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Comment by anon09809809 | Hacker News Reader

The 250k+/year US salary of the fully trained doctor setting bones could be a problem. Many doctors are paid significantly less in many of those other countries.

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It's not, though. It takes under an hour to set a bone, so that doctor's time is not driving the expense.

Why do I need to see a doctor to get a mole or skin lesion checked? Why is it necessary for someone to go through 4 years of undergrad, med school, etc etc just to examine a mole and remove it with a scalpel?

Are you trolling? Are you legitimately asking why you need a doctor to check something that might be, amongst the million other possible complications, Cancer?

The mole-specific training is probably a couple of months, max (if that's all the person needs to do). Division of labor.

Go back a step further. Why do they need a big income? Because they took on lots of education debt. Why did they take on so much? Why is it so expensive? Because the usurers extend that much credit.

The free market in shampoo is okay, sort of. For a lot of other stuff "free market" + fiat looks like a mess.

We don’t have a free market in healthcare. We have a highly regulated one. Free market healthcare is lasik and boob jobs. Both have come down in price because they are not part of the insurance system. They’ve also gone up in quality due to competition and demand.

Dental care is also a 'free market' and I don't think I need to say how much of a disaster getting any sort of dental work can be in the US.

Why haven't dental costs fallen through the floor if it's a free market?

It's covered by most employer health plans, so patients don't see the true cost and don't shop around much. That's not the case for lasik or elective plastic surgery.

Of course since the latter are elective, customers have the luxury of shopping around and taking their time.

I'm not sure where you've been employed, but dental plans have always been separate from the actual health plans and generally cover nothing beyond giving a pittance per year that hardly rolls over. Once that's gone, you get to pay the full cost.

I've had to deal with the true cost of dental work and I can guarantee you anyone that's needed to deal with significant dental issues has had the same experience. So why hasn't the free market dropped down prices? Why are we still paying more for basic dental work compared to other countries?

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