alt Hacker NewsProviding a chain of reasoning to support a logical conclusion is not “pro bono PR for those companies”. Claiming that someone doing that seems like an emotional kneejerk reaction to an idea that does not jive with the model of the world you would like to have.
I even provided an example of a healthcare provider choosing to be more transparent. It is always Eli Lilly’s choice to sell their medicine at a flat price to everyone. But it is also in Eli Lilly’s benefit to engage in price discrimination, so that they get paid more by people who can pay more:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Price_discrimination
Another example of this was when I was in college, US textbooks cost multiple times more than the international version of the textbook I could buy on Abe books or whatever website. Or, coupons for grocery stores. The insurance company has no hand in this.
To be clear, insurance companies also cause waste, because the government does not audit them, and the insurance companies are not staffed appropriately to resolve disputes in a timely manner.
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> it has a problem of supply being nowhere near demand,
Get rid of the patents and this will solve itself in no time.
> The insurance company has no hand in this.
False. Insurance companies in the US own stock in big pharma firms like Pfizer, Johnson & Johnson, Eli Lilly, etc. They maintain substantial investment portfolios and generate returns on premiums and reserves. They also have voting rights as institutional investors.
> US textbooks cost multiple times more than the international version of the textbook
I mean, I think a lot of the incentives behind textbook pricing in the US are honestly not that dissimilar to the ones in healthcare. I know Pearson is particularly egregious for price gouging students because they have exclusive deals with schools to provide the textbook for some specific class or subject. They raise prices because f*ck it why not, they won’t get pushback, which is not a valid reason to do so in most other countries.
What you gave us wasn’t a chain of reasoning: you just regurgitated the industry’s preferred excuses (“it’s complicated”, “people will use too much healthcare if it’s cheaper”, “liability!”) while begging the questions of whether those are true or why they affect the United States far more than any other advanced country. If you wanted to construct a logical chain of reasoning, that would be far more interesting than repeating another round of simply asserting that the status quo is inevitable.