Viper1 said:
Ail said:
Each time someone brings a point you mark it as annecdotal, don't answer and move on.
Besides the obvious glaring issue that some of the big issue today in healthcare comes because of monopole and free market isn't going to regulate that.
And the end goal of free market isn't to be fair to everyone and healthcare is one area where the goal isn't to maximise profit...
PS : when I speak of monopole I don't speak of insurance I speak of the fact that a lot of the new biotech treatment are only available from one company ( like Enbrel that mentionned above).
How is free market going to lower the cost of the a prescription when it is only available from one company ?
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I only stated 1 portion of a post as anecdotal as a means to understand the context between a single person account and the general overall quality. The second refernce to being anecdotal was simply because he said hsi story wasn't an anecdote which by the very definition of an anecdote, it was. So it was only to clarify the defintiion for him. If you are inferring that I am somehow negating his point solely on the grounds of his point being an anecdote, then that is your own issue. That's called projection.
I'm going to asume you mean monopoly and not monopole - a single radio antenna or a concept in physics. The monopolies of the healthcare industry are because of government intervention. Ever hear of the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973? The government basically created the HMO's. And the free market handles healthcare just fine. I already gave a perfect example of that with elective cosmetic surgeries and procedures. Why isn't Lasik monopolized? Why isn't Lasik increasing in costs?
Did you know that if you pay cash for standard check ups, doctor visits, basic procedures, even hospital stays that you can usually negotiate the prices and get it down 40%? Ask yourself why they'd allow that.
True, the goal of the free market isn't necessarily to be fair to everyone. I can concede that. BUT, the goal is to be successful and when in a completely competitive market, the entity with the best solution for customers will win out...because it is they who decide how successful a company can be. It is in therefore in the best interst of the competing entities to outdo each other in costs and services else lose out on business to the other guy and therefore lose out on profit. See, greed can be a useful tool when balanced properly by risk factors. You take away the risk factors, which the government intervention does, and they don't care hwo good of a service they are providing or how much it costs to the paient...they have to pay it anyway.
As for your example regarding new procedures being exclusive to the provider that developed the procedure. Let me ask you this, how many people would go through the ordeal of funding and developing a new procedure if they knew it would get taken away from them the monent they invented it. You want ingenuity yet what you propose stifles it greatly. How much ingenuity came out of communist Russia? Do you know why China is now advancing so fast in ingenuity? Because they've adopted a capitalistic business environment over the past 2 decades.
Your presription question: Doctors and hospitals get kickbacks for prescribing the new exclusive drug so the drug company charges a premium for the drug itself so both the manufacturer and the doctor/hospital profit big time. The government encourages this through subsidies to these drug companies. Get rid of all this financial extortion and you lower the cost already. Now, opening the market up more freely enables more competing drugs...so not so exclusive anymore. Again, lowering the costs.
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