Ponderable

tenacious said:
What makes me think we can come up with a way to improve access and reduce costs? Well... all our competitor nations sure seem to have figured out how to keep cost down and quality of care up. I mean good grief... the European Union has over 500 million residents and they are all getting affordable access to healthcare that is on par with what you see here in America.

So perhaps rather then enabling our government's leaders poor performance with knee jerk excuses about how the best we can finish is last, maybe a better course of action would be to start to demand better
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Health care is a complex personal service, with wide variation in quality, both along measures of health outcomes and along more subjective dimensions of satisfaction. Its demand curve is very elastic – people will consume a lot at subsidized prices. The distinction between “want” and “need” is conceptually fuzzy, and nearly impossible to measure.

The big improvements in health care come from better technology. But big improvements in health-care delivery, average quality, and cost are also attainable. The latter come from much better human organization, as has happened recently in many other industries that have witnessed revolutionary supply competition. Achieving those improvements requires that newcomers can sell products at a profit, and enter new markets, while displacing lots of entrenched interests, before facing competition themselves.

From these observations, simple conclusions follow.

Health care markets need a big supply-side revolution, in which the likes of Southwest Airlines, Walmart and Apple enter, improving business practices, increasing quality and transparency, and spurring innovation. And disrupting the many entrenched interests and cross-subsidies of the current system.

I outlined a long string of restrictions on competition that must be repealed or modified to allow competition. At a minimum, every new regulation should be evaluated by its effect on competition by new entrants, or protection of incumbents, a consideration not even spoken in policy discussion today. (Even when regulatory cost-benefit calculations are made, they do not consider the effects of regulation on competition, capture, and cronyism.)

Health care is singularly ill-suited to payment-plan provision, either by government directly or by heavily regulated insurance by a few large well-protected businesses. A functional cash market must exist in which patients can realistically feel the marginal dollar cost of their treatment, or (equivalently) enjoy the full financial benefits of any economies of treatment they are willing to accept, and are not patsies for huge cross-subsidization and rent-seeking by an obscure system negotiated behind the scenes between big insurance companies, hospitals, and government.

Both supply and demand must be freed, along with insurance. Without supply competition, asking consumers to pay more will do little to spur efficiency. Without demand competition, new suppliers will not be able to succeed.

So, the alternative to the current health care and health insurance mess (both pre and post-ACA) is clear. Getting there will be a long hard road. It’s not a simple matter of “deregulation,” given how deep and widespread the offending restrictions are, and the many legitimate purposes which they purport to serve, and sometimes do. We need to construct a different, but wiser, legal and regulatory regime. I know an interest group when I see one: Don’t worry, there will be lots of jobs for health economists, policy analysts, and lawyers.
 
tenacious said:
I agree. There are whole segments of the pop that are getting less then they deserve. Vets being a big one.

Imagine if government stopped dicking around and coming up with excuses and got to work. Making life better for vets. Making life better for all of us.
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Imagine if unicorns and dragons were real.
Its more realistic.
 
Hüsker Dü said:
I thought we were gonna start winning? I thought we were gonna be so sick of winning you wouldn't believe it? I thought lord Trumf was gonna fix everything?
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You think like a commie.
The only thing I want Trump to do for me, is leave me alone.
That, and take a fire hose to gubment as usual.
 
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