> Either the goal is fixing sick people, delivering care, or it is not.
That's an odd dichotomy. You could apply this to literally any good or service. With food, either your goal is nourishing hungry people, or it is not; and yet the private sector provides food just fine.
At the end of the day, price signals and market forces ensure that producers meet the needs of consumers. There are certainly instances of market failures, especially in the case of externalities. But with healthcare, there's really no evidence that markets and the private sector cannot deliver world class healthcare, and in fact we see evidence to the contrary, both domestically (in Medicare Advantage) as well as globally (in Switzerland and the Netherlands).
With food, for example, people have lots of options, and while the need for food is absolute, wants for food can be ignored and or vary widely. Food wants is a great market. People can participate or not. They can prepare their own food or not.
Food needs are not as good of a market, though again, people have options, and are rarely in a must buy scenario.
That difference matters.
Notably, there is a cap on how big of a risk there is in the whole thing, and it's not all that big of a risk.
With food, one can end up in a weak scenario where one gets the least value for the most dollars. But, it's not typically life changing, and there are a lot of options for most people in most cases.
Contrast that with health care.
Let's talk about wants first, just like food. Cosmetics are a great example. People can choose not to do it. They may have options, depending on what the scenario is. This makes for a reasonable market. And, depending, people can make their own. I did that for a prosthetic a while back. Saved thousands of dollars. But, that is rare more than not. Still, we could empower people to some degree like we do with food.
Someone having a heart attack will need treatment, or let's say they are out of the market. It's not like they can shop around either. I could go through and compare / contrast with food, but here's the main point:
Unlike food, that doctor visit doesn't really have a cap on risk. 5 figure? 6 figure? 7 figure? All can and does happen.
And things people require? When people have to participate in the market, they pay the most and get the least value for the dollar. See insulin prices in the US?
Now, for a nation that has it's priorities in order and those priorities are not making money first and foremost, that price is a small fraction of what gets charged here in the US.
This is a shitty market. People are forced to buy, their choice is often limited, risks are crazy variant, costs not transparent, and on and on it goes.
At a minimum, most nations break these out making sure people who find themselves sick or hurt have baseline options that are not life changing, and market type options for those health care related things that make better sense.
Boil all that down, and what do we get?
Making money IS NOT THE TOP PRIORITY. Fixing sick people is.
When we examine all this in detail, we will find those shining examples of for profit health care actually working out are very well regulated, and that means they are forced to fix sick people first and foremost.
If they were not, then people would be tipping over for lack of ability to participate in the market, which isn't really even a market in a need scenario. It can be a market in the want scenario.
All of which is precisely why I frame it in those terms.
Which is it then?
Currently the US has chosen to make money first and foremost and look at the carnage!
> With food, for example, people have lots of options, and while the need for food is absolute, wants for food can be ignored and or vary widely.
Wants for food absolutely cannot be ignored. Without food, you starve and die. Along with healthcare, food is the quintessential example of a good/service with price inelastic demand.
Now, you’re absolutely correct that in most food markets, there is a variety of options; that’s exactly what’s needed for a market to function. Unfortunately you haven’t demonstrated that private health insurance markets are inherently devoid of such options by nature of their being private. Medicare Advantage is an extremely healthy market, as is the individual market in Switzerland.
> Unlike food, that doctor visit doesn't really have a cap on risk. 5 figure? 6 figure? 7 figure? All can and does happen.
You’re just talking about catastrophic risk here, and as I’ve already mentioned, there’s nothing inherent to the private insurance model that makes this unworkable. This isn’t based on guesses and conjecture, it’s based in empirical outcomes: see Medicare Advantage, Netherlands, and Switzerland. Also keep in mind that nobody here is arguing against subsidies for poor or unhealthy people; we’re just talking about whether that money is used to purchase plans are created by actuaries that work for the government, or for private sector organizations, and the merits of each.
> And things people require? When people have to participate in the market, they pay the most and get the least value for the dollar.
That’s true in the US. That’s not true in Switzerland. Both have private healthcare markets. Therefore, it’s impossible to conclude just based on US outcomes that private-ness is the root cause. It’s clearly something else.
> See insulin prices in the US?
The unfortunate reality here is that government-enforced patents allow insulin prices to remain bloated. Again the root cause isn’t the profit motive, that’s just a side effect.
> This is a shitty market.
Absolutely no disagreements there. The US healthcare market is indeed shitty (outside of Medicare Advantage at least), unlike Switzerland.
> People are forced to buy, their choice is often limited, risks are crazy variant, costs not transparent, and on and on it goes.
Agreed. Again, nothing to do with private-ness.
> When we examine all this in detail, we will find those shining examples of for profit health care actually working out are very well regulated, and that means they are forced to fix sick people first and foremost.
This is also true of the US. Health insurance is by far the most regulated industry in the country. Profit margins are capped by ACA, plans are regulated by ERISA, health insurance has minimum standards thanks to the ACA, insurers cannot deny access based on pre-existing conditions, and employers are mandated to provide health insurance — all thanks to the ACA. From a regulatory standpoint, the US is virtually identical to Switzerland, except for one notable difference: employer sponsored care.
> Again the root cause isn’t the profit motive, that’s just a side effect.
That's just utterly naive or politically biased. The profit motive is what causes those regulations in the first place! It has always been like that, especially in the states.
Don't try and create some sort of a fairy tale place where the profit motive won't try to rig regulations in their favor, they will always try to, this is what the incentive to make more and more profit creates.
> The profit motive is what causes those regulations in the first place! It has always been like that, especially in the states.
Actually, that's not true. The regulations were created as a result of a series of well-intentioned but catastrophic policy decisions, starting in World War 2. FDR instituted a wage cap to discourage private sector employment, which resulted in employers using non-wage benefits to participate in a competitive labor market. After a decade or so, it became an expected benefit (sort of like company cars, at the time). Eventually around the '70s, the Federal government decided it was time to incentivize remaining employers to provide health insurance by making premiums tax deductible; again a well-intentioned attempt to expand access. It finally all culminated in ACA which _mandated_ that employers provide health insurance. None of this can be attributed to lobbying, almost all of it attributed to well-intentioned regulations gone awry, not the profit motive.
In fact, the best shot we have right now of decoupling health insurance from employment is the ICHRA (https://ichra.com/), which allows employers to fulfill their healthcare obligations by providing tax-advantaged cash to employees that can be used to cover health insurance premiums on the individual market; and I imagine that came about due to lobbying.
Again, the easiest way to falsify a causal line between the profit motive and the current outcome is by finding instances of markets wherein there is a profit motive, but with differing outcomes. That's exactly what we see in Medicare Advantage, Switzerland, and the Netherlands.
> Don't try and create some sort of a fairy tale place where the profit motive won't try to rig regulations in their favor, they will always try to, this is what the incentive to make more and more profit creates.
No disagreements that industries will try to rig regulations in their favor. This is true everywhere in the world, and yet we see wildly differing outcomes. Notably, I'm yet to see an argument explaining away the Medicare Part A/B vs Part C outcomes in the US.
That's an odd dichotomy. You could apply this to literally any good or service. With food, either your goal is nourishing hungry people, or it is not; and yet the private sector provides food just fine.
At the end of the day, price signals and market forces ensure that producers meet the needs of consumers. There are certainly instances of market failures, especially in the case of externalities. But with healthcare, there's really no evidence that markets and the private sector cannot deliver world class healthcare, and in fact we see evidence to the contrary, both domestically (in Medicare Advantage) as well as globally (in Switzerland and the Netherlands).