Care Costs

Post by ThomasHobbes »

GE Morton wrote: August 2nd, 2018, 10:31 am
ThomasHobbes wrote: August 2nd, 2018, 5:18 am
You are a damn fool.
My, such a lucid, substantive, and insightful comment.

This is an adult conversation. Now run back to your romper room. You have no business posting on a philosophy forum.
Everything I needed to say about your post was encapsulated in that simple and economic sentence. You are a robot.
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ThomasHobbes
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Re: My Article about Reducing Health Care Costs

Post by ThomasHobbes »

GE Morton wrote: August 2nd, 2018, 10:57 am The high costs are not due to "corporate parasitism." They are due to the relentless, pervasive government interference in that market.
So its okay when YOU say it?
LOL
Corporate parasitism is the natural consequence of the free market. Your problem is that you have bought into the "less government" trope without thinking it through.
The US needs less of the sort of government it has at the moment, that gives free reign to corporate hegemony and more of the democratic sort of government that works in the interests of the people and are willing to brake up monopolies.
There is no evidence of that happening any time soon.
GE Morton
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Re: My Article about Reducing Health Care Costs

Post by GE Morton »

LuckyR wrote: August 2nd, 2018, 11:09 am This topic can be approached from several angles. The current one is: why does a unit of medical care cost more in the US than other places? The answer is multi-factorial: 1) pharmaceutical houses and supply houses charge much more in the US than the same products in other countries. Why? Because they can. 2) there is actual wasteful/unnecessary care, one portion because of fee-for-service incentives and another big one because of the "defense" practice of medicine, ie to bolster the ability to defend against potential lawsuits and 3) because a portion of the care provided costs nothing (or next to nothing) to the patient, ie insurance covers the costs, thus the patient over-demands those services. In more recent times, the move to online surveys/ratings is also causing docs to cave in patient demands for care that the doc knows is of little to no value. However, the largest is that the cost of care for those who can pay (the insured) is artificially high to compensate for the uncompensated care provided for the uninsured (and the under-insured, ie Medicare patients)
You pretty well nailed it, Lucky.
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