[jihoon796]

Both the prices and costs of a hospital/clinic are very much politics-driven.

And the most infuriating part to all of this is that whether a system does well financially has little to do with patient outcomes or any other metric related to human health. Yes, I understand Goodhart's law ("when a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure") since it's a common counterpoint used against my argument, but surely there are better metrics to optimize for other than profit?

For example, I work closely with a medium-sized reference laboratory, and it's clear to me that they have to take literally every shortcut possible in order to survive. The only reason that they're able compete in the market at all against a LabCorp or a Quest is due to the fact that they have deep political connections (lobbyists, governors, lawyers, etc) - certainly not because they have a better product or have better testing methods (although if you asked them, that's what they'd tell you).

[creaghpatr]

>The only reason that they're able compete in the market at all against a LabCorp or a Quest is due to the fact that they have deep political connections (lobbyists, governors, lawyers, etc) - certainly not because they have a better product or have better testing methods (although if you asked them, that's what they'd tell you).

Exhibit A: Theranos