If you had 10,000 people look at a painted block of wood and asked them what color it was and they all said it was blue; you would likely think it was blue. If you took that piece of wood to a science laboratory and they tested it with spectral analysis repeatedly and concluded that it was blue; you would think it would likely be blue. If you went to several countries with that same block of wood and they all concluded it was blue in whatever language they spoke; you would think it was blue.
However, if you ask people about health care and whether it should be profit based or a social benefit to be overseen by the government, and the vast majority found that profit based health care was more expensive, and less effective for the majority of people and government overseen health care worked better in those countries that had it, and those people generally liked it better and it more effectively treated the overall population. What would you conclude?
Blue is pink seems to be a popular opinion here.
I remember as a child running around the farm barefoot and stepping on a nail. My parents called our doctor in the town 12 miles away and he came and gave me a tetanus shot.
Today I have to schedule an appointment with a specialist 3 months in advance and at a time and place the is convenient to them, generally at a hospital which is laid out in an indecipherable labyrinth far enough between places you have to be that would exhaust an Olympic athlete. There I will find that the doctor will listen on an average of 10 seconds before making their conclusion as to what I have and what should be done about it. But they are specialists and can charge exorbitant prices for the expertise; but they have been trained to do one thing well*, in contrast to my old general practitioner which had to do lots of things.
Don’t you just love profit based health care.
*I probably misspoke there, most have excellent training in investing their money.
Another radical suggestion: all assisted living centers and nursing homes should be taken over by churches as tax free ministries. This might work better than an industry that demands a 30% profit margin in or to bother running the place. And the care would likely improve exponentially.
The point of a profit-based sector is to persuade consumers to spend more than is really necessary for a given product or service. The specialization craze is part of this. The expense of medical education required and the more lucrative prospects as a career also helps drive it on the supply side.
ReplyDeleteTheoretically market choice might provide price competition but this is generally not the case in our system. When you need open heart surgery you're not going to quibble on price, and you can't opt for a vasectomy just because it's cheaper. And even for non-emergency services, the pricing system is so opaque that it simply defies the application of market forces.
So you get vast resources, training, education and advice offered on costly specialized consultations and cutting edge chemically complex medications, and little to no training, advice or financial resources directed toward ridiculously cheap preventative and corrective strategies such as addressing nutrition deficiencies (which are a causative factor in a great many modern western maladies).