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Honestly, all I want is the same level of care and availability that I can get from a veterinarian, plus the ability to pay for market-rate insurance to cover against genuine catastrophe. I know this isn't what most people want, but it really is all I want out of the system. I have just about arrived at the point where I think people in aggregate would be better off if there was almost no medical regulation and the government paid for nothing other than a few emergency services.
My dog has seizures. When we discovered this, we were able to get her into a vet and get blood work done and meds prescribed at reasonable prices. Now she doesn't have seizures. Nothing about this was massively complicated, no MRIs were done, no insurance was involved, we just put her on barbiturates and now she doesn't have seizures. The number of human medical problems that seem to have roughly comparable complexity and that run about bajillion dollar in bills instead of being handled quickly and easily is mindblowing.
I mean, the question is ‘what’s the relevant difference and is it possible to have it apply to humans’. I’m guessing there’s at least parts of veterinary practices that cannot- if lower liability because they’re just dogs is really a significant part of the puzzle, then we can’t really reduce human medical bills that way.
I'm well aware that it's not actually possible for the American medical system to become an actual market where normal market pricing applies. Liability is a great example of why, along with regulatory burden, licensing requirements, and so on. But still, it's pretty annoying to consider edge cases.
For example, Apple produces the AirpodsPro 2. These are cool and fairly common product, many people own them simply because they're good for normal earbud purposes. Apple, being full of ingenuity, now has a hearing test and hearing aid functionalities on them. Awesome! Unfortunately, those functionalities aren't available yet because implementing that software update transforms them into a medical device that requires FDA approval. So, we have people that own an object that could test their hearing and implement hearing improvements for them. It's all ready to go! But the FDA says you may not use that functionality until they say you can.
I don't know just how many things there are like that, but it's a great example of how ponderous and captured this whole apparatus is.
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