Yeah I was thinking while reading this- aren’t they actually allowed to sell that empty seat already since they are allowed to oversell? What do they want to do here? Triple dip?
Ideally, prices should be consistent with effective costs.
Practically, I would be content if prices of any single leg couldn't be negative. If leg A costs a and leg B costs b, the cost of A+B can be lower than a+b (you can offer bundles, discounts, etc.); just not less than either a or b.
If you play "tricks", the consumer has the right to use such tricks to their benefit.
I think ticket prices should reflect a combination of the cost of goods sold with a reasonable profit margin, supply and demand, and competitive pressure from market forces, with regulations to prevent fraud and anti-competitive behavior.
Driving is the most dangerous thing we all do on a regular basis. You do not own the roads, you are not the center of the universe. Drive safely and try giving a crap about other people.
I'm not convinced that coming to a complete stop is any safer than just slowing to 2-3 mph before continuing.
The real danger is from proceeding without looking around, but there's no way to enforce looking around. Coming to a complete stop doesn't change it. Someone who's going to proceed without giving proper attention is going to do so whether or not they come to a complete stop.
Dell XPS. The newest models inexplicably went to a touchscreen function row, but you can still get the 9315 from Dell for now. They have supported Ubuntu officially for years.
Transparent pricing/competition is not going to move the needle. The overwhelming majority of costs come from a small percentage of people (80% of costs from 20% of people) whose overall medical spending is so high that they are far beyond any notion of shopping. Those people are well beyond their OOP Max and not even responsible for the costs anymore, and have serious conditions where any incentive to shop is basically non-existent anyway.
We also have gobs of data showing that people associate price with quality and often don't want to be price-conscious consumers in the first place (the classic "if your kid gets cancer are you going to the cheapest cancer treatment center, or looking for the best?" You will pay the same 10k OOP max either way). The types of health care that could be price-sensitive are a tiny percentage of overall spending.
Again, every other developed nation has roughly the same outcomes as the US, but at a much lower cost per person. And a substantial portion of our population has no access to health care, which is not true in those other countries.
This is not a policy prescription or advocacy for anything, it's simply factually describing the situation.
Call it whatever you'd like but it's a fact that medicare reimbursements are absolutely terrible and the government keeps _reducing_ reimbursements in real value, forget about even keeping pace with inflation.
Because like I said this is a widely debunked myth that the industry has been slapping down over and over again for a long time. I've been in this industry working on these problems for 20+ years. You are trying to sell alchemy to a chemist
I read a few of your articles and just have some parting statements.
If the article on Healthcare Dive, the conclusion includes the statement:
> Grundling said there has to be a breaking point somewhere so long as government rates fail to keep up with medical inflation
So regardless if cost-shifting is occurring or not, reimbursement rates are not doing the job.
The article in Washington Monthly seems to operate under the assumption that Medicare reimbursement rates are the "fair" value and anything above that is driven by greed. Instead it primarily blames monopolistic power as the cause of high prices, which is a power granted to them by.... the government.
So excuse my hesitation when I have a strong disbelief that more government intervention will solve this problem, given the above statements.
The provider side skates by with very little scrutiny in the US, when they make more than anywhere else in the world while also crying poverty and whining about Medicare/caid reimbursements. They're gonna have to figure out how to make it work with those rates because commercial spending levels are unsustainable, and the rate of medical inflation is unsustainable.
I haven't said anything about "more government intervention". Hospitals, doctors, and device makers are making bank, and are still greedy for more. They are the ones causing medical inflation higher than general inflation, it is not a fact of nature. It's on them to figure it out and to learn to live within a smaller budget.
Why is it greedy for doctors to seek reimbursement for a career that included hundreds of thousands of school debt, living off junk food at odd times, and losing your best years trapped in monolithic buildings with poor ventilation ? And then getting calls from patients are 10pm on a saturday night for the rest of their life because patients are anxious about an article they read online ?
Sorry, doctors should be making as much as they are now and then some, if the govt insists on having lamborghini healthcare standards in the US.
How we pay for it is another story, but how we got here is certainly not the doctor's fault. (or insurers, for that matter).
Or lets bring it close to home since this is HN. Is anyone calling developers greedy? Last I checked, US devs make more than a mid-level in the US, with zero sacrifices. Are devs greedy ?
The reality is that older generations and their representatives in congress got us in that mess, and shifting blame to others that are providing valuable service is a copout from actually putting your finger on the wart that is bureaucrat-managed lamborghini healthcare.
Yes, greedy. Spare me the noble sacrifice theme when they are all choosing high-paying specialties and not primary care. And no sympathy for the debt when they chose the profession willingly and then make 250k+ once they start working. It is nuts to me to say they should make this much or even more when our spending is completely unsustainable. We can't continue to outpace general inflation.
And it's not just the docs themselves, it is the entire provider side. "Non-profit" hospital just means a bunch of execs keep the profits. Playing games with ER/urgent care to squeeze both payers and the patients. They are the bureaucrats managing the lamborghini healthcare, because they want to charge a lot of money for it.
You are conflating too many things and casting a wide net. You are right in that there's too many specialists, but again, they are behaving like rational actors in a game that is rigged against them. Why not understand how the rigged game came to be instead ?
Do you know the history of why hospitals are nonprofits ?
Do you know the history of socialized medicine ? Hint: its not pretty, at all.
What other industries you see outpacing inflation ? Hint: its not cell phones, cars, or airplane tickets.
I'd recommend looking deeper into those 3 if you really want to understand the causes and the philosophy that is driving spending in lamborghini healthcare. Because what you are advocating is going to literally break patient service. We are already seeing a version of that disaster in the UK, and more recently, in CAN.
Its lovely to waive the "they are too greedy" index finger. Its simple. It is comforting because it is binary and assigns blame. Yet the world is more complicated than that.
But who's not greedy ? Are you not greedy as a dev with 250K ? Who are these angels that are not greedy? Where do these angels live ? Its funny that its always the other person that is greedy, its never the one saying the word.
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