I'm not an economist, but the main issue I see with a for-profit healthcare system is that there is no incentive for preventative approaches, because there is money to be made off of expensive scans, procedures and practices. That, and there doesn't seem to be any force moderating the cost of healthcare.
How do the "free market makes everything cheaper and better" types explain the US healthcare system and it's immense cost and waste?
The problem is that the free market works very different between something you would like to possibly have but could live without and something that you need to live. Shopping for health care options isn't like going into a McDonald's. When you're healthy the normal person doesn't really care so much about their health options. Well, I mean they do, but they don't in comparison.
It's incredibly hard to shop around and price things out. As I said, it isn't like a McDonald's where you can walk in and see a menu of prices. Hospitals don't work like that. And when you
do need care usually you're kind of in a bind. You don't have time to shop around then, and a lot of times you certainly can't go without. Actually a lot of people do go without, and that ends up being very bad and costing the system and possibly the person more in the long term.
Basically, in my mind, a business's purpose in absolute, very simplistic terms is to make the most money they possibly can while doing the least work. That's pretty much every business's goal. I don't mean for that to sound like I think business is evil or anything of the sort. No, I don't. In a capitalistic society you have to accept the real purpose and goals of these systems, and that's what it is. That works in an overall sort of sense, but with health care it does not. I don't think I really need to explain why having a business whose purpose in absolute terms is to make the most amount of money doing the least amount of work in charge of your health is a bad thing, or at least not the best solution.
The other thing besides price that you normally would compare and contrast in market based products is quality. And that's where things fall apart and where I think you need government to step in. How exactly does a normal every-day citizen know quality of the health care they received? They can know some outside variables and might feel something is of high quality when they walk into a really fancy hospital or get good service from the nurses, but they don't know their actual surgery is being done to the best it can be for the price it can be. There's really just no way to do a real analysis of whether your money is being spent correctly, and so market capitalism completely falls apart in my opinion.
Most people have health insurance and the horror stories and hyperbole that are all over this thread don't apply to them. Of course, a lot of people don't have health insurance, and some people do get screwed over, and that's a tragedy. But The hyperbole in this thread is out of control.
But the reality that this thread is pointing out is that
everyone is getting screwed over in at the least a minor sense. We're literally paying twice as much as almost every other civilized country that has UHC. Even if you're not dying in the street you're getting screwed.
