Quote:
Originally Posted by sperbonzo
It's hilarious to me that everyone thinks that profit as a driving motive, is a bad idea.
Profit causes more efficient, and more customer (i.e. market) driven services.
Without profit as a motive, you end up with things like the DMV, where nobody could care less about efficiency or customer service. In fact, that is how government, with no profit motive, works in general. There is actually an incentive to be LESS efficient, because if you can show cause that you need a bigger budget next year, you get it.
One of the problems with the health care system in the US, is that with health insurance, the customer NEVER looks at the actual bill to see if they are getting a good deal, it just gets passed to the insurance company and thats the end of it.
Look at the one sector that is TRULY market driven. Plastic surgery. Insurance does not cover it, so the free market takes control. People are looking for the best surgery for the best price. Thus in the last 30 years, cosmetic surgery procedures have DROPPED in price, while the technology and techniques have gotten better. This is the free market in action.
During the same time, prices for insurance covered procedures have shot up.... because the providers know that the customers don't look at the price, they just pass the bill to insurance.
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While profit motives often cause most businesses to get better and to streamline and compete, in health care they cause providers to skimp on services and deny claims in the sake of profit.
Here is a perfect example. My uncle just had a knee replacement surgery. He is 60 years old. His doctor told him that he would probably spend 2-4 weeks in a nursing home while he recovered and did the physical therapy. His insurance denied him and told him he only got 4 days in the nursing home because they felt 4 days was enough then he could go home and just travel to his therapy. Luckily, his daughter lives near him so he is staying with her for a few weeks and she is driving him to his therapy every day.
Of course we could do away fully with the insurance industry and just have medical care as something you pay for out of pocket as you go. This might drive down the cost, but probably not that much. First off, I doubt employers would be paying their employees that extra money they are saving on not having to buy insurance. They would keep it as added profit so the cost of health care would just become another cost on an already burdened and over-extended middle class. Even if they did give some of it as raises people would be required to save it for it to do any good. If you are an average healthy person you might be able to save that money for years and never use much of it then if something major happened you could afford to pay for it. But if you are someone who has long term care needs and has taken medicine much of your life you may burn through that money as you get it and a major illness could destroy you financially.
Sadly, gone are the days when things were affordable and the free market has shown that people will sit by and let costs rise and do nothing about it. Housing is a great example. In 1950 the average worker made $250 per month and the average home cost around $7000. Today the average working makes $2500 a month, but the average home now costs $183,000. So wages have increased 10 fold, but the cost of the average home is now 26 times higher. Did the middle class demand lower cost housing and only buy cheaper houses? Nope they bought the higher priced houses. Why would health care be any different?