> there are still fewer medical schools today than there were 100 years ago... it may get the number right or it may get the number wrong... And it's a major part of the explanation why US doctors make 2x+ what their counterparts in countries like Germany make.
> Most of the differences in outcomes between us and other wealthy nations amount to lifestyle/culture much more-so than affordability and availability. Americans are very obese. Not having to pay a copay to visit the doctor is not going to change that. But obesity means we'll have more problems with newborns, lower life expectancy, etc.
> During the New Deal era regulations wage caps were put on workers in the hopes of staving off inflation. Employers, wanting to entice good employees to work for them sought to get around these wage caps by offering health insurance. This then spread like wildfire, coincides with the time healthcare inflation separated from general inflation, and began the trend towards a lack of price transparency.
Except, of course, in the countries where it didn't spread like wildfire. Why all this crazy post-hoc history-building when you can just... empirically observe how the natural experiment played out?
Your modus operandi in this thread is the start with an ideology and then derive conclusions that are often wholly inconsistent with observed reality. There's nothing wrong with premises or theory-building, but when the data flatly contradict your conclusions... well, that's the difference between reality and fantasy.
By your link we're 52nd in doctors per capita. That's not great. Plus I'd already noted that we've made a concerted effort to undo the damage since the 90s. Are you suggesting that supply and demand has no impact whatsoever on the wages doctors are capable of demanding? Do you believe that artificially restricting the supply for decades has had no impact on wages whatsoever?
Higher adolescent pregnancy rates, higher rates of HIV, etc.
=== Most experts estimate that modern medical care delivered to individual patients—such as physician and hospital treatments covered by health insurance—has only been responsible for between ten and twenty-five percent of the improvements in life expectancy over the last century. The rest has come from changes in the social determinants of health, particularly in early childhood.===
So best case scenario access and affordability to healthcare accounts for about 25% of improvements in life expectancy. Except the majority of people already have access to healthcare in the US. It's not as available and affordable as we'd like, and we're talking about how best to improve availability and affordability, but it's a tiny fraction of the problem of why US health outcomes are so bad.
It's clear you still don't understand my critique.
> By your link we're 52nd in doctors per capita. That's not great.
I think this sort of argument is innumerate. Statistical sciences provide us with many ways of testing the correlation between "value of care per dollar spent" and "average doctor salary".
None-the-less, I am tempted to point out that Cuba is #2 on this metric ;-)
Regarding the rest of your post, consider actually reading that New Yorker piece. The things you think it says, it DEFINITELY does actually not say.
> there are still fewer medical schools today than there were 100 years ago... it may get the number right or it may get the number wrong... And it's a major part of the explanation why US doctors make 2x+ what their counterparts in countries like Germany make.
http://www.nationmaster.com/country-info/stats/Health/Physic...
> Most of the differences in outcomes between us and other wealthy nations amount to lifestyle/culture much more-so than affordability and availability. Americans are very obese. Not having to pay a copay to visit the doctor is not going to change that. But obesity means we'll have more problems with newborns, lower life expectancy, etc.
https://obesity.procon.org/view.resource.php?resourceID=0043...
> During the New Deal era regulations wage caps were put on workers in the hopes of staving off inflation. Employers, wanting to entice good employees to work for them sought to get around these wage caps by offering health insurance. This then spread like wildfire, coincides with the time healthcare inflation separated from general inflation, and began the trend towards a lack of price transparency.
Except, of course, in the countries where it didn't spread like wildfire. Why all this crazy post-hoc history-building when you can just... empirically observe how the natural experiment played out?
Your modus operandi in this thread is the start with an ideology and then derive conclusions that are often wholly inconsistent with observed reality. There's nothing wrong with premises or theory-building, but when the data flatly contradict your conclusions... well, that's the difference between reality and fantasy.