Aces44 wrote:05Racer wrote:RacerJoeD wrote:One problem with calling up the National Guard is that in many if not most cases, medical professionals in the guard are medical professionals in civilian life too, so calling them up might just be robbing Peter to pay Paul.
But you are right, more support is needed for our medical professionals.
I had not even considered that. Good catch. Bottom line is the government needs to be putting more money into supporting our healthcare infrastructure and human resources. Only way to decrease costs is to increase supply. Private industry will never generate enough capacity to sustain the system through a crisis like COVID, because it's more profitable to cut it as close as you possibly can with very little excess capacity. That's why we have problems with overworked staff and burnout. You need excess capacity which is short term inefficient but critically necessary in times of crisis. Have to incentivize the supply side. Build more hospitals, train more doctors, more nurses, maybe even a shorter work week to build excess capacity into the system.
Spoken like someone who has never taken an Econ class.
More Government is a problem, not a solution. At least it’s never been in the history of time. Maybe this time is different….
Actually I have taken an econ class, and if you had too you might know what an externality is, or why private markets can fail to achieve optimal outcomes in the case of management of common goods, which are goods that are held in common by all members of a community/society. The most common example is with fish. Anyone can buy a fishing boat and use it to catch fish, but if everyone did that and everybody was allowed to catch all the fish they want, there would eventually be no fish for anybody, because we would run out of fish. In this case, the fish are limited in number and only one person at a time can eat them so everybody is competing over a set number of fish. The supply of fish is limited not by any economic reality, but a physical one, fish can reproduce only so fast and people have long been able to catch them much faster. A supply of hospital beds is similar. Only one person at a time can make use of it and there are only so many to go around. Unlike fish, however, it is an economic reality that creates the situation with hospital beds. Private industry will supply hospital beds, but only so many so that enough of them are filled most of the time in order to maximize profits. They don't account for once in a generation events like COVID because it isn't profitable to do so. So, when we have a situation where we need more nurses/doctors/hospital beds, the private market runs out quickly. Private markets are great for optimizing profits, but not for dealing with unexpected events.
So, in order to ensure we have enough capacity to handle disasters, we need excess capacity, which is, by definition, not profitable. Some of this can be provided by non-profits and charity groups, but some government intervention is necessary and required. Roads are another good example of a common good in that everyone can use them but they too have a fixed capacity. We don't think of roads as a 'good' because government has always built roads even going back to ancient civilizations who had no concept of economics, but they could theoretically be privatized and you'd end up with similar problems. Some areas with lots of businesses and wealthy people would have great roads and other areas would have nothing. Any time you have a common good provided entirely by private markets, it will almost always create a shortage and/or overuse, it's pretty much a rule.
So, given that, the rising cost of healthcare should come as no great surprise. Now, it would be dishonest if I didn't mention that the existence of employer provided health insurance and the insurance industry in general also raise costs by limiting competition, but that's another can of worms entirely. Even if the healthcare industry was a purely private capitalist market, and it isn't, there would still be too little supply.
The other thing an economics class would teach you is that an optimal economic outcome is not necessarily the same as an optimal social outcome. The former is somewhat of a mathematical formula based on data and/or best estimates, the latter can be different based on the values and priorities of different cultures. Like other values dependent debates, it's not easy to determine and not everybody is going to agree.
