Not being able to afford healthcare without a full-time job at a megacorp isn't because markets are too free.
Also, if devs that are older (or women or parents) are undervalued, there is a competitive advantage waiting to be seized by companies that can create business models around that.
In other words, being bigoted is not profitable in a free society. Only companies resting on their laurels (or otherwise abusing people) can afford that sort of nonsense in the long run.
“Free market” can only exist in specific sectors and rarely without extensive regulation.
Comparing computer and healthcare industries makes almost no sense (besides extremely superficial ways) due to perfectly obvious reasons.
> making health care more affordable
Doubtful (since there is zero evidence of this working anywhere). Try to imagine how would this work for cancer and other serious diseases (hint: it wouldn’t at all for the majority of the population without some form of ins)
Why don't the users simply select health care system outside the one that pays too much in their mind to executives? Surely in a free market society there must be alternatives, or maybe some VC firm should start one ignoring all the regulations like they did with Uber and AirBnB that everyone loves.
Maybe this is splitting hairs, but it's more a problem with worshipping corporate capitalism. I don't think you can really describe healthcare in the US as a free market.
People are willing to pay anything for food or clothes as well. Still, free (well, at least way more free than in case of healthcare) market works decently, at least when it comes to providing cheap and decent food options.
The problem with healthcare is the opposite: there is no free market and it's impossible to compete without huge investment and even then it's sometimes still impossible (patents, long approval periods etc.).
The problem is for sure not simple but a lot of basic healthcare services could be a lot cheaper if it was easier to get in.
I'm not sure you fully grasp what your opponent means and why they mean it when they say "free markets." As an ideal in the market place of ideas, free markets as a concept aren't ever created by ADDING regulation. Free markets generally imply that a system left to itself will eventually regulate itself through market forces and will produce both more output and more freedom as a result. Unfortunately, most people learn that we have free markets in America. What we really have is nothing like a free market. It's some strange mixture of chrony capitalism, elitism, and government regulation. I know this isn't a healthcare post, but it's a perfect example of a misaligned system that sometimes tries to use the word "free market." If the market were actually free, the government wouldn't pick winners that abandon a motive based on patient and public health outcomes in favor of profit. Now that we aren't forced to buy a garbage product anymore, family doctors have been leaving HIPPA behind lately and doing a subscription model with patients and making HEALTH OUTCOMES the priority and not profit. That is a free market competitor... Not the government itself or it's regulations. Free market ideals give money to common people and let them choose. Otherwise, they are just "free" slaves and not participants in the market.
Healthcare simply does not line up with the incentive structure of the free market.
People can't opt-out if they're getting a bad deal.
Risk outliers get turned down as bad business decisions, or the drugs they need to stay alive are impossible to afford because of "low" demand.
It's left up to employers to choose the product that's best for their employees (and ensure that market competition functions), but that assumes they actually care about their employees' well-being, which most don't.
Denying care to the unemployed is a strong force deepening the poverty cycle, preventing people from working their way back up to being productive members of society.
Healthcare doesn't even really fit the model of insurance, because it isn't just a guard against unlikely catastrophe, it's an ongoing, chronic, inevitable cost of being a human being.
Exactly. That's not an exactly free market to operate in to begin with. Contrast that with the software/hardware markets, or even consumer goods markets, and the difference in terms of outcomes is pretty obvious. The problem with healthcare is that there is no direct "pay for service" system. It's all a mix of insurances, hidden costs, complex pricing systems (with little to no elasticity once fixed) defined by governments and third parties that have nothing to do with the end user.
Healthcare is not a free market. It’s a collection of cartels with price controls.
Things like healthcare networks were illegal before the Supreme Court redefined monopoly, and are now swallowing up healthcare delivery.
CVS essentially controls drug distribution.
The AMA is a trade guild that restricts the supply of doctors. A radiologist makes $1M a year because there are only a limited number of new ones minted each year.
ISPs are dangerous but nothing close to as awful as healthcare.
You can't let the market decide because the market is doomed (in the treating-people-as-human-beings sense) by the lack of infrastructure in the first place:
- no healthcare means you're a slave of whatever you can find,
- tipping culture means your employer can pay you shit
Health care is so regulated that the word free market doesn't make any sense.
A truely free market solution would be to train people specially to deal with COVID-19 cases and build a specialized hospital to deal with that. It would also bring the cost down.
It's more appropriate to say free markets work great when they are allowed to work. Health care isn't allowed to function in a free market due to the moral implications of doing so given our prevailing morality.
Also, if devs that are older (or women or parents) are undervalued, there is a competitive advantage waiting to be seized by companies that can create business models around that.
In other words, being bigoted is not profitable in a free society. Only companies resting on their laurels (or otherwise abusing people) can afford that sort of nonsense in the long run.
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