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Let's go back to basics. You already gave a vastly better answer. Did you forget what you said two days ago?
Dawg I have no idea what you are saying, I've been consistent in my messaging with you which is that this stuff is hard and complicated.
You don't seem to want to engage with any of the most important details here which include things like "medicine is not like other fields, maybe it could be but it is not allowed to be - and we have evidence of this!" and "the specific cost is not relevant in any practical sense."
You appear to have forgotten your answer from two days ago. I suggest you go back and re-read your prior comments.
You have made this accusation multiple times, I have consistently maintained that it is fundamentally unknowable (because it is) if you loosen your definitions of knowable you can know some things about it. Additionally, it ultimately is not relevant and not our job, but we do know some things about it anyway.
If you think you "got me" in some way you will need to clarify.
This tack is not helpful, unlike last time I've tried to give examples of things you don't know and would need to know in order to understand the complexity at hand, but you need to actually engage with them. Every example I've given you about how healthcare is not like a car repair shop has been ignored.
Can you remember what your answer was two days ago?
Yes. Please see above. Thank you.
If you had a lottery-type game as an option that you could consider playing, and they said, "The payout is $5k with about probability p, and the payout is $1.5M with probability 1-p," would you say that the payout is "fundamentally unknowable"?
Yes.
Expected payout does not equal pay out.
In car repair your estimate may be off by a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Maybe more than a few thousand dollars at maximum.
In healthcare your estimate can be off by hundreds of thousands of dollars or more.
This impacts the wisdom of giving estimates and the validity of the practical validity of those estimates.
And AGAIN you have yet to establish why cost matters. As previously stated repeatedly healthcare workers are often prohibited by law from making decisions based off of cost and often by necessary convention when not prohibited by law. Patients almost never pay cost and are rarely charged it. Why does it matter?
Engage with the substantive and relevant portions of the discussion.
I'm not sure we can proceed much further. You have a highly unorthodox definition of "fundamentally unknowable". You seem to apply it to a thing that I view as incredibly knowable. Perhaps we just have different levels of background in probability and decision theory. Perhaps I should wave my degrees and/or publications around (they do happen to be highly relevant) and say that if you can't answer highly technical questions about probability and decision theory, you don't know anything about what you're talking about? How should I think about how you might feel about that form of argumentation?
We're talking about patient decisions.
This is obviously not true, as evidenced by the constant uproar about medical billing. To repeat myself:
The old saying just happened to pop up in my mind: "The first step is admitting that you have a problem." I'm not quite sure what else it will take for you to realize that your industry has a problem. I hope it's not more assassinations or slap-dash regulations.
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