The health-care bill has no master plan for curbing costs. Is this a bad thing? | Hacker News Reader

The health-care bill has no master plan for curbing costs. Is this a bad thing?

newyorker.com

6 pointskcy8 comments

This article is worth a read before making bland comments about the tagline.

Edit: To provide a little value, the article digs into some history of how the US managed amazing increases in productivity in agriculture in the early 20th century. That portion of it alone is fascinating. Whatever version of the healthcare bill the article's using includes similar techniques to how the government approached agriculture.

Uh,

The article's headline is sort-of plausible.

The article's body is a pathetic absurdity. An massive integrated, interdependent industry can't be plausibly compared to the motley collection of itinerant farmers roaming America in 1900. I'd laugh if this article wasn't such a pathetic failure to address the oncoming gigantic failure that is the looming health care bill. As it is, I want to cry...

Edit: The history of agriculture improvement are interesting. But cryingly inapplicable - health care processes are absolutely not the product of the decisions of individual health care providers but the massively complex interactions of multiple sub-industries, regulations, etc. Sheesh.

I don't know that I'd disagree. In its current state, I'm afraid there are too many pressures on each individual actor for them to try new things.

The advantages in agriculture were that they were suspicious of trying new things, but once they did they demonstrated profit advantages. I have more trouble seeing how the pilot programs the article mentions would profit individual practitioners, or how insurance companies would provide the same kind of demand signals that direct consumers would.

In the long run the only ways to control health care costs are to let old people die, or cure aging. I'd prefer the second.

Unfortunately, the second would ensure rising health care costs as there would then be more patients. Also, overpopulation would then be a much larger issue than health care and as such we'd have to find creative ways to cull the masses. Darwin Awards or not, the numbers would rise indefinitely.

Yes. This is the major problem with leaving out a public option. There is no way to control costs without one. Preventative medicine has been shown to improve patient outcomes but has also been shown to increase, not lower, costs.

A lot more than a public option is needed.

«Preventative medicine has been shown to improve patient outcomes but has also been shown to increase, not lower, costs.» [Citation needed.]

Reply on news.ycombinator.com