alt Hacker NewsThe only way to fix the budget is to fix the medical system, and that doesn't mean enacting more schemes to figure out how to pay the absurd costs, it means destroying the cost side by applying long standing anti-trust law to the entire system.
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Some people think that the fix to the medical system is to make it more socialist and others think it should be made more capitalist. What we have right now is somewhere in the middle.
Hot take: stop funding biomedical research. Turn the tap off from which bleeding edge but super expensive therapies emerge. People won't demand what doesn't exist.
GLP-1 treatments alone are responsible for a plurality of the rise in costs this year and next. Over $7000/per/year for a huge fraction of the population.
I guess nixing patents might have the same effect, but it'd be easier to get Republicans onboard an approach that simply cuts outlays rather than one that ruins the wet dreams of biomedical research private equity.
Uh oh. Someone is sounding like a socialist.
(note: I did not say this was a bad idea.)
Yes, we should apply anti-trust law to the whole system, but this doesn't really pass the smell test. First, consider what proportion of medical costs is corporate profits. Maybe 5-15% as a guess? Then, excess monopoly profits would have to be a subset of this (what, 20%?). Sure, it would be nice as a one time adjustment but it's not going to fix the problem over decades.