Re:U.S. Life Expectancy Drops for Third Year in a Row (2018)
by bluGill on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @01:44PM
(#20346633)
No, they do not merge into the same thing. If you already have capital it is to your advantage to create a system where nobody new can compete with those who do - lest someone who doesn't have capital comes along and undercuts you.
Re:U.S. Life Expectancy Drops for Third Year in a Row (2018)
by fzeroracer on Wednesday July 03, 2019 @01:55PM
(#20346760)
Yes, and that was my point. Staunch supporters of capitalism often own capital. A great example is home ownership, which people use as an investment platform. Using your home as an investment platform means you have an interest in maintaining the value of your investment, which leads to things like NIMBYism or voting against measures that might help the city, but devalue your property.
The only way you could possibly maintain free market capitalism is by, ironically, putting in rules preventing people from using the free market in their own rational self interest. Which is why I believe healthcare can't be fixed by making it free-er, simply because the rational self-interest of insurance companies is against that of the insured.
In a free market, the assumption is that everyone is a rational actor that will work in their own self-interest. People that want to maximize returns are behaving as you'd expect; someone not wanting to maximize profit in a free market would be considered an irrational actor.
Which, well, there lies the problem. For a lot of markets, maximizing profit comes at a very human cost. For healthcare the profit incentive is to have as many barriers to avoid paying individuals as possible because their profiteering is orthogonal to your well-being in most cases.
This is also why many markets can be considered short-sighted because it's easier to make returns now than it is to gamble on long term growth, which results in smash-and-grab style of corporate takeovers.
Ultimately even if we did have price transparency for healthcare all of the issues would still remain. It just can't work as a free market and going further in that direction is just pouring salt on a rotting wound.