Free Market
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In a truly Free-Market healthcare system... any business that makes a product and prices it out of the reach of the majority of the population would risk running themselves out of business, wouldn't they?
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@Dashrender said:
Considering all healthcare though, you are rarely in a situation where if treatment isn't done immediately, you'll die. S
I'm not sure that that is true. Or more importantly, it's not true when it matters. That you can get a wart removed under negotiation doesn't really matter in the context. What matters is that the important healthcare cannot be negotiated.
When things matter, life threatening, incredible main, loss of decision making capabilities, loss of consciousness... you can't negotiate. Free market requires it all to be free, not just bits here and there. That's like saying all cars are not free for you to choose, but it is a free market because you get to pick the floormats. That's just a distraction.
It's not considered free market when a hospital controls access to emergency services for a region. Sure, you COULD fly to another country for that surgery. And in some cases that is viable, absolutely. But by and large, you need healthcare where you live and there is no free market.
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Scott - so in your utopian healthcare isn't part of the free market situation, what drives innovation? Who determines how much money a doctor is paid? Who decides how much money is spent on research to make new drugs?
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
This reminds me of the pausing windshield wipers. There's a movie about this. A guy invented the way to make this happen. The auto manufacturers had been working on it for years, clearly with those who understand the engineering, etc. The inventor found a non trivial way to accomplish his goal and was granted a patent.
That's an example of where it might work. A good one of when it doesn't is the guy who invested the CRT for televisions. His patent process cost him everything and even though he was one of the most important inventors of the 20th century, they used the patent office to make sure he got nothing, rather than everything. Same for Tesla, for example. Patents were used to keep him from getting paid for his work. Sure, that's all corruption, but the nature of patents means someone external has to make a judgement call about things like "obvious", who was first, etc.
Are you saying that someone else patented those ideas before the named people did, so the named people were screwed?
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@dafyre said:
In a truly Free-Market healthcare system... any business that makes a product and prices it out of the reach of the majority of the population would risk running themselves out of business, wouldn't they?
Exactly. If you truly attempted to run a healthcare system like a free market, the prices come down, they don't shoot up.
Still wouldn't make it a true free market, but treating it like one would look nothing like what the US has. More like what India has.
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@Dashrender said:
Are you saying that someone else patented those ideas before the named people did, so the named people were screwed?
Or used influence to get the patents instead. Edison got Tesla's patents and used the wealth from them to not pay Tesla.
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@Dashrender said:
Scott - so in your utopian healthcare isn't part of the free market situation....
It's not a utopia. I haven't suggested how things should work. I've only explained that conceptually healthcare is not eligible for a free market system. Plain and simple. Neither is air, for example. It's not suggestive that there is a utopia system, it's simply stating what is.
I'm not sure how that's being missed. I'm not arguing that one system is more free market and another is not. Or that healthcare should or shouldn't be free. I'm saying that free market is a concept that can't be applied to healthcare and that's all that there is to it.
I don't think the US is a utopia, but clearly free market and healthcare have no association there.
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@Dashrender said:
Who determines how much money a doctor is paid?
That depends on the system that you want to use. Nearly always the government in systems that currently work well.
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@Dashrender said:
Scott - so in your utopian healthcare isn't part of the free market situation, what drives innovation?
Altruism. Same thing that drives it nearly everywhere today. Either individual altruism or the people funding it because it is in the interest of the people to have good healthcare. It's a known, working system.
Remember, free markets need healthy workers. It is in the interest of the people, the government, businesses and markets to have good healthcare.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Who determines how much money a doctor is paid?
That depends on the system that you want to use. Nearly always the government in systems that currently work well.
Which also means that the doctor is likely to try and "sell" the most expensive service they can every time.
Just like a car sales man.
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@Dashrender said:
Who decides how much money is spent on research to make new drugs?
Who determines it today? The governments determines what will be bought, sold, allowed, protected, provided, etc. The government effectively already decides completely. The government is always the answer when a free market connect exist. You can hate governments as much as you want, they are the only possible answer. Work to fix them rather than to break systems for best results.
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@DustinB3403 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Who determines how much money a doctor is paid?
That depends on the system that you want to use. Nearly always the government in systems that currently work well.
Which also means that the doctor is likely to try and "sell" the most expensive service they can every time.
Just like a car sales man.
Why? If there is no money is selling drugs, there is no incentive to do so.
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@DustinB3403 said:
Just like a car sales man.
Only in a corrupt world where doctors are drug dealers and don't provide healthcare.
IT pros don't have this problem, that's why we warn people about confusing IT pros with salesmen. Two different roles, two different jobs.
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There is no money in selling the drug my ass.
They certainly are getting kick backs in one way or another.
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@DustinB3403 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Who determines how much money a doctor is paid?
That depends on the system that you want to use. Nearly always the government in systems that currently work well.
Which also means that the doctor is likely to try and "sell" the most expensive service they can every time.
Just like a car sales man.
Have you used healthcare in countries that have government set doctors pricing? Because this really does not happen there. That most of the developed world works this way, and all the countries with the best healthcare, and this is not a problem in the least suggests that this isn't true.
That the US does the opposite and lets doctors set any price they want AND allows them to sell drugs and results in exactly the situation you describe effectively proves that your theory is backwards.
This isn't some theory that isn't tested. You can witness this in global healthcare every day.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@DustinB3403 said:
Just like a car sales man.
Only in a corrupt world where doctors are drug dealers and don't provide healthcare.
IT pros don't have this problem, that's why we warn people about confusing IT pros with salesmen. Two different roles, two different jobs.
The pharma sales reps, sell to doctors, to promote a specific medicine. If the doctor has patients who could use that medicine, they are prescribing it to their patients.
Which at so many units sold (i know this from working closing with the pharma industry) does the doctor get a kickback of some kind. As well as the rep.
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@DustinB3403 said:
There is no money in selling the drug my ass.
They certainly are getting kick backs in one way or another.
No, they really are not. Where are you getting this? What country have you witnessed this in that has government set doctors' prices?
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@DustinB3403 said:
@scottalanmiller said:
@DustinB3403 said:
Just like a car sales man.
Only in a corrupt world where doctors are drug dealers and don't provide healthcare.
IT pros don't have this problem, that's why we warn people about confusing IT pros with salesmen. Two different roles, two different jobs.
The pharma sales reps, sell to doctors, to promote a specific medicine. If the doctor has patients who could use that medicine, they are prescribing it to their patients.
Which at so many units sold (i know this from working closing with the pharma industry) does the doctor get a kickback of some kind. As well as the rep.
Right, but I think the issue is that you are putting things together. You are looking at a system with corrupt doctors AND corrupt pharma and a government that supports both. You can't just fix one or the other. In countries with working healthcare doctors don't sell medicine AND can't get paid for it. Both things get fixed together and work extremely well. Drugs are dirt cheap, research happens unabated, doctors work for more or less set prices, healthcare is affordable and procedures are not guessed prices after the fact. The concept of pharma reps does not replicate universally. That's an Americanism. Since doctors can't sell drugs in other countries, there is no way for pharma reps to push drugs like that. And since the prices are low, there isn't much money in it.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Scott - so in your utopian healthcare isn't part of the free market situation....
It's not a utopia. I haven't suggested how things should work. I've only explained that conceptually healthcare is not eligible for a free market system. Plain and simple. Neither is air, for example. It's not suggestive that there is a utopia system, it's simply stating what is.
I'm not sure how that's being missed. I'm not arguing that one system is more free market and another is not. Or that healthcare should or shouldn't be free. I'm saying that free market is a concept that can't be applied to healthcare and that's all that there is to it.
I don't think the US is a utopia, but clearly free market and healthcare have no association there.
I was going for dramatic effect - I know you never suggested a solution - but I am asking for what you think a viable solution could be.
I'm not missing what you are saying, you've swayed me significantly, but without a plan of action, I still prefer my own versus the BS we have today.
I'd love to hear a plan that addresses the issues I've raised.
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@scottalanmiller said:
@Dashrender said:
Who decides how much money is spent on research to make new drugs?
Who determines it today? The governments determines what will be bought, sold, allowed, protected, provided, etc. The government effectively already decides completely. The government is always the answer when a free market connect exist. You can hate governments as much as you want, they are the only possible answer. Work to fix them rather than to break systems for best results.
I completely agree that the government needs to exist for certain things - roads, power, water, sewer, etc. of course those, we pay for water, we pay for electricity, we pay for sewer.
I think the only way to get healthcare to be the way you mention is to make it zero cost with no financial incentives to anyone who is in it.
i.e. Doctors only make at max $100K, government funded research labs also have salary caps, etc. I'm not sure you could even allow privately funded medical research labs, unless you could somehow require that all research is open source and all results must be freely shared with anyone who wants them and are able to product any product that is a result of that research at no fee to the researchers.
I'll agree there are plenty of altruistic people out there, probably the Bill Gates of the world would continue to donate millions to such research facilities, but you need to take the corruption out of it, and you do that (as far as I can see) by taking money out of it - i.e. no one can become rich.
