>>Regulations and subsidies do not seem to make other countries' systems inefficient.
Other countries' healthcare systems are growing increasingly more inefficient as well, with the proportion of GDP expended on healthcare rapidly rising, with many seeing it double over the last 40 years. [1]
And they face critical shortages, like this case of a woman in Canada who had to wait two years to get a test that diagnosed her with cancer, because of a shortage of state-licensed doctors:
>>I really want regulation in health care. I do not want medication to be a free-for-all like supplements are in the US.
I think the best of both worlds would be most regulations being opt-in, while disclosure regulations are mandatory.
More specifically, I think healthcare would benefit from legalizing the provision of medical service by un-certified individuals, as well as providing more than one tier of certification, where people who can't afford fully certified practitioners, but would like the assurance of some certification, have that option.
Instead of making it illegal for individuals who don't possess full certification to practice medicine, the law could instead require medical practitioners to disclose their level of certification, and any warnings the state provides in relation to that.
So for example, an uncertified doctor/nurse may be required to disclose not only that they are uncertified, but also the warning that the state strongly advises against using uncertified medical practitioners.
Why providing these options is critically important is that sometimes the prescribed institutions fail, and an escape hatch is a life saver, as in the case of a woman in Canada mentioned above.
>>I do not want average folks to be able to get antibiotics willy-nilly because I want to be able to take them when I'm old.
If the negative externalities of irresponsible antibiotic use is your concern, maybe you could advocate specifically regulations on antibiotic use.
When you advocate wholesale centralized gatekeeping of all manner of healthcare interaction, you deny people a way to escape failures of over-regulation, like regulations that prevent people from accessing life-saving medical products/services in a timely manner [2][3] or deny people access to a vaccine due to a risk from side effects that is orders of magnitude lower than the risk the vaccine mitigates. [4]
> Other countries healthcare systems are growing increasingly more inefficient as well, with the proportion of GDP expended on healthcare rapidly rising, with many seeing it double over the last 40 years.
There are two (mostly) unrelated issues: the efficiency of the healthcare system and increasing availability of effective but expensive treatments.
I believe we have already reached the point where even 100% of GDP is insufficient for healthcare. There is always something more you can do, something better you can try. No matter how much money you choose to spend, somebody must eventually make the decision to withhold better care because the economy is not big enough.
There is in fact a correlation between per capita GDP, and the proportion of GDP expended on healthcare, so you may be correct. It's worth noting that the US has much higher per capita GDP than most OECD countries.
In any case, the price inflation seen in highly regulated vs lightly unregulated markets is, to me, telling:
Other countries' healthcare systems are growing increasingly more inefficient as well, with the proportion of GDP expended on healthcare rapidly rising, with many seeing it double over the last 40 years. [1]
And they face critical shortages, like this case of a woman in Canada who had to wait two years to get a test that diagnosed her with cancer, because of a shortage of state-licensed doctors:
https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/doctor-shortage-cancer-video-...
>>I really want regulation in health care. I do not want medication to be a free-for-all like supplements are in the US.
I think the best of both worlds would be most regulations being opt-in, while disclosure regulations are mandatory.
More specifically, I think healthcare would benefit from legalizing the provision of medical service by un-certified individuals, as well as providing more than one tier of certification, where people who can't afford fully certified practitioners, but would like the assurance of some certification, have that option.
Instead of making it illegal for individuals who don't possess full certification to practice medicine, the law could instead require medical practitioners to disclose their level of certification, and any warnings the state provides in relation to that.
So for example, an uncertified doctor/nurse may be required to disclose not only that they are uncertified, but also the warning that the state strongly advises against using uncertified medical practitioners.
Why providing these options is critically important is that sometimes the prescribed institutions fail, and an escape hatch is a life saver, as in the case of a woman in Canada mentioned above.
>>I do not want average folks to be able to get antibiotics willy-nilly because I want to be able to take them when I'm old.
If the negative externalities of irresponsible antibiotic use is your concern, maybe you could advocate specifically regulations on antibiotic use.
When you advocate wholesale centralized gatekeeping of all manner of healthcare interaction, you deny people a way to escape failures of over-regulation, like regulations that prevent people from accessing life-saving medical products/services in a timely manner [2][3] or deny people access to a vaccine due to a risk from side effects that is orders of magnitude lower than the risk the vaccine mitigates. [4]
[1] https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Healthcare-spending-as-a...
[2] https://www.propublica.org/article/this-scientist-created-a-...
[3] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/10/us/coronavirus-testing-de...
[4] https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/us/politics/johnson-johns...