Libertarians: Got any good rebuttals against this blog's take on free market health care?

[tangent4ronpaul]

Indeed, we use too many powerful drugs now. We opt for the most expensive drugs over much cheaper ones that are almost as effective. Doctors also subject patients to batteries of unnecessary tests and perform more expensive, more invasive surgeries, when cheaper, less expensive alternatives would be just as or almost as likely to solve the problem.

This is largely because medical consumers have been divorced from the direct costs of all these services and so do not price shop, not even for far less expensive, but nearly as effective alternatives.

Americans do use more drugs than any other nation and many are not needed.

We pay 5 times more for drugs than most of the world - thank regulations and price gouging. And sometimes the less expensive ones are more effective than the expensive ones - case in point prilosec (generic) vs nexium (Rx)

It's largely impossible to price shop - prices are generally not available.

 

[BarryDonegan]

The first glaring error is saying that health care services aren't elective and that you can't perform consumer checks as a result. Whether or not an item is elective has no effect on the existence of competitive market forces or consumer checks and balances or else the same would be true with food. Furthermore, much of the healthcare industry is elective because you can choose or not to go to the doctor for a vast majority of minor to moderate illnesses. I, for example, elect not to take antibiotics or really medication at all unless I have a fever worthy of going to the hospital(severe to the extent that it may be a sign of something fatal) or some kind of illness with a non-anomalous mortality rate. That aspect is elective, and whether or not something is elective has no effect, nor has anyone demonstrated how that could have an effect, on whether or not competition can drive prices down in the marketplace. Plenty of goods aren't elective and still go down in price as more providers enter the marketplace.

 

[Teaser Rate]

I don't think I can argue with any of the author's three points. He's right that health care does have an inelastic demand curve, that there is a an asymmetric information problem and that the majority of costs are driven by a minority of consumers.

However, I don't believe that conceding those points necessarily implies that I'd jump at the conclusion of universal coverage or more government involvement. There are market solutions to market failures, and I think it's more useful to focus on finding them than to argue about proven things like the elasticity of demand.

 

[Brian Defferding]

I don't think I can argue with any of the author's three points. He's right that health care does have an inelastic demand curve, that there is a an asymmetric information problem and that the majority of costs are driven by a minority of consumers.

What should be noted, though, is that many think that inelastic demand curve therefore means patients are entitled to the highest, most expensive form of medical care. And not even the most socialized of health care systems can feasibly work like that, they ration it out and have a lottery system in place, because their resources are limited. A purely private market works within its means, and that does not automatically mean it must be for profit. Non-profits work all the time, but our government has the health care system set to where it's either a loss/gain.

 

[fisharmor]

Big surprise, he didn't allow my comment.
Shows you how far medicine has fallen. They don't even understand that most people don't like strangers shoving things up their asses, and can't comprehend that coming up with a better procedure is about as basic as customer relations gets.

 

[Brian Defferding]

Another point worth making: Japan is a country that has a mostly-government-funded health care system, and clinics/hospitals are strictly non-profit. But yet they are forced to raise taxes recently to support it. Guess what they cited for the main reason? The elderly, which is the demographic that uses the most expensive medical procedures. After taxes are raised to fund it, will that solve the rising costs issue? I doubt it. I think costs will continue to go up again, and taxes will need to raised more, goods and sales will start seeing diminishing returns. Rinse, repeat. Eventually we will start seeing the law of diminishing returns appear.

If a purely private system supposedly "can't work" because the most expensive procedures are not profitable, then I hate to break it to the person that believes that, but locking the entire nation into a partial socialized medical care system would make rising prices for everyone nothing less than a total certainty.