You keep repeating statements like “this is a solved problem” and “it definitely can’t be capitalism” without any evidence to support those statements. All that tells me is you are deeply worried that the reverse hold true.
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Capitalism values things based on what people will pay for them, not what is 'correct' by any other metric, and what people will pay for their life is 'anything'. Therefore capitalism cannot value medicine correctly. Q.E.D.
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enh it's what the market will bear in both directions if one guy will sell you your life for everything you own, and the other will sell it to you for everything you own minus one dollar, the problem then is if there isn't anybody who'll go one dollar lower than that
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In reality you just price fix at infinity, especially in a market with as stringent supply and IP restrictions as medicine.
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right, those stringent supply and IP restrictions having been created to prevent market entrants from selling at cartel-breaking $(n-1) price points and sold as protections
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There are a few other goods that might bear 'infinity' on the demand side as the uppermost price; food and shelter. Unlike medicine, however, those have finite bounds because almost all people could produce those themselves given sufficient price pressure, unlike insulin/medicine
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Replying to @unormal @chaosprime and
So medicine is, I think, uniquely positioned as a good that breaks capitalism pretty hard.
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Replying to @unormal @chaosprime and
Big agree with Brian here. You cannot make educated market decisions about your health, because you have zero power in such an exchange, because you are automatically in a position of vulnerability
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Replying to @tegiminis @unormal and
i don't think that's immutable and i think there are vast cultural factors that are working to put people in that position that could be changed there's basically an asymmetry of sacrality
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Replying to @chaosprime @tegiminis and
the cultural value of the sacredness of life means that it's deeply *wrong* on a level most people can't articulate for the health care consumer to speak of price, much less quibble at it or shop around
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but all the providers and insurers who also participated in that cultural value have been eliminated, so basically the function of the value is now to prevent people from resisting being gouged
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