They’ve been blaming you and laughing all the way to the bank
You know what they all say, we drink too much (not), smoke too much (not, really really not, have you seen how much Frenchmen smoke), obesity (not), malpractice (one of the great lies in history).
What does it come down too?
- We pay more for the same services.
- Our overhead costs dwarf those of socialized medicine.
- Doctors get paid a lot more here.
At its core, what we are seeing is a situation where the perfect “immaculate market” that the free market mousketeers seem so enamored of simply does not work.
It doesn’t work because healthcare is not an area where you have the option of just not buying the service, and frequently, shopping is not an option.
Besides, even if it were an option to shop for the best deal, the pricing schemes are deliberately obfuscatory, because opacity suits the players in this little pseudo-market dance.
H/t DC at the Stellar Parthenon BBS for the graphic.
> It doesn't work because healthcare is not an area where you have the option of just not buying the service, and frequently, shopping is not an option.
> Besides, even if it were an option to shop for the best deal, the pricing schemes are deliberately obfuscatory, because opacity suits the players in this little pseudo-market dance.
It should be pointed out that those characteristics that make the market for healthcare a complete sham hold for government as well, which makes the government market (i.e., elections) a complete sham as well:
1. One cannot opt out of being governed,
2. Frequently, you have very little choice between candidates,
3. The platforms presented by the candidates are deliberately obfuscatory, because opacity suits the players in this little pseudo-market dance.
Thus, elections – as an ideal type, leaving alone its defective manifestation in any specific case – are a disfunctional political system. Like commercialized healthcare, the electoral system serves the politicians and various powerful interests, but not the public.