[VancouverMan]

The widespread need for medical insurance only exists because regulation has introduced many artificial inefficiencies within the health care sector that in turn severely distort the pricing of medical services and medical products.

We'd see far more reasonable pricing, and much less need for something like medical insurance, without the regulations that artificially limit the supply of practitioners and clinics, that prevent competition, and that introduce unnecessary costs, among other distortions.

[skhunted]

The fact that healthcare is far cheaper in every European country that has universal healthcare suggests that you are wrong.

[AnthonyMouse]

Healthcare is cheaper in every country everywhere regardless of whether they have public or private coverage. This implies that the difference isn't public vs. private, it's some other regulatory differences which are driving up costs in the US.

[victorbjorklund]

But not sure americans would be okay with the limits on healthcare you got in europe. I'm from sweden and here you often have to wait several months to see a doctor if it isnt "im dying right now"-urgent. And if you got something complicated that isnt easy to diagnos but isnt killing you they will just not do anything about it.

The healthcare is good if you got something well defined and urgent like a hearth attack or cancer (but less good than cancer treatment in the US). But if you got something less urgent then you are kind of screwed.

[JamesBarney]

I think the causality runs the other direction. Europe has an efficient system so they can easily afford to give everyone health care. We have a very expensive system so we don't.

Medicare costs do not look like the rest of the world. Medicare has slightly lower costs than private insurance but that's mostly bargaining power not any increases in efficiency. They free ride a little off money made off private insurance.

[VancouverMan]

High costs are certainly present in socialist medical systems, they're just somewhat obscured.

I'm more familiar with Canada's taxpayer-funded, "universal" provincial health care systems than the European ones, so I'll describe the costs we typically see with them.

Government health care spending makes up a huge portion of the provincial budgets each year. This results in costs like high tax rates, and significant government debt. (Those, in turn, introduce other costs, such as the stifling of business development and employment, among others.)

Another significant cost is the poor quality of service. Long delays are the norm. This can mean single-digit hours-long waits for emergency service, double-digit hours-long waits for semi-emergency situations, and weeks to months for routine diagnostics and specialist appointments.

A lot of Canadians don't have a family doctor, and walk-in clinics are typically quite busy and have relatively short hours, so people end up going to emergency rooms even for relatively minor health issues. That only exacerbates the problems there.

Even once you're finally seen by a practitioner, there is little incentive for them to do a good job because there's pretty much no competition, and no punishment for providing poor service. Don't expect a favourable outcome, especially for anything requiring in-depth investigation or long-term treatment.

Common dental, vision, and pharmaceutical costs often aren't covered by the provincial systems, which results in many Canadians paying even more money for costly private medical coverage on top of the "universal" coverage they've already paid for via taxation and public debt.

It's very revealing that despite paying a lot for the local health care systems, Canadians with the means to do so will often seek treatment in the US anyways. Even if they have to travel and pay a lot more money to do that, at least it tends to result in much faster, and much higher quality, service than they would ever have received in Canada.

[consteval]

> artificial inefficiencies

To be clear, the "artificial inefficiencies" here include treating poor people, treating elderly people, and treating people regardless of their conditions.

The alternative, which we have lived, is those people just dying. We, as a collective society, decided these features are "non-negotiable". Hence, the US has a semi-socialized system in the form of insurance.

The reason your premiums are so high is because some homeless man somewhere is getting Narcan as we speak. Your woes of a communist future have come to fruition, but it has been packaged in such a way that the average American does not realize it. We have the worst of both worlds - the sheer greed of the private sector, with the burdens of a public policy.

If we seek efficiency, as you say, the answer is obvious. Abolish insurance, and provide single-payer healthcare. Delete the middle men on top of middle men.