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Comment by magic_beans | Hacker News Reader

What are you even rambling on about?

I understand the parent's idea. An employer gives his employees Tickets Resto. It's a 'social advantage' that may cost the employer less than simply paying the employees more because exempt from certain social charges. As a result, there are more of these scriptural Tickets Resto floating about than real money that people want to spend on restaurant meals. Which could lead to an inflation of restaurant prices in a fashion not so different to the inflation of the prices of medical prestations paid by private insurance.

Inflation is only one symptom. The bigger problem is that the providers (health or restaurants) start catering to what the PAYERS -- insurance, or the company handing out restaurant tickets -- want, not what's good or helpful for the customers.

The entire thing becomes a giant game of "what you can bill", which pretty much sums up healthcare today. There is no emphasis on outcome, quality, or cost, just whether something is "reimburseable". Will it be covered by the ticket?

Good explanation and I've read a number of articles about private health insurance under this angle. It's not an imaginary phenomenon.

I'm curious to know if a study has been done about the similar effects of restaurant tickets. The idea seems quite plausible, would go a long way towards explaining the doubtful quality of many parisian restaurants and, anecdotally, I remember a lot of use of restaurant tickets and incentives based on them when I was in the city of lights.

I'm not sure specifically for restaurants. A lot of my ideas on health come from "Catastrophic Care", where they talk about "the surrogates" who stand in, for the role customers would pay in an ordinary cash transaction.

P.S. Bisto food sucks. I went to Paris on my honeymoon last year, I live in SF and our food is better and way more innovate to boot.

I'll check the book. I'm relatively interested in health insurance and the financing thereof because I haven't quite identified the system that works the best and even the most successful countries need to tighten their game given the imminent demographic challenges.

As to bistros, well I've been to a hundred different restaurants in Paris, they don't all have 'bistro' written on the window but I'm sure that some were. For the money that I was willing to spend at the time, nothing stood out so much. The Bouillon Chartier was great since I'm a fan of the Lyon-style bouchon and I find them comparable. Generally, I wouldn't go to Paris for affordable and good food. I'm not particularly looking for innovation either, just some intelligence in the menu and ingredients.

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