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.