Why can't the market deliver healthcare at a low cost?

Maintenence policies.
Expensive and drive up costs

 

That is an insignificant minority.

 

Look at how the court system operates with legal liability.

 

Sorry, but no. I don't care about excuses for failure. There is no "free education" and I'm tired of paying for these hapless drones who would do the world a favor if they succumbed to a quick death so the rest of us who actually work for our can of beans aren't required to part with what we worked for so that these complete losers don't die from starvation.

I welcome the starvation!!!! Darwin awards will be awarded posthumously, but that and their pathetic lives aren't worth a cup of coffee. Just a bunch of freeloading bums!

 

But it didn't. That mises.org article abused, for example, simple supply and demand theory. Without a credible starting point in its economic modelling, it is nothing but empty political ideology.

 

The answer is because they don't want to.

People can't shop around for hospitals in a health crisis. They go to the nearest one.

Hospitals know this, which is why historically they have charged outragious markups on the most basic treatments.

I've heard nightmare stories about some hospitals charing upwards of $5,000 for a single painkiller tablet that cost them $0.15 to buy.

 

If you want to know that answer to that, ask yourself when was the last time you got three prices before going to the doctor or the emergency room?

 

I agree there is no other business in the world where in federal, state and local law makes it mandatory that I am, in essence, required to buy a pig in a poke.

 

That isn’t even remotely true. That is, unless you’re talking about the rat’s nest of state regulators that the insurance industry supports in order to keep their business as opaque as possible.

 

Dude. if I own a I furniture store I can advertise my prices for a table a lamp stand or what ever. But state laws going back decades make it illegal for doctors and hospitals to advertise their wares. Ditto doctors. There are on going attempts to change that but it's slow going. It's been all but impossible just to get the outcomes for various treatments rated. There are web sites that will allow you now to find out which hospitals do the best job on various surgeries and other things but not in every state and locality and that needs to change but nothing for costs.

 

I think during the 50s healthcare had a private market base of individuals not companies and insurance companies. As companies offered healthcare benefits to acquire quality employees the system changed where the individual no longer had a place in the free market. Pricing is based on what employers and insurance will pay.

 

Nonsense. And that has been true for decades. depending on where your at as many as fifty percent of patients have nothing physically wrong with them and 2/3 of emergency room beds, are occupied by people who should have saved themselves time and money by going to walmart and buying a bottle of tylenol or Aspirin.

 

Both you and he have several issue here. There are four chief drivers of health care costs, access (increasingly unlimited demand with an increasingly limited supply), technology (there were no MRI machines upwards of a quarter million a pop, Ct scanners even more etc and far fewer drug treatments in the 1950's) bureaucracy, (the only thing that even approaches medicine in terms of bureaucratic over load is public schools) and defensive medicine (the medical equivalent of lawyer warnings).

 

Of course prices will be higher then 1950s as all things are.
The free market has not been in place for years. The industry revolves around what employers will pay the insurance company and what the insurance company will pay the medical industry. The person who wants to pay cash for a procedure pays 10 times more then an insurance company because they are not the customer and the industry does not want them as a customer.

You have an elite few..entirely businesses...that have control, and the population is entirely left out of the system.

 

I see a civil war as inevitable. Its only a matter of time before the fascists on the right become violent.

 

You know this is false

 

Do you suppose it's possible or likely that health insurance companies and other companies worked together to design the system that evolved?

 

If you can't make a cogent response you're free to abstain. Your reply is in fact completely nonresponsive to what I posted. That said, I will respond to your "arguments".

Are you so unimaginative you couldn't conceive of a life threatening need to be somewhere? What if the place you need to be is the emergency room? That misses the point however, as the comparison is between two services. If you need transportation you can arrange for that by purchasing a vehicle prior to the need, if you need healthcare you can purchase that prior to the need. The fact that the government intervenes in the healthcare market increases cost, reduces competition and variety. If healthcare was offered in a market relatively more free (less compulsion and fewer restrictions) costs would fall, competition would increase and the variety of available options would increase. Nitpicking about the difference in the level of "need" for either good is irrelevant.

Within 10 miles of my current residence there are several hospitals and dozens of clinics, urgent care facilities and doctor's offices. This is in our current heavily restricted and regulated healthcare environment. If I have a functioning car I can be at the clinic of my choice within minutes. If the healthcare market were relatively more free than it currently is, those options would increase and the cost for them would decrease.

In the post I made that you didn't respond to, the word voluntary is crucial as that is what indicates a free market versus one that is compelled or forbidden.

 

As always with every business opportunity in capitalism, that was one more example of an industry developing, consolidating, positioning itself with businesses working to maximize their power to generate maximum profit, and to dominate an industry. It appears that you might be thinking that it's all just a matter of choosing a structure that does the best job for the people, but it's not. It's the normal evolution of capitalist business.

 

You are leaving out the fact that the single biggest medical insurer is Uncle SAm who historically pays well under the actual cost of services and the rest of us have to pick up the tab.

 

This is slowly starting to change. More and more practices are popping up that dont take insurance and instead opt to use yearly or quarterly fees, then you pay anything not directly covered by that fee with cash. These plans are generally far cheaper than even the most basic individual plan and even many employer plans.

 

You do realize that the vast majority of hospitals are nonprofit? I am not so sure that the allegation of profiteering is appropriate.

 

Direct Primary Care is changing the problem with pricing. Go to this website: https://mapper.dpcfrontier.com/ and find a clinic in your area. The clinics I've looked at have subscription rates from 20 to 100 dollars per month based on your age. The clinic website will also usually have a list of services included in the subscription price and the cost for those services that are extra. This website is an example I found in Pittsburgh: https://gentilefamilydpc.com/benefits. They list their subscription fees as follows on the website:
Membership fees
Individual child (0-18 years) $35/mo
Individual adult (19 and older) $70/mo
Family (2 adults, up to 2 children) $150/month
Registration fee *Waived if you sign up before August 1* $100 at time of first medical visit
Re-enrollment fee $200

These Direct Primary Care clinics demonstrate that quality healthcare can be provided on the free market at very reasonable prices.

 

Sir, i do not know if you are a real person, or a troll of some sort because you claim progressive roots, but espouse ultra conservative rhetoric. But i will give you the benefit of the doubt

I observe that you present a video which compares computer and consumer electronic products to healthcare.., why oh why is their a differential cost outcome between these two categories.... surely the ONLY conceivable explanation is government vs free markets, right. As if the production of these two things are even remotely similar. If you wish to defend that comparison as valid... i will be happy to do so.
Moving on

The fact is that the NHS in england is rated as perhaps the most cost effective healthcare in the world.
Since you are only concerned about cost effective medical care, maybe we should emulate their approach... or maybe the von mises folks would start being less concerned about cost effective solution. Well we know that people like von mises criticize the NHS. Is the criticism that the NHS is insufficiently cost effective... NO. There are all sorts of other critiques.... you gotta wait in line, rationing, not absolute top quality etc.

Ok , lets take any economic product..., lets say that you want the best service, the highest end quality, and you do not want any rationing of that product... will it be more expensive? Yeah. If i wand fed ex service, i do not pay usps prices. DOH

IF you wand super cost effective medicine.... go to cuba.... also socialistic

Is it the case that your low cost medical plan will deliver heart transplants, kidney dialysis, knee and hip replacements, bone marrow transplants, cancer treatment, hospitalizations etc.... for 79 per month.....dream on.

Everyone wants lower cost healthcare .... until they really have a problem. I did too, until i needed an emergency heart valve replacement

As far as medical billing forms... few individuals have to deal with this these days.... because the dr office does this..., and that costs money....shocking i know


If you want to get rid of those expensive forms... socialized medicine is perfect. Uks NHS does nit have all those forms.,., but, oh yeah, you will not like NHS..., even though it is the most efficient, even though it does not have the forms that you hate.

Come clean.... what you hate is government and any deviation from a total free market. That is the one and only value to which you adhere

 

You are not required.
Where did you get that from?

Way to dodge that healthcare isn't a free market. It's a monopoly market, IMO.