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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 2, 2024

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That is exactly the problem, though. If healthcare is going to be a paid service provided by the market, pricing for the end user should be clear and telegraphed. If it’s going to be some kind of nebulously complex system where many people pay different things for the same product, then we may as well just have single payer, if only for clarity’s sake.

I don't in principle have any issue with modifying our system to more resemble a market, I suspect that would potentially have efficiency gains but may not be feasible given the amount of money involved and the inherent variability issues (as previously mentioned 5k for a surgery is a reasonable amount for someone to self-insure and so on, millions of dollars thought?). Also a million other questions would need to be answered (do we keep having healthy young people subsidize the sick?).

As is the prices have nothing to do with the patient the price is whatever their insurance's rules are (premiums, copays and so on).

Any information released by the hospital is unrelated to the patient's experience. A cheaper list price may be cost the patient 50,000 dollars, a more expensive list price may be literally free (if that's the way the coverage breaks down).

You can squint and try and figure out places where price transparency might help. I may see that my competitor across the river offers the same surgery for 500 dollars less and go "ooh wait maybe I could be saving money here" but when you shake those out practically they don't work out. Maybe the cost savings are because they average out their anesthetic gas charges over all procedures, they have more volume, or the people on my side of the river are fatter so cases take longer.

If you've got one I'll listen though.