this post was submitted on 04 Dec 2023
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Our taxes fund more public health dollars per capita than almost anywhere else in the world. Medicare and Medicaid spending is higher than DOD budget, and that’s before you include medical research funded by NIH and DOD or VA spending.
The issue is that our prices are out of control because of regulatory capture and downstream inability of the government to negotiate lower prices.
What we need are price controls.
We spend the most but get crap. USA isn't very good at this.
It's working as intended.
There's a lot of money to be made in making sure the US Govt isn't paying minimum dollar for goods and services, be it healthcare or military spending.
It’s about stealing everything they can between those that need and those that provide.
Insurance companies. Middle management. It’s everywhere. Needless spending that’s made up to create “industry”.
This industry should never have existed in the first place. It’s akin to fire departments standing in front of a burning home until the owner pays up, and if they don’t they get robbed while the place burns.
That was determined by the public to be greed driven, robbery and also fucking illegal.
But the insurance industry does it daily for generations, constantly creating scenarios where people die or become destitute and yet it’s legal?
Somebody explain.
look, your argument is fair but inaccurate. When the Insurance company’s negotiated rate on a heart attack is 14k, but the hospital bills you 300k, then the problem is we’ve allowed for private healthcare to make more sense and forced government funded healthcare to be overly complex.
Let me repeat this but in capitalism, we have DONE THIS PURPOSELY so that private healthcare companies can make money.
"The issue is that our prices are out of control because of regulatory capture and downstream unwillingness of the governmemt to negotiate lower prices."
FIFY!
It's not about unwillingness. Negotiating lower prices requires collective bargaining. In the US there are so many different insurance companies and each one has to negotiate prices for its relatively small pool. Contrast that with countries like Canada which have a single system, giving them the ability to negotiate prices for the whole country.
I wouldn't call it unwillingness, Obama did try to create a public option.
That's what happens if you don't have public health care.
A small insurer or even an uninsured person cannot bargain with large pharma companies. If they try to, the pharma company will just not sell the product, because it's more expensive for them to lower the prices for everyone compared to losing one small customer.
But if your whole country's health system bargains at once, it can get much better deals, because not taking a deal means for the pharma company that they'll lose access to millions of potential customers.
That's why for example in Europe Insulin costs about 10% per dose compared to what people in the USA have to pay.
Our tax dollars fund more corporations than other countries. The military spends so much because they pay private companies for their equipment, which is sold at inflated costs because they can. The US spends a shit ton on health care because private companies inflate their prices because, again, they can. The government/insurance companies don't even pay the full price that's listed on the bill, but they still use the original numbers.
You can't compare our spending to other countries. The US spends more because they pay inflated prices. Citizens spend less because we can't afford to get health care.
so if they put such a generous amount in, why isn't healthcare free then, like in Europe? if i have the flu and go to the doctor, even the medication they prescribe is subsidised, i pay max 6 bucks for everything
Insurance companies. Because of the way they operate, healthcare providers are forced to raise prices as high as possible so that they can actually afford to operate once the insurance companies negotiate the lowest price for care they can.
And then the insurance companies charge consumers high prices anyway and pocket the difference.
Indeed, what good is all that public health spending when health corporations and orgs are determined to maximize profit, and no authority is willing to curtail their efforts
It's not regulatory capture, it's a complete lack of federal regulatory guidelines in regard to the insurance industry.
for a medical service provider to be insured (and thus not be destroyed by the first malpractice suit they lose) they need insurance, the insurance companies have their own stipulations onto the healthcare provider, like all their stuff being certified, now guess who owns the respective certification companies? letting them charge whatever they damned well please...
it's straight up duopolistic markets