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Comment by xtracto | Hacker News Reader

The problem is that it's an inelastic market. So sellers can basically charge WHATEVER they want, constrained only to the line where people will revolt. But that's a very high line in the US.

Health providing shouldn't be a for-profit endeavor. Certainly shouldn't be in the stock market and it absolutely shouldn't be comingled with "insurance"

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> The problem is that it's an inelastic market. So sellers can basically charge WHATEVER they want, constrained only to the line where people will revolt.

What keeps me from bringing my business too the competition like I do in every other market? The main constraint I see right now is that there are very few, but large hospitals and my insurance only pays for me to go to even fewer of those. However, competition already works (if the patient makes an effort) for some planned procedures like CT scans where you can safe up to 80% in my own experience.

It’s hard to compete on price when your customers don’t know any of the prices up front.

Definitely true. However, it's not intrinsic to healthcare. We made it that way. You can go to https://surgerycenterok.com/ and see all-inclusive prices for surgeries right now. Some people fly there for procedures. They have higher success rates than competitors, surgeons take more money home and the procedures cost less. It's possible.

Getting approval to build a new hospital seems to require regulatory stuff and how do you get the staff if there's a cap on how many doctors can be trained a year?

I am not saying we have a functioning or free market right now. I am arguing that competition can bring down prices if we allow it to.

Just noting the other constraints on it like the AMA

Maybe they're referring to the way the system is set up. You're probably not going to shop around for the lowest cost heart surgeon unless you have no insurance. Will they even say how much they charge? Couple that with emergencies. I think the only hope for America is a movement to stop a lot of this stuff before they become issues. Early diagnosis of cancer, national movement to unfat America (whatever that mean), people feeling more responsible for their own health inasmuch as they can.

Availability of prices is definitely an issue. Many, many things aren't emergencies though and arguably many of the expensive ones aren't (cancer treatment, many great procedures once stabilized). My wife used to work on healthcare and has helped friends and family shop around for cancer treatment and heart surgery. However, due to the lack of price transparency this was limited to shopping for quality. We could totally change that though. See the surgery center of Oklahoma website I've linked in several comments

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