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Originally Posted by sebastian_dangerfield
The relevant psychological factors at work in use of a health insurance card, credit card, or student loan, are near identical.
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The difference is that you have to pay the credit card or student loan eventually, which means at some point there is a reversal of the psychological effect from which the consumer can learn.
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I'm not advocating writing anyone off anything.
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I know you aren't. And I actually agree with you that people paying for things out of pocket would reduce consumption and therefore reduce total health care costs.
The problems are that some people think reducing consumption is bad (I want my antibiotics for this cold, dammit!) and what to do with those who can't afford to pay out of pocket (i.e., anyone elderly).
Personally I think the second problem is sufficiently large that a third-party-payer-free health system is a pipe dream, so we have to move on to how to make the system work with third party payer involvement.
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There's no constrained supply in education.
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That's just laughable. Between licensing, accreditation, and reputational barriers to entry, there is significantly constrained supply. I find it hard to believe that you want to argue otherwise.
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A huge percentage of the $600bil in non-performing educational debt is tied to for profit institutions that let anyone in the door and charge a ridiculous tuition, often above that charged by an actually accredited, and 10X better state school.
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Right. Because of constrained supply by the real schools.
GW doesn't get $50k a year (or whatever) because there are abundant alternatives out there.
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I think we'll always need Medicare to take care of those who simply don't have resources.
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The biggest issue is that almost anyone old is among those who simply don't have the resources.
