The market has solved it.
You just don’t realize what the market has solved for. It didn’t solve the problem of expensive healthcare, it solved the problem of how to maximize profits for the wealthy.
That’s what people don’t understand about “the market”. What you think it’s doing isn’t what it’s actually doing.
If the free market had any real competitors, the problem would genuinely solve itself in favor of the consumer. We see this with any new tech where a bunch of new firms try to win customers by any means necessary in those first few years.
The problem as always is: where are the competitors after X years, and are these “competitors” actually competing anymore?
The solution as always is: regulate. Ensure competition. Ensure cartels aren’t price fixing. But no one wants to hear that
The streaming market has tons of competition. So then why are prices endlessly rising and content being removed and the value being made worse with ads?
The video game market also has tons of companies in it, and yet most of them are making the experience worse with ads and service-based games.
I’m so old I used to install my games on 5 1/2" floppies. I dispise how the video game market changed from an ownership model to service-based and micro transactions models that are popular today. Don’t even get me started on mobile games. What I have noticed is that I am paying almost the same price for a video game today as I was 30 years ago. A game that I paid approximately $75 for in 1994 I should be paying approximately $150.00 for a new release today. Yet I’m still paying $75 for a game, they have to be making up that difference somewhere. Now the tools needed to make a game have had an enormous impact on reducing costs, and there’s a whole bunch of other economic stuff I’m ignoring. Regardless, it’s still kind of amazing the price of games hasn’t inflated.
By the time the system has consolidated enough that there is little effective competition, those companies have also become so large that they can lobby for regulatory capture. It’s not zero regulation, but rather a form of regulation that solidifies their position while still providing the same shitty service they always have.
Regulation won’t work. The system is too far gone.
What other tools are there for ensuring a fair market? Government intervention seems like the only avenue
Stop expecting politians to be the source of change. The results will be lackluster, at best.
Everybody knows this. You don’t have to state it so pretentiously like you’re the only jerk who knows it. It’s been said on the internet billions of times for 2 decades at least.
…how did the line come about? How did they determine what the life expectancy would have been with less expenditure per capita?
I think the line might be historical data?
But… from when? Surely expenditure hasn’t gone up linearly with time
Yeah something is weird about this graph.
Health expense in what timeframe? Monthly, yearly?
If i had to guess, i would say this graph just shows the average yearly health expense of people that died at age X
So people that spend more money on their health, live longer. If thats the whole message this is the most boring graph ever.
If the US line is true, it shows that people there get much less value out of the money they spend on their health.
There is a minimum amount which is likely the least some people spent on their health. So there is no interpolation I can see.
That doesn’t make sense unless this was personal expenditure, which it doesn’t seem to be
Wait the life expectancy in the US is that low?!
It’s actually lower in the poor-er regions.
Yeah, but think of all that value generated for shareholders in America: What’s a few million dead people compared to profit?
That, and half of the system is designed to discard people that are no long useful for the machine, unless of course they’re wealthy or have a wealthy benefactor.
High life expentancy is communism tho
I think it’s clear from the graph that USA is doing it right and the rest of the world needs to smarten up!
/s
We can do better. There’s still empty pixels on the right to fill.
I would really like to know how this graph was generated, because some expenditure per capita values have three different corresponding life expectancy values. Just look at Spain for example.
One could poke around on those sources: https://population.un.org/wpp/Graphs/DemographicProfiles/Line/1832
https://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/health-data.htm
My understanding is that the largest part of expenditures on health is generally at end of life, at least in developed countries, rather than spending a smaller amount on disease prevention earlier in life, which would be expected to have a larger effect on morbidity and mortality.
EEAGLI looks to be some sort of marketing/ PR firm. shrug
Yes this is a huge problem. Keeping people healthy instead of mitigating the obvious consequences of their unhealthy life
Cool, can the stupid meme “security is why the US has no free healthcare” finally die?
Only if you keep reminding people that Medicare for All would be cheaper than our current system.
The good news is that if you live in America, living part 80 is a terrible experience that nobody would want to do anyways.
If you want more fun info: if you move abroad you still owe Medicare & Medicaid, the national healthcare plan. Neither of these can you get an tax exemption, reimbursement, or a voucher to use in another country even if you haven’t stepped foot on US territory in decades. You will pay into these services your whole life if you have a passport to that shitty system & never get anything in return unless you fly to the US to have a procedure that will cost more than it does in the country you might be living in (even without insurance).
During COVID when Sleepy Joe Biden promised vaccines for all Americans that want vaccines, the health minister had to step in when asked to clarify that historically the US does not help its citizens abroad & to go ask the host country instead–or to get on a plane, in a pandemic, quarantining both ways, if you want a shot. The cherry on top was sending vaccines aboard for political favors & if you asked if the embassy if any of those will be used for citizens abroad to be told these were for diplomatic purposes only (meanwhile France & China sent its citizens shots).
You have to have a will to live, also.
Well, now I’d like to learn what the differences between the US and the Australian Healthcare System are!
Why is Australia so damn high up?
Turns out it seems the Australians have public health insurance for everyone - Medicare. And you have optional additional private insurance. Communism I guess. Surely wouldn’t workout for the US…
Turns out it seems the Australians have public health insurance for everyone - Medicare.
To follow from your comment , because Australia has a publicly funded health system, the government actively works to reduce preventable diseases because it reduces the load on the system.
So they have had:
A sunscreen campaign and skin cancer check initiatives since the '80s.
Anti-smoking campaigns (and high tobacco taxes) where resources are available to help quit.
Every citizen gets a free bowel cancer test mailed to them when they turn 50 to help find and treat cancer earlier.
Road safety laws are tight and helmet / seatbelt regulations are strict as it reduces hospital loads.
Vaccinations for a multitude of easily preventable diseases are given for free in childhood, particularly now for the virus that causes cervical cancer.
Those and a myriad of other public health initiatives all help Australians to live longer.
Coupled with the fact that the cost for the whole population is borne by an income tax of approximately 2% , it means that if you are poor or unemployed, you still have access to health services. That also means that small health issues among low income earners don’t snowball until they are life threatening.
It has the knock on effect that people don’t end up trapped in a job because it offers “good benefits and a low deductible” and concerns about pre existing conditions interfering with insurance and etc when changing jobs is generally moot.
Then throw in mandatory government regulated retirement funds that require all employers to put in 12+ percent of an employee’s gross earnings into an employee’s fund of their choosing for their retirement. That coupled with public health generally means the whole US style worker=slave arrangement can’t exist.
Which means the US will get nothing like this as all that screams of nanny state overlords and death panels and moar taxes killing freedom and so on and so forth. Sorry guys.