Subject: Re: Trump To Allow Crypto In 401K's...
No. And not enough will ever do so to ever matter.

Oh, I'd disagree with that as well, especially if the patient had more financial skin in the game.

I said: All this is infinitely better than an unwieldly government driven solution that seizes partial control over a quarter of the nation's GDP (or more).
You said:
How do you know? Obviously you have a philosophical belief about it, but there's absolutely no country on earth that has the type of pricing model you are wishing for, and we have no way of knowing at all whether it could work or whether it would have any better outcomes.

The "every other country has this so we should do it, too" or "No other country has this so we shouldn't do it"...again - aren't arguments. Every mom who's ever found weed in her son's sock drawer has heard a version of "All the other kids are doing it". In other words, just because all the other teenagers in town are hitting the bong doesn't mean it's the right thing to do.

There's zero way we're doing single payer health care here. Zero. Why? We can't afford it, and we already have the numbers in hand from the last time this came up.
Case in point. I ran Vermont's numbers back on the Fool, and they didn't jive: they were estimating $5 billion dollars per year (likely understated).
For those who incessantly demand links: https://mediad.publicbroadcast... (This presentation is their own post mortem)
Slide 21. The $5B number is from 2020.

Vermont has 648,000 residents. That's a cost of $7,700-ish per resident per year.
Vermont's entire state budget is $9 billion. So they'd have to increase their state budget by 80% for this.

Now let's extrapolate to the entire country. The US has 342M citizens. At $7700 per (and given that the Vermont thing was several years ago that number is likely FAR higher given medical cost inflation)...ouch...but let's be generous and say that through the miracle of government intervention we got the price down to about half or merely $4,000 per citizen. That would mean we're spending the equivalent of double the entire federal budget today.

As I said, not happening. (And the real number is probably north of $10k/citizen, anyhow).

And btw.
And even then, I notice that your description of the work and education and questions you put into him doesn't mention price!!! Even as you were educating yourself about him and his skills and the procedure, did you ever bother to research his pricing compared to those of other providers, and figure out whether the cheaper alternative might be a better fit for you.

How could I have? Nobody published pricing information back then.

But now...I could go here:

https://surgerycenterok.com/

I could look up ACL repair surgery. I'd find this: $7,931.

Guess what? This is LESS than what my insurance was charged 26 years ago!.

You're trying to argue that no patient would do this research because they have no incentive to. But you know who would? The insurance company, who has every incentive to. They'd do the research for the patients.

Over time pressure would be applied to the system such that prices would naturally somewhat equalize (allowing for differences in regions and demand just like with many other markets) to a FAR better degree that we have now. Costs would drop as insurers would demand improvements in efficiencies across the board.

For the record, I DID negotiate price with the surgeon and the anesthetist and got the entire thing done for $229 bucks out of pocket. All it took was a 10 minute phone call, btw. Maybe not even that long.