[bhupy]

Not being able to afford food can also kill you (you would starve to death). Is that a sufficient justification for the government to step in to negotiate food prices on behalf of its citizens?

There are merits to government price controls and there are certainly countries that have employed them successfully. That said, it isn’t the only solution to bending the cost curve, and there are also downsides to price controls. It’s complicated.

[LatteLazy]

I agree on the wider point but in case you or some other reader were unaware...

Government does that in the US (and the EU and Canada and basically every first world nation that's not a city state). The department of agriculture and others spend somewhere between 10s and 100s of billions every year to make sure that food (and other crop) prices stay within carefully set, tightly defined limits.

[ineedasername]

It may not directly negotiate the prices of food, and that's fine: If there's another form of intervention that would provide healthcare to people without directly negotiating the price, I'd be fine with that too. However, the government has not subsidized the healthcare industry to the point where healthcare is as accessible as food.

Healthcare is not just a demand-side issue. There is also constrained supply. I'd be happy to see the government subsidize supply production (building new medical schools etc) in a similar way that it subsidizes food production.

I'm by no means advocating government negotiation or single-payer or medicare-for-all as the thing the government must do on this issue. I'm fine with a form of intervention that allows the market forces to go the last mile in this.

[claudeganon]

> Is that a sufficient justification for the government to step in to negotiate food prices on behalf of its citizens?

Yes? We already do this? For many years directly in the postwar period and now indirectly through agriculture subsidies and programs like SNAP. Making sure everyone has enough to eat is step one of having any kind of functioning society and why it’s always been a source of massive government intervention in the economy.

[bhupy]

Yes, that's the whole point. SNAP and directed subsidies are decidedly NOT the same as government prices-setting. The analog in healthcare is targeted subsidies for poor people that cannot afford care, not government negotiation and price setting.

Making sure everyone has access to healthcare is, for the most part, a universally held goal. The disagreement is whether the only way to achieve that is through government price controls.

[burkaman]

> The analog in healthcare is targeted subsidies for poor people that cannot afford care

Food subsidies aren't targeted at the poor. The US government spends many billions of dollars subsidizing corn and soybeans and other crops that lower food prices for huge portions of America.

[CWuestefeld]

While at the same time, imposing huge tariffs on other products (notably sugar), drastically increasing the prices of those products domestically. So if you're one of the people concerned about the usage of HFCS in pretty much everything, the blame lies squarely at the feet of the government for artificially raising the price of sugar.

[bhupy]

Yup, and a strong analogous policy in healthcare would be for US government to spend billions of dollars subsidizing medical education and hospital construction.

It's also not the same as price controls.

[claudeganon]

“Access” in this context is just a weasel-word cooked up by hospitals and insurance companies to protect their bottom lines. Almost every other wealthy, developed country guarantees healthcare itself, not the right to get surprise billed or screwed by your insurance company. And even those countries that are closer to the American model (e.g Germany and the Netherlands) don’t let these industries get away with egregious abuse of people at their most vulnerable, as happens in the US. I don’t agree that I want people with critical illnesses or disabilities (or anyone else) to get “access” to healthcare. I want them to receive healthcare itself and pay for it with my taxes.

SNAP and ag subsidies are also just price controls with extra steps. We can argue about their efficacy, but they’re far closer to price controls than anything like free markets, especially given the increasing monopolistic control of industrial agriculture in the US.

[bhupy]

> Almost every other wealthy, developed country guarantees healthcare itself, not the right to get surprise billed or screwed by your insurance company.

I'm not sure who argued that "the right to not get surprise billed or screwed by your insurance company" is the optimum solution. The argument is that guaranteeing access to healthcare itself is attainable without price controls.

> SNAP and ag subsidies are also just price controls with extra steps

They're really not. The closest analog would be to institute a basic income that's earmarked for health insurance premiums. We don't have that today, at least in a uniform way (ACA subsidies come close).

[claudeganon]

Guaranteeing “access” is functionally meaningless. You already have “access” to healthcare in the U.S., it just comes with all the fleecing and abuse unto death that we have under the status quo. When you argue for “access,” that’s precisely what you’re endorsing. This is why again, other countries guarantee actual healthcare and not these kind of doublespeak vagaries.

[bhupy]

You might be putting words in my mouth. What I am advocating for is not merely “access”, I’m literally advocating for giving money to people that are unable to afford healthcare. That’s effectively what SNAP is.

No doublespeak vagaries here.