America's Health Care

[cruithear_lorr]

Research essay I did on America's health care problems. Constructive criticism welcome and appreciated.

America's Health Care: Plans, Policies, and Profits
H.L. Mencken claimed that there is a “simple, elegant, and wrong" solution for every problem (Tanner "Universal Healthcare..."). Today that solution appears to be providing universal health care

Comments

[somerled]

There are a few leaps in this that aren't actually supported in your essay. I'll point some out:

it is easy to envision mass shortages of every medical resource
The reason only 2% of medical students aim for general practice is that it pays the least and offers the least prestige. If you believe in market correction forces, then you are obliged to believe that rising demand for general practice will draw some medical students back into it. It is actually a very easy problem to fix, the balance of medical students in the various practices, it can be set by the professional associations.

customers will swamp any store that offers freeThis is not true. The best things in life are free, yet air, water, and our own imaginations are not greedily guzzled. In fact, we pay good money for worse things. At best, you are saying that people will rush to pay a low price for something that ordinarily costs a lot, but this is an arbitrage optimization, nothing to do with supply & demand per se: I will buy gas today at 1.00 if I know I will

[somerled]

You have to be more careful with the arguments you are making. I suggest, when researching, you look for both the evidence and the counter-evidence to the claims you are making. For one thing, the first source you find might be wrong. For another, even if the argument is correct, you can expect it to be challenged, and you should be answering the obvious challenges to your arguments within your text. This process elevates the debate, rather than repeats it.

[cruithear_lorr]

I understand your argument about the medical students and agree that when the demand increases, medical student will be drawn to the higher wages. But that will take time, and right now universal health care will hit the industry at a time when general practice numbers are low and/or dropping

[somerled]

in countries with universal health care, there appears to be a much higher demand for health careMy claim here was that the demand for health care, be it high, low, or in the middle, comes from sick people, at least the vast majority of the demand does. The segment of health services that are elective, for example botox, responds to price in the way you describe. But not the segment that concerns, say, ear infections. The demand for health services related to ear infections is at all times exactly equal to the number of people with ear infections at the time. Driver's licenses are an example I think you'll understand. If you change the fee for a driver's license, the exact same number of people will stand in line to get one as before. The only reason someone would not come to the hospital when sick is if they were actually prevented from it, for example by the threat of personal bankruptcy. Private health services are an excellent way to provide elective services, such as botox. Making them public would increase demand. But general

[cruithear_lorr]

I agree that the demand for health care comes from sick people but according to this report (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BpsEAVbCkMM, since LJ isn't letting me post HTML for some reason), people go to the doctor if they have trivial problems that don't necessarily need a doctor because they don't pay for it. As far as I know, universal health care increases cost-unconscious demand (http://www.thecitywire.com/?q=node/5284... )

[somerled]

You might want to look through WHO statistics. Under the current US system, the US government contributes about 45% of total health expenditures in the country (compared to about 80% in France) but these expenses, in the US, account for about 20% of total government expenditures in the US, compared to about 15% in France

[somerled]

PS: you asked what I do professionally. Well, you already know I am a writer. I also run a software company that works with education systems. Education being a largely state-run industry, we are constantly in contact with political and civil service figures.