A place to share and discuss data visualizations. #dataviz
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The market has solved it.
You just don't realize what the market has solved for. It didn't solve the problem of expensive healthcare, it solved the problem of how to maximize profits for the wealthy.
That's what people don't understand about "the market". What you think it's doing isn't what it's actually doing.
If the free market had any real competitors, the problem would genuinely solve itself in favor of the consumer. We see this with any new tech where a bunch of new firms try to win customers by any means necessary in those first few years.
The problem as always is: where are the competitors after X years, and are these "competitors" actually competing anymore?
The solution as always is: regulate. Ensure competition. Ensure cartels aren't price fixing. But no one wants to hear that
I have an honors minor in medical humanities and took several medical policy courses. We looked at this exact graph from previous years as well as several other huge sets of data/graphs/studies and anything else related to insurance you can imagine. Insurance is not a standard market commodity and does not follow the same trend or logic. The only way you can lower premiums in insurance is by reducing the risk in the pool, or increasing the pool size to dilute the risk. This is either increasing the total pool size by increasing premiums, getting more people, or being selective about who joins the risk pool. The third one was what was called "preexisting conditions" and kept high cost people from entering the risk pool and draining the funds. This got banned and increased premiums. By increasing competition you end up splitting up the pools, making everyone's premiums go up. This happened multiple times post ACA after the GOP started stripping out the funding and safeguards to prevent this. More and more competition opened up with artificially low premiums being subsidized by federal dollars, but then when the subsidies ended the premiums started jumping. Then when the premiums were jumping, new companies opened up to make more competition advertising lower rates, but then further fractured to pool sizes, leading to premiums skyrocketing. If you look back just 10 years ago there was a 3-5 year stretch of premiums increasing almost 30% year after year. It was due to all the competition opening up every year. This is why single payer systems have the lowest rates. If you have even one private company monopoly with a regulated cap on profits you would still end up with lower premiums. Then, if this single paying company was nationalized to take out the profit making middle man, the premiums are that much lower because your risk is spread across a massive pool. More competition in insurance makes the problem worse. I would agree with your stronger regulation though. There is a lot that can be done there.
Thanks for your insight!
The streaming market has tons of competition. So then why are prices endlessly rising and content being removed and the value being made worse with ads?
The video game market also has tons of companies in it, and yet most of them are making the experience worse with ads and service-based games.
By the time the system has consolidated enough that there is little effective competition, those companies have also become so large that they can lobby for regulatory capture. It's not zero regulation, but rather a form of regulation that solidifies their position while still providing the same shitty service they always have.
Regulation won't work. The system is too far gone.
What other tools are there for ensuring a fair market? Government intervention seems like the only avenue
Stop expecting politians to be the source of change. The results will be lackluster, at best.
Yup, the free market and health care are not compatible because the free market works on principles of supply and demand. But when you have a limited resource that people will literally pay anything for (their health) - well you can see where the problem is.
I N N O V A T I O N Doctors in the US spend about 25% of their time dealing with insurance companies
In Germany the adminstrative effort including documentation is at 50%.
Is this a good comparison? Feels like we're missing all of the US administration, insurance is just a part of it.
Barely, but doctors here in Germany are always complaining about difficulties they have with insurances. Especially the dozens of different public insurances. System here is an unconsolidated mess. Apart from having optional private insurance.
Like my doctor working on treatment and not being buried with administrative tasks.
The best part is that it's only State spendings, people in the USA also pay for private insurance individually!
Americans essentially pay for our insurance 4 times.
we pay more tax dollars per patient than ay other country
We pay hundreds per person per month in insurance premiums
We pay all healthcare expenses until we hit our annual deductible
We they pay a co-pay percentage after all treatment beyond the deductible.
Everyone knows it's a broken system, but people are adamant that anything else would be communism or would make you lose an election.
The people worried about "losing an election" are paid by the people who profit from the broken system. The communism fear is a strawman that liberals use to excuse their worthless party.
..how did the line come about? How did they determine what the life expectancy would have been with less expenditure per capita?
I think the line might be historical data?
But.. from when? Surely expenditure hasn't gone up linearly with time
Yeah something is weird about this graph.
Health expense in what timeframe? Monthly, yearly?
If i had to guess, i would say this graph just shows the average yearly health expense of people that died at age X
So people that spend more money on their health, live longer. If thats the whole message this is the most boring graph ever.
If the US line is true, it shows that people there get much less value out of the money they spend on their health.
Wait the life expectancy in the US is that low?!
It's actually lower in the poor-er regions.
I'm guessing the target goal is whatever they set retirement age to be.
(Yes, I realize they want to eliminate retirement entirely.)
Absolutely. They've been trying to increase the retirement age for years now.
That's average. So if you have a lot of money and are spending it to raise the average cost, you probably live as long or longer than the other countries. On the other hand, the poors have a live expectancy that much lower to average it out. So call it 70 for the poors and 82 for the rich.
Well, now I’d like to learn what the differences between the US and the Australian Healthcare System are!
Why is Australia so damn high up?
Turns out it seems the Australians have public health insurance for everyone - Medicare. And you have optional additional private insurance. Communism I guess. Surely wouldn’t workout for the US…
Turns out it seems the Australians have public health insurance for everyone - Medicare.
To follow from your comment , because Australia has a publicly funded health system, the government actively works to reduce preventable diseases because it reduces the load on the system.
So they have had:
A sunscreen campaign and skin cancer check initiatives since the '80s.
Anti-smoking campaigns (and high tobacco taxes) where resources are available to help quit.
Every citizen gets a free bowel cancer test mailed to them when they turn 50 to help find and treat cancer earlier.
Road safety laws are tight and helmet / seatbelt regulations are strict as it reduces hospital loads.
Vaccinations for a multitude of easily preventable diseases are given for free in childhood, particularly now for the virus that causes cervical cancer.
Those and a myriad of other public health initiatives all help Australians to live longer.
Coupled with the fact that the cost for the whole population is borne by an income tax of approximately 2% , it means that if you are poor or unemployed, you still have access to health services. That also means that small health issues among low income earners don't snowball until they are life threatening.
It has the knock on effect that people don't end up trapped in a job because it offers "good benefits and a low deductible" and concerns about pre existing conditions interfering with insurance and etc when changing jobs is generally moot.
Then throw in mandatory government regulated retirement funds that require all employers to put in 12+ percent of an employee's gross earnings into an employee's fund of their choosing for their retirement. That coupled with public health generally means the whole US style worker=slave arrangement can't exist.
Which means the US will get nothing like this as all that screams of nanny state overlords and death panels and moar taxes killing freedom and so on and so forth. Sorry guys.