You're Doing it Wrong: The US Healthcare "Market"
Not too long ago we reviewed a study that showed that when given a cost choice vs. a quality of care choice in healthcare, people overwhelmingly chose quality of care over any cost factor. 97% of the time. So people said 'yeah, make my kid healthy and take what you need from the vault in order to do it.'
To put that in perspective, you couldn't get 97% of Americans to agree not to stick a needle in their eye. There are always 2-5% of the population who will mess with your survey just to mess with it. Stoner sarcasm is often lost on survey-takers. And there are another 2-5% who will genuinely refuse to cure themselves or their loved ones based on the cost of that care. $50 is too much for whatever them pills are, and prayer is nearly always free, depending on the size of the mega-church you belong to and the number of engines on the Pastor's personal jet.
As we've discussed, patients who need medicine are not "Consumers." Health care for humans has no financial correlation. If you are drowning or suffocating, air has no price. We cannot negotiate price with parents who are watching their kids bubble under the waves. They will literally pay for a rescue with anything up to and (usually) including their own lives.
But Upton Sinclair was right: " "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
So, to those with a salary at risk, the survey actually means people can and want to shop for their health care. It means that you will seek the bottom dollar to get that life preserver while your wife is drowning. Wait - what?
No. And the newer story in this series shows that when you give people an app which shows them prices and deductibles for health services, they still don't care what the price is. Even when they end up paying more out of pocket. So... You tell people clearly what their health care costs are (shockingly a new idea for Americans but whatever) and they react - not at all.
Sadly, there are Americans who are still drawing a salary which is dependant on their seeing this as a market issue.
No less an authority than Harvard Medical School is lamenting: '"Our findings temper the enthusiasm around the idea that price transparency is some sort of panacea… That price transparency alone, coupled with high deductible health plans, are going to lead to reduced spending," said Sunita Desai, a health economist in the department of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, who led the study."
This is the part where salaries block really basic fundamental understanding of what words mean. Those who need to see health care as economics and not basic humanity need to see the market in action. But they don't. Why don't people react to market stimulus when purchasing or 'consuming' health care?
It's like this mystery to them. It's like watching a drunk high school kid trying to start his dad's car with his house key. Why doesn't this work?
It's important to those who are making huge money from the health care "industry" to keep costs down and maximize profits. And that's why profit has no place in health care. As long as corporations and fat cats are making big bucks from the suffering of Americans, they're going to push for lower costs.
To them, a financial incentive should influence people to 'use' less health care. Why wouldn't it? It works with breakfast cereal and beer, right?
In the real world where we don't make our living like vampires sucking the life from actual people, there is no cost incentive to use less health care, because we use what we need. We won't turn down health care that our doctor says we have to take. And we're not looking to add anything unnecessary.
American Health executives (including that sad bunch at Harvard) seem to think people with good health benefits are walking into their doctors offices asking "whatta you got?" Like we're looking to suck up some health care when we don't actually need it.
"Hey Doc, how about prescribing me some heart meds to go with the cholesterol pills you hooked me up with?" Or "how about fixing me up with a hernia operation? I haven't had a good operation in ages."
When the rich and corporate executives need to get some work done on their personages, to them that's a good spend, no matter what. But somehow when other people who make a lot less money than they do need health care, it's a Market. The Poors should be bartering services or selling blood or entering into indentured servitude or - best yet - just not getting the treatment.
For crying out loud, if you take someone's mother hostage and point a gun at her head and ask what they'll give to save her, that's not actually a "negotiation." It's not a Market that's set on Momma's Life. There is no price point at which pulling the trigger is really the best option because the costs have risen over the deductible.
It would be kidnapping and extortion, and would hopefully end up in a healthy living mother and a life sentence for the kidnapper.
I think that would be the best way to address those whose salaries require them to imagine a market, or worse - make a market out of health care. Anybody who treats medical care as a market commodity should be sent to jail as an extortionist.
See how fast the system changes then.
To put that in perspective, you couldn't get 97% of Americans to agree not to stick a needle in their eye. There are always 2-5% of the population who will mess with your survey just to mess with it. Stoner sarcasm is often lost on survey-takers. And there are another 2-5% who will genuinely refuse to cure themselves or their loved ones based on the cost of that care. $50 is too much for whatever them pills are, and prayer is nearly always free, depending on the size of the mega-church you belong to and the number of engines on the Pastor's personal jet.
As we've discussed, patients who need medicine are not "Consumers." Health care for humans has no financial correlation. If you are drowning or suffocating, air has no price. We cannot negotiate price with parents who are watching their kids bubble under the waves. They will literally pay for a rescue with anything up to and (usually) including their own lives.
But Upton Sinclair was right: " "It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it."
So, to those with a salary at risk, the survey actually means people can and want to shop for their health care. It means that you will seek the bottom dollar to get that life preserver while your wife is drowning. Wait - what?
No. And the newer story in this series shows that when you give people an app which shows them prices and deductibles for health services, they still don't care what the price is. Even when they end up paying more out of pocket. So... You tell people clearly what their health care costs are (shockingly a new idea for Americans but whatever) and they react - not at all.
Sadly, there are Americans who are still drawing a salary which is dependant on their seeing this as a market issue.
No less an authority than Harvard Medical School is lamenting: '"Our findings temper the enthusiasm around the idea that price transparency is some sort of panacea… That price transparency alone, coupled with high deductible health plans, are going to lead to reduced spending," said Sunita Desai, a health economist in the department of health care policy at Harvard Medical School, who led the study."
This is the part where salaries block really basic fundamental understanding of what words mean. Those who need to see health care as economics and not basic humanity need to see the market in action. But they don't. Why don't people react to market stimulus when purchasing or 'consuming' health care?
It's like this mystery to them. It's like watching a drunk high school kid trying to start his dad's car with his house key. Why doesn't this work?
It's important to those who are making huge money from the health care "industry" to keep costs down and maximize profits. And that's why profit has no place in health care. As long as corporations and fat cats are making big bucks from the suffering of Americans, they're going to push for lower costs.
To them, a financial incentive should influence people to 'use' less health care. Why wouldn't it? It works with breakfast cereal and beer, right?
In the real world where we don't make our living like vampires sucking the life from actual people, there is no cost incentive to use less health care, because we use what we need. We won't turn down health care that our doctor says we have to take. And we're not looking to add anything unnecessary.
American Health executives (including that sad bunch at Harvard) seem to think people with good health benefits are walking into their doctors offices asking "whatta you got?" Like we're looking to suck up some health care when we don't actually need it.
"Hey Doc, how about prescribing me some heart meds to go with the cholesterol pills you hooked me up with?" Or "how about fixing me up with a hernia operation? I haven't had a good operation in ages."
When the rich and corporate executives need to get some work done on their personages, to them that's a good spend, no matter what. But somehow when other people who make a lot less money than they do need health care, it's a Market. The Poors should be bartering services or selling blood or entering into indentured servitude or - best yet - just not getting the treatment.
For crying out loud, if you take someone's mother hostage and point a gun at her head and ask what they'll give to save her, that's not actually a "negotiation." It's not a Market that's set on Momma's Life. There is no price point at which pulling the trigger is really the best option because the costs have risen over the deductible.
It would be kidnapping and extortion, and would hopefully end up in a healthy living mother and a life sentence for the kidnapper.
I think that would be the best way to address those whose salaries require them to imagine a market, or worse - make a market out of health care. Anybody who treats medical care as a market commodity should be sent to jail as an extortionist.
See how fast the system changes then.
posted by fiduciary at 1:16 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home