[ExI] Single Payer Healthcare

[Dylan Distasio]

The cynic in me answers because they are profiting with political capital
from the current arrangement and have no incentive to do so.  Trump has
been in favor of forcing them to, but Congress (Republicans in
particular) has not stepped up:

One of Mr. Trump’s proposals — to force drug makers to bid for the right to
sell their products to Medicare
<http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/medicare/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier>
beneficiaries — has repeatedly failed to attract enough support in
Congress, especially among his fellow Republicans.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/23/health/the-fight-trump-faces-over-drug-prices.html

I don't know how much it would help, but I don't see how it could hurt.  I
think the linked article gives a decent summary of the challenges.

I will say that now that Ryancare has failed to pass, you may eventually
see Trump extend an olive branch to Democrats to get something like that
baked into whatever is proposed next.  I don't see them revisiting
healthcare anytime soon though.  I would expect Trump has moved on to tax
reform (which IMO he should have started with in the first place, but
that's a topic for a separate thread).


On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 9:58 AM, William Flynn Wallace <foozler83 at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Dylan wrote:
> I do think the current US system is broken though (for many reasons); it
> doesn't allow markets to effectively price.
> ---------------------
> Why doesn't Congress allow our health agencies to bargain with drug
> companies over prices?
>
> bill w
>
> On Tue, Mar 28, 2017 at 7:54 AM, Dylan Distasio <interzone at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> John-
>>
>> As I'm sure you're aware, correlation does not imply causation.  This
>> issue is extremely complex and difficult to wade through, and your
>> implication that we should be on a single payer system (I'm not sure what I
>> think on that, but my political leaning immediately recoils at the thought)
>> is not very libertarian.
>>
>> For one thing, the US subsidizes the rest of the world in terms of drug
>> prices:
>> https://www.bloomberg.com/graphics/2015-drug-prices/
>>
>> For another, these single payer systems are also going broke, and you
>> inevitably get rationing (which is fine until you're one the short end of
>> that stick).
>>
>> You also effectively get a government centralized entity deciding how to
>> allocate overall healthcare funds to various conditions.  I have seen few
>> problems that get better with a centralized bureaucratic entity making the
>> call.
>>
>> You're also discounting genetics, homogenous populations, and other
>> socioeconomic factors including diet that may be influencing longevity
>> numbers.
>>
>> I think it is a good idea to look at what these countries can teach us,
>> and I come away thinking single payer is not a good idea.
>>
>> I do think the current US system is broken though (for many reasons); it
>> doesn't allow markets to effectively price.  I find an analogy in the US
>> experiments with deregulating energy prices at the wholesale level but not
>> allowing price to pass through to retail.  I don't know if that is a good
>> idea, but you can't have an effective market when one portion of it is
>> allowed to price and the other side is not.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> On Mon, Mar 27, 2017 at 10:06 PM, John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>
>>> The USA spends FAR more on healthcare than any other country on the
>>> planet and has done so for many decades, yet it doesn't seem to be getting
>>> much bang for the buck. In 2016 the USA spends $9451 per-person per-year on
>>> healthcare but is only #31 on the list of countries with the longest lived
>>> citizens; Japan is #1 on the longevity list and spend only $4150 per person
>>> per year, Australia is # 4 and spends $4420, and at  #31 is the USA which
>>> spends $9451. Every one of the top 30 longevity countries have 2 things in
>>> common:
>>>
>>> 1) They all spend far less on healthcare than the USA does.
>>> 2) Unlike the USA they all have Single Payer Healthcare.
>>>
>>> We are extropians and thus are believers in the scientific method, that
>>> means if a theory doesn't fit the facts it must be abandoned no matter how
>>> beloved it may be, and that includes political theories. So as a extropian
>>> do you think maybe those top 30 longevity countries can teach us something?
>>>
>>>
>>> John K Clark
>>>
>>> _______________________________________________
>>> extropy-chat mailing list
>>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>>
>>>
>>
>> _______________________________________________
>> extropy-chat mailing list
>> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
>> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>>
>>
>
> _______________________________________________
> extropy-chat mailing list
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org
> http://lists.extropy.org/mailman/listinfo.cgi/extropy-chat
>
>
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.extropy.org/pipermail/extropy-chat/attachments/20170328/0b7b86a7/attachment.html>