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this post was submitted on 16 Oct 2023
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I think that there are spaces in healthcare where you could safely apply a free market. "Hey, yeah, I see you have a cane, but have you tried my super luxury high speed low drag jet-powered hover cane? Guaranteed to be 1000% more like a Nerf commercial than any standard cane!"
"Woah, check it out, we built an MRI that's way cheaper and doesn't scare the shit out of people!"
"Hey, I found a medicine that cures baldness!" Etc.
Right? I can see the intersection of luxury (in the sense that not buying it incurs no cost, not even an opportunity cost), convenience, and healthcare being a place where there's room for the free market. The problem is that we've gone and applied it to everything, including all kinds of things that shouldn't be free market. Then you end up with all kinds of goofy fucking bullshit like corporates parenting stuff that the DOD paid to develop (Epi Pens, vaccine adjuvants, etc), GSK opting to develop a singles vaccine instead of a tuberculosis vaccine, etc, etc, etc. Oh, that last one is real. Here: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-big-pharma-company-stalled-tuberculosis-vaccine-to-pursue-bigger-profits
This is probably an unpopular take on Lemmy, but I believe that free markets generally work well where they exist. But there's a lot of things that have no business being free markets, like healthcare, and aren't free markets (and won't behave like them) even if you try super hard to pretend that they are. You see, a truly free market requires the ability to say no and suffer no cost. You can buy Bob's Widget, Jan's Widget, or no Widget and be perfectly fine. This is not the case in healthcare. If you're having a heart attack, your choices are:
-Agree to pay for this widget but we can't/won't tell you how much it costs until we're done.
-Die
That's not a free market, that's not how free markets work.
Yeah. It's wild to me, because the Dutch actually have a private, insurance-based system and it works great for them. Their healthcare is affordable, as is their insurance. But the Dutch also aren't afraid of regulating.
A free market cannot have oversights or constraints. If it does it's not free. Free markets have never worked. Will never work. And simply can't exist. Either powerful entities will seek to control the market for themselves. Or if you're lucky benevolent people in government will do their best to control the markets against said group. Someone is always controlling it.
The best we could ever hope to have is a fair market. And the only way to have a fair market is to have a market that is completely optional. Markets that deal and necessities can never be optional. Because Necessities are not optional.
I don't care what they charge for luxury housing or fru fru fancy food. But we can and should provide desirable public housing and basic nutritious food for everyone. And if they want a luxury house. Or fancy food. Any of us are free to work to get it should we choose to. But the point is choose to. Not be forced to under coercion for basic survival.
Not true. Without oversight, you get corruption and monopolies, and the system collapses.
Correct. But both preclude having a free market.
My comment was a bit of a simplified hot take. And your perfectly valid reasons are why I didn't also throw housing and food right in there in the same take.
See... you kid, buuuuuut...
https://www.hurrycane.com/