this post was submitted on 17 May 2024
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[–] psvrh@lemmy.ca 4 points 1 year ago (2 children)

The market has solved it.

You just don't realize what the market has solved for. It didn't solve the problem of expensive healthcare, it solved the problem of how to maximize profits for the wealthy.

That's what people don't understand about "the market". What you think it's doing isn't what it's actually doing.

[–] tetris11@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

If the free market had any real competitors, the problem would genuinely solve itself in favor of the consumer. We see this with any new tech where a bunch of new firms try to win customers by any means necessary in those first few years.

The problem as always is: where are the competitors after X years, and are these "competitors" actually competing anymore?

The solution as always is: regulate. Ensure competition. Ensure cartels aren't price fixing. But no one wants to hear that

[–] callouscomic@lemm.ee 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The streaming market has tons of competition. So then why are prices endlessly rising and content being removed and the value being made worse with ads?

The video game market also has tons of companies in it, and yet most of them are making the experience worse with ads and service-based games.

[–] MrEff@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I have an honors minor in medical humanities and took several medical policy courses. We looked at this exact graph from previous years as well as several other huge sets of data/graphs/studies and anything else related to insurance you can imagine. Insurance is not a standard market commodity and does not follow the same trend or logic. The only way you can lower premiums in insurance is by reducing the risk in the pool, or increasing the pool size to dilute the risk. This is either increasing the total pool size by increasing premiums, getting more people, or being selective about who joins the risk pool. The third one was what was called "preexisting conditions" and kept high cost people from entering the risk pool and draining the funds. This got banned and increased premiums. By increasing competition you end up splitting up the pools, making everyone's premiums go up. This happened multiple times post ACA after the GOP started stripping out the funding and safeguards to prevent this. More and more competition opened up with artificially low premiums being subsidized by federal dollars, but then when the subsidies ended the premiums started jumping. Then when the premiums were jumping, new companies opened up to make more competition advertising lower rates, but then further fractured to pool sizes, leading to premiums skyrocketing. If you look back just 10 years ago there was a 3-5 year stretch of premiums increasing almost 30% year after year. It was due to all the competition opening up every year. This is why single payer systems have the lowest rates. If you have even one private company monopoly with a regulated cap on profits you would still end up with lower premiums. Then, if this single paying company was nationalized to take out the profit making middle man, the premiums are that much lower because your risk is spread across a massive pool. More competition in insurance makes the problem worse. I would agree with your stronger regulation though. There is a lot that can be done there.

[–] makyo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Yup, the free market and health care are not compatible because the free market works on principles of supply and demand. But when you have a limited resource that people will literally pay anything for (their health) - well you can see where the problem is.

[–] Fedizen@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I N N O V A T I O N Doctors in the US spend about 25% of their time dealing with insurance companies

[–] Kecessa@sh.itjust.works 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

The best part is that it's only State spendings, people in the USA also pay for private insurance individually!

[–] BakerBagel@midwest.social 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Americans essentially pay for our insurance 4 times.

we pay more tax dollars per patient than ay other country

We pay hundreds per person per month in insurance premiums

We pay all healthcare expenses until we hit our annual deductible

We they pay a co-pay percentage after all treatment beyond the deductible.

Everyone knows it's a broken system, but people are adamant that anything else would be communism or would make you lose an election.

[–] PowerCrazy@lemmy.ml 1 points 1 year ago

The people worried about "losing an election" are paid by the people who profit from the broken system. The communism fear is a strawman that liberals use to excuse their worthless party.

[–] unreasonabro@lemmy.world 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

in case you've not gotten the memo, the entire world has been telling you for more than fifty years that under your shitty model you pay more for worse results.

It doesn't take a genius to see how retarded the way you're doing things is.

[–] beebarfbadger@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Retarded? You obviously don't understand that it is working perfectly and exactly as intended. Only, it is not a system to maintain the health of the average citizen, it is instead a system to siphon as much wealth from the regular people as possible towards the few corporate entities who managed to buy themselves the monopoly to exploit the poorer castes and drain any poor fuck who needs medical assistance dry for all they're worth.

The average American is prey, but there are enough reserves of these human resources to simply not care that it's either bankruptcy or death in the average case of a medical emergency.

[–] sarge@lemm.ee 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Well, now I’d like to learn what the differences between the US and the Australian Healthcare System are!

Why is Australia so damn high up?

[–] sarge@lemm.ee 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Turns out it seems the Australians have public health insurance for everyone - Medicare. And you have optional additional private insurance. Communism I guess. Surely wouldn’t workout for the US…

[–] dgriffith@aussie.zone 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Turns out it seems the Australians have public health insurance for everyone - Medicare.

To follow from your comment , because Australia has a publicly funded health system, the government actively works to reduce preventable diseases because it reduces the load on the system.

So they have had:

A sunscreen campaign and skin cancer check initiatives since the '80s.

Anti-smoking campaigns (and high tobacco taxes) where resources are available to help quit.

Every citizen gets a free bowel cancer test mailed to them when they turn 50 to help find and treat cancer earlier.

Road safety laws are tight and helmet / seatbelt regulations are strict as it reduces hospital loads.

Vaccinations for a multitude of easily preventable diseases are given for free in childhood, particularly now for the virus that causes cervical cancer.

Those and a myriad of other public health initiatives all help Australians to live longer.

Coupled with the fact that the cost for the whole population is borne by an income tax of approximately 2% , it means that if you are poor or unemployed, you still have access to health services. That also means that small health issues among low income earners don't snowball until they are life threatening.

It has the knock on effect that people don't end up trapped in a job because it offers "good benefits and a low deductible" and concerns about pre existing conditions interfering with insurance and etc when changing jobs is generally moot.

Then throw in mandatory government regulated retirement funds that require all employers to put in 12+ percent of an employee's gross earnings into an employee's fund of their choosing for their retirement. That coupled with public health generally means the whole US style worker=slave arrangement can't exist.

Which means the US will get nothing like this as all that screams of nanny state overlords and death panels and moar taxes killing freedom and so on and so forth. Sorry guys.

[–] Gsus4@mander.xyz 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Cool, can the stupid meme "security is why the US has no free healthcare" finally die?

[–] Liz@midwest.social 1 points 1 year ago

Only if you keep reminding people that Medicare for All would be cheaper than our current system.