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And healthcare is quite obviously infrastracture, not FMCG. Trying to press prices down by implementing market methods to healthcare will only result in higher prices because market aims for profit.
That's why you have anti-trust. Every time businesses get too large, just break them up into smaller businesses. Businesses are profit-maximizers, but profit tends towards zero in a perfectly competitive market space. Now there are other considerations like barriers to market entry and so on.
All I'm saying is, you can have a highly regulated and closely controlled private market solution in the form of insurance (The Netherlands might be a good example of this), or you can have a fully-socialised solution. What you can't have is what the US has, which is a poorly regulated and very uncompetitive private solution which also combines the worst aspects of govt.
Either solution will fall apart in the face of a corrupt government though.
NB: As this cost is something which is more or less politically unthinkable to abandon for most people/voters- and the cost represents a shift from the young to the old, some form of solution needs to be there - so the emphasis should be on minimizing the costs/return on investment (which do balloon as the population ages). The US system does not permit this. Inability to do this will likely lead to a tax revolt amongst the youth, especially when coupled with other taxes for detrimental programs levied on the youth.
Edited 2 time(s). Last edit at 10/12/2017 07:12AM by istirith.