Flame — HabitableZone

Flame » in reply to re: Leapin' lizard, crouching kitty.

Atlanta's burning, Miz Scarlett
ER — (archived)

Market forces do not apply when you have a good chance of dying unless you can afford the product. Free markets depend on the assumption that somewhere down the line the consumer can say "I don't need this at this price, I'm going to the competition."

Our health system may be the best in the world, but it is also by far the most expensive. Where is the vaunted free market now? How much of our health dollars go into those gleaming insurance company office towers and walnut-panelled executive suites (or should I say "sweets"?).

And the whole process breeds waste, those who get expensive substandard care in emergency rooms for easily managed chronic conditions generate enormous costs that are directly passed to other consumers and the taxpayer, not the insurance firms. How can you describe a marketing system that has no incentive to cut costs as a "free market". A few years back, when I took my wife to an emergency room, I was presented with a bill for thousands of dollars for a few hours of caregiver time and an inventory of supplies I could have purchased at the drugstore for about 40 dollars. I immediately took my itemized bill to my insurance company, expecting they would jump all over the hospital for waste, if not downright fraud (there were items on the list that the hospital didn't even have in stock, much less use in her treatment). The upshot was that they didn't care. It didn't matter to them, as the clerk explained to me in hushed tones, "next year your employer's premiums will go up based on this evidence of higher costs". I paraphrase, of course, but that's exactly what she said.

Many of the criticisms of socialized medicine are valid and need to be addressed, but what we have NOW is socialized medicine, except the private industry that administers it is gaming the system as it's own private cash cow. They are the reason med costs are higher here than anywhere else in the world, and getting higher every day. The system is close to collapse except for the very wealthy, and the situation is intolerable.

Perhaps if critics of socialized medicine spent as much time exposing the health industry's greed as they do proposed government reforms to it, the health cartel might actually start competing and economizing, and we wouldn't need government intervention. The way things are going now, a heavy handed bureaucratic, expensive and inefficient system is inevitable, and the party will be over for everybody.

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