And you wonder why Health Care is so HIGH?????

Typical. Re read my post about the dog and if you cannot comprehend what is written let me know and I will stop trying to communicate with you. For now let me spell it out.

A dog can get the exact same procedure as a human for 1/20th the cost.

The reason is the free market.

The price of the surgery (or any other service the vet provides for that matter) is determined (like the eye-surgery example that also seems to escape you) by the surgeon (seller) and the pet owner (buyer).

It is not determined by the FDA or the insurance companies (very few people carry pet insurance and as of now there is little need for a vet to carry malpractice insurance).

The. Result. Is. A. Lower. Price. For. Effectively. The. Same. Thing.

Because. Of. The. Free. Market.

Buyer. VS. Seller.

No. Regulators.

No. Meddling. With. Commerce.

Do. You. Understand. This. Time.?

 

so how do you propose we do this? i would argue that by taking away the power of government to regulate most things (on the federal level) you eliminate the bribery and payoffs

regulatory capture is a bitch. cant give government the power, pay them 75k a year and expect them to turn down the promise of riches when they leave public office for a few favorable decisions

you cant justify paying them 250k b/c the private sector always has more

tom,

What liability does a vet have for messing up? How much can someone sue for malpractice on a dog?

How much does a vet have to pay to keep a roof over their head?

How many people does it take to do an operation on a dog, how many people in total does it take to perform an operation on a human including recoop?

How about a better comparison..

Why does it cost less to do an operation in Mexico or the Malaysia versus the USA?

It has absolutely nothing to do with "free markets" (which do not exist in the first place) and all to do with fixed and intangible costs of doing complicated, life threatening procedures.

If you want a vet to do your heart transplant, sign a waiver of liability and have it done on a dog table I am quite sure you could cut down on the costs very nicely.

Your example is atrocious..

Removing regulation means that the little guy gets fisted that much faster, the people who cannot defend themselves turn into powder faster if business knows there is no recourse to them hiding and misleading..that only EVENTUAL (if at all) backlash from the public MIGHT mean people choose a different product. That thinking is elitist and way too long in how it develops.

Get rid of campaign contributions, high cost election campaigns, get rid of all lobbyists and special interest groups, that is a START..

The problem is politicians are hooked on the money, they need the money to be elected, they need to lobby favor to get votes from business groups who can influence voting.

The corrupt nature of politics starts from the private sector. If the government was 100% isolated from the private sector and all decisions and legislation were made only to better the life of citizens and the safety of the country there would be no need for the filth we allow to transact in the government.

I fear the private sector and their advantage much more than I do the government. We are being intentionally poisoned, mislead, diverted, deceived by a counter party which knows more than we do and does not provide all relative information to the transaction..that worries me much more than anything the government could do.

thats the thing, when pushed for an answer, wall always resorts to some highfalutin response, light on details, big on talking points.

wall,

do you think the govt subsidies that are used to make corn syrup are a good thing?

why is the answer always more regulation, why is it not smarter regulation?

why is the answer always more regulation, why is it not smarter regulation?
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i think we all agree that there's no such thing

so why give them the power in the first place?

Part of the conversation already with Koaj..

subsidies are due to the pollution of government from the private sector..get rid of the private sector and their hands in the process and it is not an issue.

Ive stated in the past how angry it makes me that we protect the local farmer by import taxing Brazilian sugar 100 percent, yet we allow imports of finished goods from domestic companies with ZERO import taxes.

The private industry has destroyed the government, they carry the money in with truckloads and politicians are their slaves.

Tom, glad that the one example of a vet being cheap for YOU has worked out, what I said was correct..a vet has nowhere close the overhead or insurance that a physician has..aside from that, there is no such thing as vet insurance. I think vets can and are often total crooks, Ive spent about 5k in the last two years with two pets in the mere diagnosing of issues and yet in both examples of my visits to vets, NO diagnosis was ever made, I got no answers or anything but guess work. You pay, pay, pay, pay and they had no concrete info about anything.

One pet died aside from the 4k I spent, full of wasted time, huge bills, running from specialist to specialist, a second was almost 1k spent on a misdiagnosis full of blood work, tests, medicine which ended up being completely unhelpful and yet you have no recourse with a vet and they can guess you to hell knowing people will pay what it costs (especially if they have the means) because it is their pet.

No comparison between a physician and a vet..

Wall st, As logical as you feel your arguments are about private enterprise/government , The social science is laid out in"The Road to Serfdom" and where it all leads when the gov decides the winners and losers in"Atlas Shrugged" 
On to medicine and why its costly, an abridged version
1)Lawyers, specifically trial lawyers.  Shakespeare was right, kill them all.
2)Third party payers.  Legal issues actually prevented raise packages in some sense in the late 40's and 50's so companies began offering cheap benefits to employees and their families. Yes, medical insurance was cheap then because overall costs were cheap.  We are now the only civilized country with employer based ins coverage and it disrupts our global competitive advantage.
But insurance companies profit immeasurably and I despise them for complicating my life.  I no longer deal with them but I am a rarity.  They are by nature evil and greedy.
And other than MLB, the only business not allowed over state lines, thereby destroying competition.
3)Medicare/Medicaid.  Filled with fraud , waste, incompetence.  A 40 trillion unfunded mandate over the next 40 years!!!!!!!!!!!!!
4)the technology industry...making sure everyone needs the latest and greatest tests or devices at extraordinarily inflated costs.  bribing docs as bad as the pharma industry used to
5) Big pharma and their special laws they have had passed. From price fixing to patent manipulation, they have all the angles covered.
6)Hospitals, manipulating Insurance, medicare/medicaid for max profit
7)Doctors, in my defense,  12 years of school and 300K worth of debt and starting your career at 29-35 leaves you a bit envious of the asshole who hung up a financial adviser shingle and raked in a million a year by age 25 last decade.  But there is greed and we deal with a system that rewards doing something with a needle or knife instead of the right thing sometimes.
8)Patient expectations.  This is huge.  1/3 of all medical care is delivered in the final months of peoples lives.  We need to teach dying with dignity with our drivers licenses and voting privileges.  If you have a 93 yr old frail demented grandma with no living will, get one.  you wont like all the tubes and machines we use and your final memories will look like a science project gone horribly wrong...trust me
9)illegal aliens...i'm not gonna start on this unless some absolute moron starts in on the awesome contributions of the heroic migrants.
10)Lack of personal responsibility, see the obesity article above...go Nevada, we're only 6th worst.
11)lack of primary care clinics...and it is getting worse.  half of ER visits are for non urgent matters by illegals, medicare, medicaid, and the mentally ill.....cuz its free for them and the costs are passed on to all of us.
12)Lack of price transparency
If I had to stitch up an arm of an indigent patient I'd do it for free, for a poor working person with no insurance, 40$,  for a rich man no ins 200$,  if billing insurance 500 and get paid 200,  if i was in the ER the cost would be 1500 plus extras.  a lab test costs 1 $ to run.  medicare pays 5$,  the price with no insurance is 120$.
The working poor without insurance get it the worst of all sub types of patients.

Your boundless density amazes me.

I give up.

The private industry has destroyed the government, they carry the money in with truckloads and politicians are their slaves.
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you cant argue that more government regulation is the answer when we agree that government is corrupt and inept

My point being is Cause and Demand feed them shit get them sick= profit!

Lots of people on this board own shares in lots of companies. Under your definition their insight must trump yours. It was nice though how you attempt to paint yourself as THE owner as opposed to some guy who held a fraction of a percent of the stock.

Sure I can, I think there is hope to save the government, plus aside from the only negative view you have on the general government I think there are things the government does which are positive..and regulation CAN and is one of them. The default response to a problem isnt to implode it (at least to me). Get rid of private industry corruption, that is the start.

esplande, stretch much? Me saying I owned VISX meant I owned the whole company?? Is that all you have in the way of insults?

the first time i read that post i thought he meant he actually owned the company, then i remembered who was writing it.

but heres the anatomy of a wall argument.  A happens bc of B.  and when someone shows A happens in spite of B, wall always comes through with some convoluted reason why that doesnt count.  happens every time, like clock work.

in this thread, "The only way business truely is contained is when they are forced, and more often than not the force is due to regulation. Consumers are not educated enough to make a decision worthy of the basic economic theory, because business is not transparent, they hide to gain advantage"

and when proven wrong, wall responds with "The reason laser surgery is cheap has nothing to do with government being in or out or regulating at all, it has only to do with saturation."

and

"It got cheaper and better because of demand dropping and market saturation."

and

"The reason the product is safer (if indeed it is) resulted from the need to actually provide a product and stay in business."

Huh?

There may be some validity to the argument that in certain situations, regulations can prevent free market principles from allowing competition to reduce costs, but not in this example. The examples are not analogous.

Hospitals have greater overhead, higher costs for support staff (vet assistants do not require any form of degree), insurance costs, and most importantly, recomp for unpaid for costs. When is the last time a vet's office allowed a service to be performed without payment?

If you are so married to the free market principles, than you would certainly want to address the issue of unpaid services, because it is the central reason that drives the actual costs for medical services beyond the scope of the actual necessary costs. Just imagine how much it would cost to have your car repaired if the service station had to recomp for over 50% of its services that went unpaid.

I also don't understand how anything can be viewed from an unregulated lense. The industry has base regulations as it is. How can one service be extracted from that overall rubric of entire industry.

steve,

So I was proven wrong how exactly? From tom saying that a lack of regulation meant innovation improved for laser eye surgery, or his horrible example of a surgery at a vet being cheaper than the hospital is a form of free market exchange?

Is that your idea of proving me wrong? Both examples are incorrect and are poor at best in proving a point. I actually gave a better comparison which had more relation than a vet vs a hospital, but the reality is there is no comparing the cost of running a hospital to a vet period.

As to my comment about "owning" VISX, if you are a shareholder, you are an owner by definition..what kind of moron would think that I was the sole owner of a multi billion (at the time) dollar publically traded company? The term "owner" when speaking of stock is common, that anyone owning shares is an owner..good grief.

I stand by what I said regarding improvements and sales..why arent we using pentium 186 processors anymore? Because innovation occurred to increase sales, and old technology over time has a negative sloping margin curve..it is why every single year Intel is working on the next processor, they know that the longer the current processor is in the market, the lower the price will need to drop in order to maintain sales and market share.

The same holds true with laser surgery. In the early stages of the product there were plenty of problems and kinks in their process, people were having issues in large numbers, there were lawsuits and concerns of safety (and there still are). So in order for this company to survive they HAD to improve the technology, nobody today would pay 3k an eye for OLD technology, even with the newer technology the price has STILL gone down. That is called market saturation..once the high demand consumers have the product, the company has to be creative in gaining that "fringe" customer, that means improving the technology and making it better priced.

Not sure why I even bother, you arent interested in doing anything more than disproving most anything I say even when it makes no sense in the process.

you cannot be serious wall,

intel makes new processors bc guess what, they arent the only gig in town, ever heard of AMD?  they make comparable chips for much less money.  if there were no one else besides intel, we probably would still be using old processors.

please explain how regulation made intel improve their products

you even admit that competition, not regulation, caused visx to make its product better and cheaper.

i could go on, but i think i made my point.  thats not to say the free market is the only solution and works all the time, but to say regulation is mostly the answer is just plain moronic.

America has the most costly and wasteful healthcare system in the world.  Not because of unhealthy population, high tech medicine, malpractice suits, government regulation or insurers ineffiency.  Other countries have those problems too.

The real reason is that profits have priority over patients.  For healthcare industry, high income is more important than reducing costs.  As a result, administrative and overhead costs are excessive.  Reform is necessary because the system has failed.

 

regulation? there isnt one farmer in the USDA. there isnt one mathematician or stock man in the SEC...they are all attorneys who rely on tips from the public (trust me on that)

private industry payoffs and gaining and edge by any means necessary will never stop...so we need to remove the receiving end of their bribes.

the head of the USDA is an ex monsanto lobbyist. who is the bigger fool, the lobbyist or the government official who put him there?

See this is where we differ, your answer is to get rid of government, my answer is to get rid of private sector involvement in the government.

Is either possible?

Getting rid of government opens the private sector to destroy the consumer, and to me the government does less damage than the private sector..so I would rather try to improve things by cleaning up government, not destroy it.

while that certainly may be true, but lets not assume the private sector will destroy the consumer, they MAY destroy the consumer.

but lets also remember the govt kinda destroyed the consumer in the housing market.  if there were no freddie and fannie, there wouldnt be anyone to sell the risky loans to, thus they dont get made in the first place, bc what bank would want to keep those loans.

and i think getting rid of lobbyist would solve most of our countries problems