Phatscotty wrote:Lootifer wrote:Question: what does frer market healthcare look like? (High level question)
I don't know. Health care, in general, has never experienced the free market, not in my lifetime. My grandpa tells me stories though, about my 5 other aunts and uncles.
They just paid the doctor the money when they needed the doctor.
The real
cost of healthcare has risen significantly with time, even in a single generation (dont confuse this with the price, price is what the butchered distorted system pops out - the $8000/p.a. or whatever number gets thrown around).
This is because healthcare has become far more complex and requires more raw materials (doctors/nurses work-hours, doctors/nurses training time, more cost-intensive equipment and more cost-intensive medicine). This is ok because the results are far better, we now live longer healthier lives.
In your Grandads time you
could just pay the doctor for your annual cold and occasional spained ankle; however if you tore the miniscus in you knee, sorry bucko, you were given a crutch and declared "lame". Now we dont have to put up with that, we can get surgery and fix that up; however the real cost of the fix isnt cheap, and likely to be beyond the means of 90% of the population (the surgery I had at the beginning of the year would have been in the tens of thousands of dollars order of magnitude) - hell likely even more; not many have a spare couple of thousand to spend on a treatment which in the old days we may have just put up with for the rest of our lives.
Thats where the insurance and socialised models have evolved from. Healthcare isnt cheap; however not everyone needs it. Apart from the elderly not everyone will need a horribly expensive major surgery during their normal year to year life. So insurance is just a form of socialisation under the guise of a "free market" tag - as Doom says, the real free market would be user pays.
Now in reality the true free market option would almost be unanimously rejected by the population. Only the true Libatarian stalwarts like BBS would fight for it;
The moderate libatarians would likely offer some kind of coupon type deal (I think Friedmans' education policy is one such example, though cant remember off the top of my head - not sure if it would work in Healthcare - education is cheap in comparison).
I go to the gym to justify my mockery of fat people.