[curiousgal]

I find this whole situation ironic because whenever I come across a news article online of some Third World country making an improvement, mostly in regards of human rights like Saudi Arabia allowing women to drive or Tunisia passing inheritance equality laws, the general response is "Meh, this shouldn't have been an issue to begin with".

When it comes to the U.S., particularly with anything that involves its helathy care system, the slightest event is considered a step in the right direction. Well guess what? I wholeheartedly believe that it is both sad and pathetic to consider this as a win for the people against the healthcare industry. A country as rich as the U.S. and that spends on healthcare per capita more than other countries like Canada, should not have a for profit system.

A "hospital's retail price list" is the epitome of a for profit system, those words shouldn't even be in the same sentence together.

I understand that HN crowd is probably in the top 10% of the country so advocating for the system to change probably is of no concern to us, but let's not lie to people and say things are getting better when they clearly are not.

[cdoxsey]

Healthcare systems are not uniform. Canada or the UK's system is quite different from other systems. For example the Netherlands has a hybrid system that utilizes a competitive, private, for-profit insurance market (with subsidies from the government). I think a lot of first-world countries have systems like that. (they aren't publicly managed, single-payer systems) And given the rhetoric on this issue I was very surprised to learn that.

I agree that the US system is in need of major reform, but prices, competition and markets can be an important part of a healthcare system for price constraints, innovation, mitigating corruption, etc.

As an example, consider food stamps, which helps people get food, but does so via the private market. The program would be a lot worse off if the Government decided to open grocery stores or tried to run the whole supply chain.

Perhaps a similar line of reasoning applies to healthcare?

[splintercell]

> For example the Netherlands has a hybrid system that utilizes a competitive, private, for-profit insurance market (with subsidies from the government).

I am always skeptical of these claims. We have a hybrid system for higher education which utilizes a competitive, private, for-profit education market, with heavy subsidies from the govt (given to the students in the form of aid). Look what it looks like, ever increasing prices.

Take our K-12 schooling system, again the same problem, somehow it works great for other racially homogenous European and Asian countries, but in America, we spend far more on public education per students, and get worse results.

So why is the belief that our healthcare system is going to look like Netherland's when our education system doesn't look like that?