Re:After private equity takes over hospitals, they are less ...
by mindslight on Thursday August 08, 2024 @11:10AM
(#41192346)
> Once we stop motte-and-baileying this, then we can have productive discussions that identify cases where market capitalism actually does work and then fortify the cases where it doesn’t.
Well said, 100% this. It's also worth noting that so many things that one might abstractly think of as matters of life and death are being provided by the current system on a "sometime in the next several months if you're lucky" basis. There are surely some aspects of healthcare that can never really have a functioning market dynamic, like emergency care. But the vast majority of medical care is provided not at the speed of cardiac monitor beeping, but rather at the speed of scheduled appointments and billable events. What we really have is one big market failure due to criminal behavior of "insurance" companies (price fixing and restraint of trade) as well as providers (collusion and extortion). No matter who may be ultimately paying, two critical first steps to restoring some patient agency are outlawing "insurance" "networks" and outlawing post-facto billing shakedowns.
Well said, 100% this. It's also worth noting that so many things that one might abstractly think of as matters of life and death are being provided by the current system on a "sometime in the next several months if you're lucky" basis. There are surely some aspects of healthcare that can never really have a functioning market dynamic, like emergency care. But the vast majority of medical care is provided not at the speed of cardiac monitor beeping, but rather at the speed of scheduled appointments and billable events. What we really have is one big market failure due to criminal behavior of "insurance" companies (price fixing and restraint of trade) as well as providers (collusion and extortion). No matter who may be ultimately paying, two critical first steps to restoring some patient agency are outlawing "insurance" "networks" and outlawing post-facto billing shakedowns.