[unishark]

So food is cheap because the govt intervenes, ignoring the giant private market, and healthcare is expensive because of the private market, ignoring the massive govt intervention. How convenient.

"Threatening to not perform a service for someone" is not coercion, and does not invalidate a free market. A market is a place where scarce products can be exchanged between buyers and sellers who meet at an agreed upon price. The ability to refuse service is a prerequisite for having a market and the idea of private property itself, not some kind of unexpected flaw. The fact that something is scarce may well be problematic for some who cannot afford to outbid others who can afford it, but no system eliminates scarcity. Ask Venezuelans, who I am sure you were dying to talk about, what happens when you try to overcome scarcity with price fixing and free money. You simply achieve shortages.

In the 1980s the US did not have a 40 percent socialized system. The fraction of people on medicare was far less. Yet it was not the most expensive system in the world then. The US system is definitely failing, but it isn't the 300-year old market system that is causing it.

[arcticbull]

> So food is cheap because the govt intervenes, ignoring the giant private market, and healthcare is expensive because of the private market, ignoring the massive govt intervention. How convenient.

The only thing convenient is you not addressing my point :) The government intervention is a desparate attempt at not letting people die of disease and pestilence literally outside a point of care. You're asking for a dystopian hellscape. And that's what much of the last 300 years was with respect to medical care.

> In the 1980s the US did not have a 40 percent socialized system. The fraction of people on medicare was far less. Yet it was not the most expensive system in the world then. The US system is definitely failing, but it isn't the 300-year old market system that is causing it.

Yes it is.

Canada had a similar system until the 1970s, and it was bad. Then it switched over and things got better. America remained on the private system and it just got worse and worse.

Venezuela is totally and utterly irrelevant to this conversation. There are so many functioning systems with socialized medicine (all of Europe, especially the Scandinavians, Canada, Taiwan, etc, etc), Venezuela is an outlier and not even worth discussing. It's a failed state.

Whether you call it coercion or a power differential (you will die, the insurer or provider won't) this precludes a voluntary meeting of the minds necessary in a free market. Period.

[unishark]

> Yes it is.

No it isn't. Speaking of dodging the point. The US didn't remain in the private system, it half-socialized it. And you must know Canada's system has been increasing in cost like everyone else's.

And speaking of magic single-payer economics for the good of all, what's up with that "socialized" army you mentioned? Most expensive in the world also. I expect the very same wanton mishandling of other people's money when it comes to the eventual govt takeover of healthcare. Hell they are already doing it as that 40 percent govt part is outpacing world spending all its own.

Venezuela is just a difference of degree. The same effect is seen in everyone's lack of R&D spending outside the US.

The way a market works is people find ways to serve people at a price they can afford. When you always force others to pay for the cadillac service for them, no one bothers to find cheap ways to provide healthcare.

[arcticbull]

> The way a market works is people find ways to serve people at a price they can afford. When you always force others to pay for the cadillac service for them, no one bothers to find cheap ways to provide healthcare.

How can you be so twisted up about this? Americas system is the expensive one, everyone else's is cheap, and controlling costs better. Medicare may not be doing a perfect job but again it's controlling costs better than the private sector. What you are saying is strictly and objectively false.

Healthcare is optimized and improved in single-payer states, because there's still budgets.

You're defending the worst system out there from a cost perspective, and not top 20 in outcomes. And you're doing so by saying the system other countries are successfully using to control costs would fail to control costs, and using this to defend American's failure to control costs? You're telling me Canada is doing a bad job of controlling costs when it literally costs half as much per capita? Because their rate of cost growth is in line with their peers while America's is way, way beyond?

Your mental gymnastics are giving me a headache.

> Venezuela is just a difference of degree. The same effect is seen in everyone's lack of R&D spending outside the US.

And that? Also false. Venezuela is a difference of degree? What on earth are you talking about.

R&D spending? Guess which healthcare companies spend the most on R&D? It's not the American ones. It's all the European ones. #1 is Switzerland's Roche. #4 is Switzerland's Novartis. #6 is France's Sanofi. #9 is the UK's AstraZeneca. #10 is the UK's GlaxoSmithKlein. [1] This is yet another failed talking point.

Guess which country developed the first COVID vaccine? Germany. BioNTech's vaccine was paid for by Germany's government. Pfizer took $0 of US money and is productionizing a Turkish immigrant in Germany's German government funded research work.

You're just not right about this one, time to move on lol.

[1] https://www.fiercebiotech.com/special-report/top-10-pharma-r...

[unishark]

> R&D spending? Guess which healthcare companies spend the most on R&D? It's not the American ones. It's all the European ones. #1 is Switzerland's Roche. #4 is Switzerland's Novartis. #6 is France's Sanofi. #9 is the UK's AstraZeneca. #10 is the UK's GlaxoSmithKlein. [1] This is yet another failed talking point.

Roche has over 8000 employees in the US. https://www.roche.com/careers/our-locations/americas/usa.htm

A handful of giant international companies who obviously make a big fraction of their money in the US market (selling at higher prices due to the lack of price fixing) do not provide a useful metric. Try overall stats, such as here: https://efpia.eu/publications/data-center/the-pharma-industr...

And that'd just pharmaceuticals. The US has far greater dominance over other areas of biotech.

But you're right, I do need to move on. This immature flaming behavior is why I avoid toxic places like reddit.

[arcticbull]

Just as a final note, that chart of EU vs US spending paints a very incomplete picture.

1. That's in "millions of national currency units" (except in Japan which is in "hundred millions of national currency units") so the Japan bar is in 100M JPY, the Europe bar is in 1M EUR, and the US bar is in 1M USD. It was clearly not meant for comparison against regions, just over time.

2. Not only is the currency inconsistent the values weren't adjusted for purchasing power parity, i.e. how far a national currency unit goes in that country relatively.

If we convert the values to USD adjust for PPP the picture changes completely. All values in USD, PPP adjusted:

2016 - USA: $52.4B

2016 - Europe: $46.16B (PPP factor 1.225, EUR:USD factor 1.11)

This is about a 13% delta, not the seemingly 53% delta represented on the chart. Also, this is limited to EFPIA member companies.