TC;n3541476 said:
Unfortunately there isn't much you could do about it, without completely stifling innovation. But that is already a problem now, when all the money is in treatments, rather than cures. So long as insurance companies, or the government, is willing to foot the bill, there is absolutely no motivation to innovate better cheaper solutions and treatments.
The US system is far overpriced compared to the rest of the world. To get you a sense of proportions, the surgery I had, alone, would have costed something like 140k dollars in the US (not including the bed and the after-surgery care): it would have costed 20k Euro in Italy if done by a private clinic. The main reason is: in the US that is a market, and companies price their products to get the maximum profit. It happens here too, but the presence of State funded universal healthcare as an actor on the market who actually develops innovation and puts it to use generates a reduction in price.
By the way, I still got it for free (payed through taxes) and, but this was just pure luck, I was treated in one of the most qualified places in Italy for that kind of problem.
What I derive from that is that our system costs -a lot-, but it also grants -a lot- of return if properly managed. The US system, on the other hand, is clearly way overpriced and profit-driven, which is wrong when the goal is the health of the population, so of the major production source of a country. And that is without even taking into account human rights and the philosophy of why we do what we do.
If you acknowledge that they would have to reduce prices, then it stands to reason that it would extend to "effective" treatments and tests, as well as, drugs.
Yes, but I don't think this will get healthcare better for people; companies will be forced to reduce prices because people would have less money, but people will have less money nonetheless,so they will buy less. In the end, what companies will do is lower prices enough to get their business going, not to get people healthy.
Just like:
there is a reason McDonalds makes more money than gourmet burger restaurants that charge a lot more.
Eating at McDonald's on a regular basis -will- destroy your health and life, even if it is cheaper to eat there than in a restaurant with better food. But it's not that McDonald's is bad per se, or that its food is the devil (though it is junk food indeed), the point is that McDonald's has a goal, and the goal is profit, not giving people food which will help them in the long run. This makes all the difference.
Not that other restaurants are necessarily different, but you'll notice that the best places to eat are those where food is prepared with the first goal of giving people something good rather than something which increases profit. Yes, I know any place must be profitable to be able to survive, but the focus should not be on the profits, disregarding all the rest, rather on the people and on giving them something that will profit them too -in the long run-. This would profit the entire society, a goal which is far more efficient than maximizing the profit of the single players while dumping the costs onto someone else (because everyone is on the receiving end of some cost dumping, somewhere; what goes around comes around).
That is particularly true for healthcare. A healthy population is more valuable to a society than a small number of extremely profitable companies. Let there be as much health as possible while keeping the companies healthy enough to expand and innovate. Crush practices which increase profit far less than they damage health. In our example, crush the diffusion of sugar-filled beverages, salt added to stimulate thirst, added-sugars in food (and that is just to keep to our McDonald's example). After all, Burgers can be done in a healthy way, with better ingredients, and be better tasting that the ones we have now.
Of course, this will cost more, thus showing how many people are underpayed, whose who are now almost forced to eat at McDonald's because cooking their own food would be more expensive. But this is another topic.
I don't consider that to be a bad thing. Sure, more money in the economy is good too, but it would be nice to see people live within their means, rather than plunging themselves into debt with reckless abandon.
There would not be a real raise in people living within their means. For a start, the number of people who can't afford medical care will raise eating up from the number of those who can. Then, many people will save up but will face illnesses which they can now pay for with insurance, but they won't be able to pay for later on without. Considering a reduction in prices, I think the number of people who can't afford proper medical care will stay the same or raise, because I can't see a reduction in prices high enought to -raise- the amount of people getting into the system.
Why should this happen? More people = more costs = less profit. Companies will try to maximize profit, not healthcare coverage. Which is the point about having companies only looking at their own profit rather than considering also the profit of the society as a whole.
Plus, keep in mind that the push to "plunging themselves into debt with reckless abandon", which I think is a very effective way of describing it, is actually being fueled now by companies, who know psychology and play with people's mind everyday to push them into spending and buying, not into saving and managing.
Again, it is normal that they do, because they only look at their own profit, but it has consequences; and as long as just one company does it, there is not much of a problem. But as soon as all of them do it, the strength of the message grows, it combines with the power and the money they can put into advertising and repeating it, until it becomes a juggernaught which -will- indeed enter the minds of people and be effective (otherwise, they wouldn't bother in repeating it).
Unfortunately, when this message becomes effective, people -will- actually spend and buy more, even more than it is good for them, because the strongly-fueled push to spend will be poorly counteracted by the weak, internal and in no way supported by anyone, push to save.
There you go, people will put themselves into debt to buy sh*t they don't need. Again, the natural drive of companies to focus on their own profit alone, dumping the costs to someone else, will affect the entire society, by (in this example) destroying the possible savings of people and put them in a condition where they maybe can't even afford healthcare when it will be needed. Or even food which won't destroy their health.
It is a spiral. At the start, the idea that -personal- profit must be pursued even when it damages other people, the idea that personal profit is more important than the profit of the entire society. Which doesn't mean that you must die for the society (I hear reader's mind chanting "communism!!!!"), only that what you do should not have a more negative impact on other people combined than it has positive on you.
