McAllen, Texas: Free Market Health Care.

Source

It seems to be a knock against applying a free market policy to health care as some of you religiously advocate.

However I think the bigger message from this is that more money doesn't necessarily translate into better results and that there are other factors that work against it. This may also partially explain explain why the US performs worse than other first world nations in health care.

Well there's your problem.

First sentence after the lead:

This article has as much to do with free market economics as Obama's "common sense gun safety laws" have to do with gun safety.

Yep, I didn't read anything after that.

It's like saying utilities deregulation doesn't work because of Enron and the State of California. :

Medicare is not the free market, it's the opposite.

Conservatives reasonably fear the inevitable results of any government-run or single-payer system (the "public option" is a formula for disaster within a decade).

Health consumers behave completely rationally when they receive health care paid for by someone else, they take as much as they can get whether or not it's necessary or useful. A smart reform of our health system will make the consumer pay for the consequences of their decisions.

You other guys - who feel differently - are basically ignorant or stupid. This argument is getting tiresome.

The physician-owned hospital is a fascinating element here. What if doctors were allowed more reign and patients were allowed to work with the docs? Has that been adequately studied?

Thats what our clinic here in town is.

The doctors went together and paid for everything, and they're given a certain amount of leniency in how the deal with patients.

No surprise that we have probably the most efficient health care in the province.

I for one, spend most of my days with my local GP getting tests, or in A&E complaining about things that aren't wrong with me.

Oh, wait...

Corrected.
That's all conservatism seems to be anymore.
Saddening.

That it's saddening?

Well, I dunno, gotta admit, there's a schadenfreude side to it, but when you consider Republicans started out with Lincoln, damn, breaks your heart all over again.

On a related note, apparently global warming and gay marriage will result in the same fire and brimstone raining down from above.

Then I must not be a liberal, I'm not scared.
Why fear the inevitable?

It would help if you and your crew knew what you were talking about. Medicare has a shitload of regulations with it that actually deter utilization for patients. It is government subsidized healthcare. It only pays 80% of a fixed price and leaves the patient stuck with the other 20%. there is also a monthly premium enrollees must pay.

If you think private insurance is so efficient, well you can thank Medicare for that because they wrote the book that private pagers go by.

That co-pay doesn't apply to some big ticket items.

A few years ago my 82 year-old dad got free triple bypass surgery. The bills added up to well over $150k. The government didn't even ask my family to pay a penny (I have 3 siblings, without question each of us would have chipped in $10k or more). My dad wasn't required to pay anything either (I handle his finances and I'd have known).

I'm pleased as pie to have my dad around and no debit to my savings, but there is something very wrong with this system. My dad's certainly drawn more than he's contributed . [Incidentally, it's the same with social security - he cleverly took the option available to teachers back then to 'opt-out', so he barely contributed but still gets a (reduced) check.]

The premium is squat; a token amount, except perhaps to the impoverished.

This generation is paying for the last, but as with all good Ponzis, it can't be sustained forever.

Hush, you. Just because you actually work in the healthcare system and understand how Medicare works, don't think you can contradict the "experts."

If it's any consolation, there seems to be an uptick in population among the so-called "Millennials" - the kids in their late teens to mid-twenties. They should be able to support the smaller populations from GenX and GenY.

Then the contrast between your town and McAllen, Texas, seems to have more to do with the nature of the doctors in charge. Your guys are interested in the patients; the Texans are more interested in gaming the system.

But if you think private insurance is a clusterfuck of bureaucracy and a failed model, it's suddenly not Medicare's book...

I'm sure it's massively confusing to Obama and the rest of the libs to see so much money being thrown at a problem and all the indicators heading in the wrong direction. Heck, though, they should be getting used to it as that's EXACTLY what happened with the stimulus package that Obama had to have before anyone could review it.

Seems to me that one point that never comes up in these debates about private insurance vs. government-controlled/provided healthcare is that as long as you have a government-controlled program, such as Medicare, you'll never have a truly free market subject to the general principles of economics.

How can you accurately gauge whether the free market will provide a decent outcome when the only measure you have is the performance of private insurers "following the book" written by a bloated government program?

Once again, ideological jizzfesting stiffles an opportunity for a constructive conversation about healthcare based on the case of this article. God bless Wordforge.

Medicare, and government involvement, is only one payer in a mix with private payers. Among the things wrong with it is that Medicare is like the 800 lb gorilla in the room. It can't be ignored so it does a lot of dictating to everyone else. So, in a very real sense, the current system should be showing people just what a government single-payer system will be like. More limited availability of doctors and equipment, less coverage, higher levels of bureaucratic inefficiency... Sure, there are problems with the free enterprise model but the government has done nothing to show they can handle the problems better with the relatively limited opportunity they've already been given.

Wrong. As post #2 & 3 explained simply - the article does not stand for free market health care. So there is nothing to debate in a thread titled "Re: McAllen, Texas: Free Market Health Care."

In fact, you got it backwards - the Texas example is a very strong argument against government-manged health care.

Except as Bock just pointed out (and the dual(?) before him) - Medicare can be used as an example of the effect of a "public option" regarding health care costs, rationing, possibility of competition, co-pays, etc. It's not free market. It's a single-payer system. Medicare and medicaid are not good examples to cite if you want to gain someone's confidence in a government-run system.

Exactly. Any argument based off the current performance of the private portion of the health care sector is flawed from the start because that portion of the system is forced to operate in the shadow of this massive bureaucracy, which significantly influences the manner in which it operates. I'd be interested to see any models predicting how private insurers would operate if the entitlement programs were removed from the equation.

Private, NONPROFIT insurers functioned quite efficiently long before Medicare existed.

Why is it no one ever wants to address what happens when the primary goal of the insurer ceases to be providing value for premiums paid?

Because some smug asshole always ruins the conversation with "free market capitalism" examples that were not free markets."

Why is it no one ever wants to address the basic premise that more government is NOT the answer?

Seriously, I believe I mentioned the difficulty of setting up such a system on the scale needed just a few days ago.

Who's advocating more government? Or is that just your default statement in between chanting "it's all Obama's fault"?

I was yanking yer chain - gotcha!

Okay, now tell me what you think is the difference between the situation in McAllen and the situation Azure describes in his town.

There's nothing inherently evil in seeking a profit. Charities and cooperative community groups have their place, but in general, you'll get more and better providers when there's a profit motive to attract them to the sector. I tend to think that the most efficient system is one in which private, for-profit insurers are available for those who can pay and want them, private, non-profit insurers are available for those who meet whatever criteria they choose to use and want to participate, and charities are available to help those less fortunate. Of course, those who don't want to avail themselves of any of these options should be free to make that choice.