
Why is Health Care So Expensive? - fogus
http://blog.sethroberts.net/2011/09/16/why-is-health-care-so-expensive/
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ctdonath
Because, understandably, everyone wants the very best (usually equating to the
most expensive) health care services & products available. We would self-limit
this to reflect our income, assets and credit limits, but as that still
doesn't buy the care we want/need/demand, we all pool our resources into
insurance funds so those of us needing more than we can afford can buy it
(trust me, I know, having gone from "you need heart surgery" to the O.R. in 10
days flat). This increases the demand for expensive services, and the ability
to pay for them. By sharing the costs, we all can access more expensive
services as needed - and, by the way, we find the overall costs rising as a
consequence.

It's the natural supply-and-demand consequence of spreading costs to achieve
manageable payments, same as mortgages (would you buy a quarter-million-dollar
house for cash? how about paying over 30 years, plus a little interest?) and
student loans (would you sign up for a degree program if you couldn't pay for
it now? if you could pay over 20 years?) People make arrangements to pay for
what they otherwise couldn't afford (thank you, accountants), which has the
natural consequence of raising the prices since more people can now afford
limited resources.

Prices keep going up until the supply-and-demand equilibrium is reached, which
changes every time there's a new way for people to finagle payments so they
can get what they couldn't before.

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petervandijck
Expensive services aren't the reason health-care is so expensive. Not only is
it a circular argument, it's also easy to disprove: look at other countries,
where people get the same "expensive services" much cheaper.

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Hyena
It's worth noting that healthcare hasn't seen the kind of productivity
explosion other areas have. It's still in many cases a more "artisanal"
discipline vis-a-vis manufacturing, etc. The major bright spot has been
pharmaceuticals, which are industrialized; I think we know the broad outlines
of how to industrialized medicine, but also that the technical hurdles are
among the largest ever faced.

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jianshen
As an aside, I'm curious who all the startups/disruptors are in the consumer
healthcare industry? Closing the information asymmetry in consumer healthcare
seems like an obvious opportunity.

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DrJ
>4\. Let them get sick

Never use preventative care I guess

