Costco now offering virtual medical care for $29

Re:Costco now offering virtual medical care for $29 by monero-xmr on Tuesday September 26, 2023 @01:07AM (#37654686)

You can definitely have a competitive market for any procedure that can be scheduled. Amazon will often negotiate on behalf of their employees in order to shop around procedures (see Oklahoma Surgery Center).

The difficulty is for sudden situations like heart attacks. For these you need savings accounts and a baseline catastrophic plan.

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Re:Costco now offering virtual medical care for $29 by troupo on Tuesday September 26, 2023 @03:40AM (#37655795)

> You can definitely have a competitive market for any procedure that can be scheduled.

You don't have unlimited fully equipped hospitals and operating rooms. You don't have unlimited heart surgeons. You don't have unlimited MRT scanners or labs doing blood tests.

In healthcare both the supply and the demand are inelastic. Market forces here work only for the most common and the most simple cases like nasal sprays and eye drops.

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Re:Costco now offering virtual medical care for $29 by monero-xmr on Tuesday September 26, 2023 @08:42AM (#37658455)

Hard disagree. The market exists for healthcare. The government may artificially restrict certain aspects of it but the market does respond to signals by building more facilities.

Furthermore a lot of innovation goes to increasing bandwidth of the existing doctors. See tele health.

I think you have a very limited view of what is possible.

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Re:Costco now offering virtual medical care for $29 by troupo on Wednesday September 27, 2023 @05:08AM (#37672086)

I think you have a very rosy view of the market. And you also overestimate the supply and demand in healthcare.

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