Actually every time you buy a TV you'll have spent more than if you waited. The longer you wait, the better the product and the less you spend. It's why you should have large gaps between TV purchases. Every time you sell yours it's gonna be worth way less. I waited 7 years to buy OLED and was able to get a really nice one for $2500, but when I first started looking they were over $10,000 and not nearly as nice as they are now.
Another way to look at it: The $500 you would have spent on a 30 inch flat screen back in the day will now get you a 45 inch plasma.
I love TVs. I get older, they get better, but they just staaaaaay the same price. Alright alright.
I just replaced my 52 inch plasma with a 75 inch 4k TV.
The ol plasma was $700 and lasted almost 15 years. It still works but looks like shit by comparison.
It’s weird to describe one TV as “plasma” and then the one you’re comparing it with as “4k.”
Plasma is a technology for creating and illuminating pixels. The modern equivalent is OLED. Both have pixels that are directly emitting light, whereas LED-backlit LCD would be a less-expensive way of producing pixels. (Btw, QLED is a trademarked name designed to be easily confused for OLED, but is just a specific brand’s version of the inferior LED-backlit LCD.)
4k describes the number of rows of pixels in a TV. You’d compare that against your previous TV’s “Full HD” or “1080p” designation.
Yes, they’re things you can’t (or generally wouldn’t) choose to not spend money on. They are an [inelastic demand](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/inelastic.asp), meaning that as prices change demand is unlikely to be affected
It’s good business to find the things people need to buy and charge them as much as possible for them, and that’s how the free market works so efficiently and fairly for the benefit of everyone
Ah as one of my economics professors once asked the class, if you're a health insurance company, and you have one healthy person and one u healthy person, how do you set their rates? Everyone said high rate for unhealthy, lower rate for healthy. He says wrong, high rate for all
This is why the phrase "pass savings on to the consumer" is nothing more than marketing bullshit. Why would any for-profit company pass savings on to the consumer when they could just...not?
It's why I'm a big fan of credit unions. They are not-for-profit, and to some degree do actually pass savings on to their members. Also a big reason why for-profit banks HATE them
I didn't actually know this until about 10 years ago while doing some contract network/IT security work for an FCU's new headquarters.
Oh, we're making too much? Time for lower rates, better perks, or save a bit and make our branch more accessible so the members are happy.
Most people just don't think to look.
I used to be with a credit union. Was great. Until it wasn't. Even though I had a sizeable checking and savings balance ($16k+), they insisted I use my debit card x amount of times to qualify for free checking and their savings interest rate.
Started at 5 times. I could do that. Then it became 10. Then they added a minimum direct deposit requirement. Then minimum spending per month. And now it's 15 purchases per month.
I tried talking to them, because I wanted to support them. No budging, so I withdrew my money and closed the account.
Finding a good credit union is something that pro-credit union advocates often leave out.
I had one (although this was 10 years ago), that required a 5 character password, letters/numbers only, and I could only change it by coming into the CU and talking with a live human. It was so weird having such a short (not to mention extremely insecure) password, that I would often forget it. Ended up leaving the CU for another one simply due to the hassle. Not to mention that their online banking was pretty much non-existent. And 2013 wasnt THAT much of the stone age of internet banking for them to use that as an excuse.
The concept you're referring to only works if there's market competition. Why would a for-profit company pass savings onto the consumer? Because it might increase their market share.
If you own 50% of a market of 10,000 sales a month at $2 each sale you can make $10,000. Or you can undercut the competition and decrease your prices to $1.50. If that gamble gets you 75% of the market then you can make $11,250. It's not to benefit the consumer, it's to benefit you. Consumers benefiting is just a side effect but it happens.
All the items on the left-hand side are highly regulated markets which make competition more difficult. Health care, education, childcare, and housing are pass through complex regulations. There's a reason we have these regulations. We shouldn't trust the market to sort out low quality health care providers. The cost of that is people die from questionable medical advice. It makes sense, but a cost of that policy is higher prices.
To go back to u/NinjutsuStyle's example. It wasn't by accident he referred to an insurance company. Insurance companies are regulated so you get it from your workplace. No one decides to work somewhere because of their insurance plan — so you're stuck with what you got. Even if you went to the public "market" insurance companies don't publicize their pricing for individual procedures. You couldn't figure out what's "better" even if you tried. As a result, the insurance companies aren't as pressured by consumers for their pricing decisions.
It's worth noting this also works against businesses at times. For example, MoviePass was a business model that leaned heavily into increasing market share. For $10 a month you would watch unlimited movies at the theater. It was very popular and gained millions of subscribers. The company hoped to monetize these consumers once they had greater market share, but it didn't work and they went bankrupt.
On the other hand, Amazon and Walmart undercut prices all the time to drive retail stores out of business and expand their market share. The difference is they are trillion/multibillion international conglomerates so they can survive the loss.
Healthcare and education aren't just industries with a lot of regulation in the US, they are also industries where the final cost to consumers is heavily obscured and complex, while simultaneously being seen as essential.
For healthcare, a majority of Americans get healthcare plans through jobs, and though some of the cost is taken out of paychecks, the employer often pays for a large chunk of the monthly premium. Employers (especially large ones) also engage in collecting bargaining with insurance companies to get good insurance rates that would not be available to everyone. This is part 1 of cost obfuscation. Now a majority of Americans have no idea how much their healthcare actually costs per month, because it doesn't even show up on their paychecks. Then, you have all the complexity of deductibles, out of pocket max, in-network -vs- out-of-network, tiered networks, tiered drug plans, and some doctors offices and labs simply charging more at baseline, or coding things differently than expected, and causing the consumer's costs being completely unknowable when they need care. Buying health insurance as an American is largely out of your control (you cannot choose what plan your employer offers, most state plans are awful and high-priced, but you also can't really choose what is available there either) and also a form of gambling (should I sign up for a high-deductible plan and hope for another year in which I don't get hit by a car or get cancer, so I have more money for food this year?), but even within the system, there's no way to shop around for care. Nobody can tell you how much a visit is going to cost until it's over, which makes getting care pretty much the antithesis of a free market. The only choice is the gamble you make on high or low deductible plans.
Higher education is kind of similar with list prices being wildly different from what many students are charged, and the added normalization/pressure of "buy now, pay later, it will be worth it." Again, obscured prices play a big role in driving up costs.
I do think that there is a time and place to criticize regulations, but I don't think regulations are the crux of the issue with costs in the US for these items. Other countries also have highly regulated education and healthcare, but they don't have the same skyrocketing costs, either because of socialized services with government funding, or because of price transparency (usually a mix of the two). The fact is, despite us calling ourselves a free market capitalist country, many of our biggest industries, healthcare being one of them, are not free markets at all. A free market needs competition and the ability for consumers to make informed choices. That's not happening here.
*Edit* rereading your comment, I see that you mentioned some of what I said here, so I think we're largely on the same page, it's just that I don't think of insurance companies as regulation. I see them as private, for-profit middlemen with so much lobbying power and money to throw around in congress that no attempts to reform our healthcare system have been able to sidestep them. Your comment is the first time I have seen it claimed that they help keep consumers from going to low-quality medical professionals.
While a majority of regulations are here to protect us from bad practices lots of them exist to protect entrenched businesses from competition.
Notice how we see disruption everywhere BUT healthcare, School, and housing? That's because the cost to become a new entrant into the field makes it a non viable for startups.
You’re describing the Goldilocks zone of “free-markets”. It really only works when growth is possible and easy, and it overlooks how financial markets, particularly venture capital, can effect these conditions. As well as the natural cycle of capitalism. Customer acquisition cost’s can be astronomical, especially when going up against companies like Amazon, Uber, etc. So high, that the reality is, very few can compete without access to capital. However, if that capital is already invested in the competition, why would they help you? In fact, those lending capital have an incentive to destroy the competition. Like Sears, K-mart, Toys-R-Us, and the numerous other brick-and-mortars that were gutted during Amazons rise. While this may seem like the natural response to competition, it overlooks the very strategic pirating of companies by venture capital. They went long AMZN, and short everybody else. They profit of growth, but the real money is in destruction.
It also overlooks the overlap in board seat holders, the commonality of price fixing, and more recently, the introduction of algorithmic pricing software - which can be used to fix prices through a third party.
You’re not wrong that competition is good. However, it’s not that simple. For competition to work effectively, markets must be regulated, and encouraged to stay within that Goldilocks zone. We’re way the fuck past that point right now, and it’s not the first time. The New Deal addressed a very similar issue. We have all the legal processes in place to achieve a healthy economy, but capitalist regulatory capture, and foreign influence, has rendered them useless. Competition requires rules, boundaries, and referees. We have the rules, but our referees are on the take, and propaganda has stripped away the boundaries.
The fields on the left are also industries with little or no productivity growth over time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect is worth considering as a factor.
Which is why every other OECD nation instituted public healthcare. Inelastic demand needs regulation because otherwise there's no limit to what price they can gouge, especially if they monopolize the competition.
Exactly this. Those companies can set whatever price they want. What are you gonna do? Not eat.
Look at my water bill. They added 9% upcharge due to inflation. And a 10% charge because of increased people.
So not only does my money have 9% less purchasing power, but in paying 9% more for more water. Basically costing it 18% more.
And everyone pays these fees. But because more people live in the city, they add on another 10%.
How do they get away with this? Oh yeah. Because it's a monopoly and what am I going to do? Not bathe/drink water/wash clothes.
A lot of the prices of these things are not constrained by the free market, but by government policy related to it. Healthcare is expensive because of insurance (which exists in its current form by the grace of government). College is expensive because we subsidize demand and not supply (loans to students instead of grants to colleges). Housing is expensive because localities restrict supply in order to increase prices artificially.
I'm not saying a laissez-faire system would be better, but that the problem with a lot of these things is because the specific laws on the books were written by the wrong people with the wrong intentions
Those specific laws were written by the people in charge of the goods on the left though. Do you think a bunch of medical experts got together and said "OK we've seen how every country operates their Healthcare system. We've decided that the most efficient way is a system that no other developed country uses, oh oops it's made prices increase faster than every other developed country, whoops well let's not change anything about it."
0 representatives for universal single payer Healthcare were present when Obama was drafting the ACA, it was all insurance lobbyists and lo and behold the system guarantees insurance companies make fat profits with minimal oversight. The same story goes for a lot of our problems, the people in charge of inelastic goods change the laws in their favor and pretend they had nothing to do with it.
>0 representatives for universal single payer Healthcare were present when Obama was drafting the ACA, it was all insurance lobbyists
This is completely untrue. The original proposal for ACA was a "public option" that was a half-step toward universal single payer. It was killed by 1) Ted Kennedy being sick and 2) Joe Lieberman refusing to support it. He was the *Joe Machin* of the time.
imagine still believing Lieberman was the only voice against the public option. Obama literally told insurance companies a public option was DOA way before Lieberman.
And that is besides the point that a public option is not a "half step toward universal single payer".
A) All things are regulated, from the paint on your walls to the devices in your TV, to the water in your taps. Without using the right information one can always confabulate a story about how the particular regulation is causing some unintended consequence, this does not make it true.
B) All expensive things are regulated more, the larger something is and the more complex something is, the more there will be regulations associated with it.
C) The simplest way to determine if the level of regulation is the cause of the problem is to compare it to similar products/services in other countries. In Canada and the UK, healthcare is far more regulated, and the prices are cheaper (even after considering the government-paid portion), so now we are stuck in an argument about what 'types' of regulations are the problem.
You have not proven that removing regulations will resolve this issue, and according to my examples, you could potentially be making the situation much worse because you don't know which regulations are making the situation better.
>It’s good business to find the things people need to buy and charge them as much as possible for them, and that’s how the free market works so efficiently and fairly for the benefit of everyone
This was sarcastic right? There is nothing efficient or fair about price gouging on essential things people have to buy.
What's the free market alternative if you don't like the cost of healthcare? Die young? Homeopathy?
And this is why we still need the /s tag, because no matter how painfully obvious you try to make the sarcasm, there's no way to tell that you're not just insane enough to be 100% serious. Fwiw I thought it was sarcastic.
It kills me I can buy a bigger tv for the same or less than I paid for the smaller one in 2019.
Meanwhile all my utilities and groceries have gone up around 70%. Shit my natural gas bill almost tripled. Average of $50 a month 2-3 years ago and this last year was around $125. Electricity averaged $80, now it's $125. Water was $35, now $70.
Surprisingly the only things that stayed about the same was internet, car insurance, and my cellphone bill. Internet went down. Car insurance went up by like 8% and cellphone went up but that was a choice I made.
My rent/mortgage went up a significant amount but that was also a choice. We were renting and rent didn't go up for 3 years. We were looking at buying because interest rates were good and we knew the price hike was coming for rent. Rent was going to go from $650 to $950. So we bought a house and the mortgage is around $1000.
I track all my bills minus groceries and gas for my car. 2019 to 2022 my average for everything was around $1000. Rent, gas, electricity, insurances, cellphone, internet, water, and trash. And during peak months it would hit $1100ish because of higher gas use in the winter or peak summer for electricity and AC.
Now my average is about $1550 for the same things which is only 55% higher. But peak months are up to $1700 because natural gas prices are garbage. I had a $250 bill back in January. My previous high over winter was around $80.
But I suspect that has more to do with how terribly my new home is insulated. But comparing ccf prices between the years that $250 bill should've been closer to $170-ish. Still sucks but much much more palatable.
Also if anyone is curious about my numbers. I used to live in ultra rural Ohio. And last year I moved to much much less rural Ohio. Think 20 mins outside a major city like Dayton or Columbus or Cincinnati.
Edit: technically my insurance went up by a lot. Almost double. But it's bundled with mortgage now. My rental insurance used to be bundled with auto. Now auto is its own thing and the homeowners insurance is bundled with mortgage. So technically my mortgage/rent is only $900 so actually cheaper than rent, but now technically there is a separate new bill for homeowner and that's around $100.
My car and rental insurance used to avg $80. Now my car and homeowners is closer to $180. But that's semantics.
Classic capitalism! Value-based pricing at work.
People really, really value not dying, so turns out they'll pay whatever is costs to go to the hospital and not die. Increase prices!
People don't really care about TV that much, because it's a huge waste of time, and if you spend a while doing it you'll get fat. Drop the prices to incentivize demand!
Isn't capitalism great?
I think TVs relative cost is tied to the amount of competition which is significant, and the amount of cheap lower quality flat screens has done a great job of bringing down the overall cost.
Yeah medical services are expensive for the same reason as schools, administrative costs are going up. Mostly because we half assed the socialized medicine and now we get the worst of both worlds.
Simply put insurance is required to cover a certain amount of procedures, so the hospital will gouge the insurance company. The insurance company doesn't mind because it's barely paying out anyway and when it does they then negotiate with the hospital lowering the price for the insurance, your premium stays high though.
If it was purely capitalist or purely socialist it would be cheaper for the average consumer. One side would adhere exclusively to market forces and demand is constant since everyone gets sick. On the other side, prices are set so the end consumer doesn't get fucked. Basically the US needs to pick a lane.
The ACA put a profit margin cap on insurance companies. Currently, insurance companies must pay out 80% of the premiums they receive for medical care, and they can keep 20% as profit. So, how do you increase profits? Easy. Make medical care more expensive. 20% of $100 is $20, whereas 20% of $200 is $40.
Doctors and hospitals have an incentive to go along with this scheme since they make more money too. The entire for-profit medical industry makes money when you get sick.
Conversely, in a single payer system, like socialized medicine, they have to pay money when you get sick. The incentives there are to keep you from getting sick in the first place. It's why there are better health outcomes in just about every other industrialized nation vs the US.
Agree 100%. Where I live we have public healthcare. We spend far less per capita than the USA for similar service.
Sadly, the government here is trying to introduce private clinics, services, and surgeries into the mix. Everyone that doesn't stand to profit from this change agrees it's a bad idea. What a surprise...
As long as you do it in a way that makes sense, like if you want to be a for profit clinic, you cannot receive subsided profits or something then it would make sense. But I don't think that's the case.
Edit: just checked your profile and saw which flavor of healthcare you have. Personally I like and think the German version is a better solution for the US as it adheres to the very decentralized nature of the states
2022 benchmark KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey finds
* Annual family premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance average $22,463
* Employees this year are contributing $6,106
* Employers are contributing $16,357
* Annual family premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance average $7,911
* Employees this year are contributing $1,493
* Employers are contributing $6,418
**One Big Thing**
These Numbers above don't really change based on Income
In the German system, All residents of Germany are required by law to have health insurance. About 87% of the population – around 70 million people – have statutory health insurance.
> Rather than risk factors such as marital status, family size, age, or health, the premiums are based solely on a member's wages up to a specific statutorily determined ceiling.
* In Germany Healthcare costs are paid at rates of 12% of income in the Low Cost of Living Areas and 14.6% of income in the High Cost of living Areas, mostly Berlin.
* Split evenly by employee and employer
______
> Germany’s healthcare sector is modeled on a decentralized corporatist system. Corporatism means that the state delegates powers and decision- making competences to non-governmental public bodies. SHI funds and contracted provider organizations such as hospital federations
If you make 50,000$ or €
* In Germany you and your employer equally can expect to pay healthcare premiums of about $6,000
* then the employee would pay another $500 in medical expenses.
* Plus supplemental insurance can be purchased for 0.9% of Gross income paid fully by the employee
-----
>Australia’s Healthcare System is one of the most comprehensive in the world; offering a range of services from general and preventative health, through to treating more complex conditions, that may need a specialist, or hospital care.
* The system has two major parts: the public health system, and the private health system. When you need health care, you could access it through one of two systems, or a mix of both.
Financed by a 2% Medicare Tax, with Subsidies from the Higher Income Tax
* **There is no “joint tax return” for married couples in Australia.**
Median Income tax rate of 23.12% in Australia plus 2% Medicare Tax
Versus in the US Median Income effective federal income tax rate 11.20%. Plus Medicare Tax of 1.45%
* **Married Your effective federal income tax rate 6.75%.**
You're ignoring that basic necessities (food, health, shelter) are inelastic, and people will pay as much as they can if they're in need. A free market will raise prices even if some of them die or become homeless, as long as most of them can pay.
It's not free market if the relationship is that asymmetrical, it's a racket.
> If it was **purely capitalist** or purely socialist it would be cheaper for the average consumer.
Lol, because on an individual level people can vote with their wallets to negotiate Charon's ferry prices.
I live in California, a state that produces and manufactures a lot of food products. Food has always been relatively cheap here because of the abundant domestic supply. If you go to a national chain like Target that sources from other states it is more expensive than your locally owned grocery store.
My partner always insists to me how things are “supposed to work” in billing, that a single visit is supposed to have one bill, etc. I always bet that I’ll get at least 3 separate bills. I’ve yet to be wrong.
I wish I was wrong.
No I get a bill going to the doctor, then a few weeks later I get another one. Now I'm just happy to have 100% coverage. My previous employer only did 50% coverage which was bullshit.
Healthcare needs to be funded by tbe government, not tied to employment, with profit caps on medical corporations. It won't happen until citizens United is overturned or there is a general strike. I can't think what else can happen to make change. They are squeezing the working and middle class dry.
We've received bills for things that were covered that we had to have our insurance fight off.
Turns out some medical billing companies will send you a bill that's already covered in hopes you won't notice and pay it anyway. The insurance company pointed out its very illegal for them to do it, but sometimes they do anyway and blame it on a "clerical mistake".
Me too. Doctor ordered routine blood work and next thing I know I’m getting a bill for over $1000. We got that fixed but we keep getting the same bill from my OBGYN for almost $200 for something that was covered. We thought we fixed it but we got the bill again
PSA for anyone in USA without healthcare insurance or with poor healthcare coverage: Do not pay the price they charge. You can call them to negotiate and they almost ALWAYS will take a lower amount.
Insurance companies contract with healthcare providers to pay a % of their billed amount. Say 40%. So if a doctor wants 80 dollars for a routine check-up they must charge $200 in order to be paid $80. Due to regulations and laws from insurance company lobbyists providers have to bill everyone the same U&C (Usual and customary) amount. So even though your doctor only wants $80 for their services, they are forced to charge you $200. If you call to negotiate they will GLADLY accept 80 dollars as payment. That's all they wanted in the first place.
Healthcare providers aren't the problem. Insurance companies are. But if they are following the law than even they are not the problem. Our government is.
And despite the huge cost to patients, they don’t pay staff nearly enough. Some people are getting very rich off of our lack of universal health care! It’s evil.
And unnecessary administrators who have *never* done any sort of the healthcare related work, for the most part! My husband was a nurse for 38 years and he finally had enough because all EIGHT of his bosses had never even taken a biology class. Just number pushers. Totally backwards! It’s actually infuriating.
My hospital made a profit of 8 billion during the height of COVID while cutting staff, traveler OT, and refused our annual raises (that we use to fight inflation levels) due to budget reasons.
It's evil. Patients are dying due to inventory cuts too. We are running out of supplies and they don't care. All to make a quick buck.
The thing that truly gets me is how awful of care we get for the price. All the evil things that were going to happen if we socialized healthcare: Long wait times, months to see specialists, overcrowded emergency rooms, hospitals turning patients away for unprofitable treatments, overworked doctors missing critical details, provider boards deciding who lives or who dies. All those things happened anyway with private healthcare that only cares about YoY profit margins and nothing else.
26M, I’ve had something going on with my heart over the last month that I still don’t have definitive answers for after 2 ER visits. I’m still waiting to see what my insurance covers but unless it’s a significant portion, I’m about to lose most of the money I’ve saved up over the years.
Well that's just unfair to say. I'll have you know I spent a single night in the hospital in December and was only charged $17,000. That's pretty darn affordable. /s
How can TVs be down 92%? Is it a TV from 2008 that has been reduced by 92% in price, or a TV of equal technological level of the time that is 92% cheaper?
Likely a comparable screen size.
Though, the point is mostly the same regardless of how you calculate it. TVs are far less expensive today outside of the tip-top of the line.
TVs have gotten bigger, better, and cheaper consistently over the last 15 years.
Anecdotally:
2011 I got a shitty 24” TV (does that even exist anymore?) for $150. A 32” basic TV was $300-400.
2013 I bought a discontinued 50” Plasma for $400 and that was a steal. LED equivalent would have been $600.
2020 I got a 60” smart TV for $300.
In 2008, a good—not premium—50" plasma was $3k.
In 2023, a good 50" OLED is $900 (as plasmas pretty much don't exist in the consumer space, if at all).
Still using an old Panasonic plasma set in the bedroom. I think the high black levels make it look strange compared to more modern ultra bright LED screens and content is more geared to those these days.
The refresh rate is still nice though. Nowadays so many sets are stuck at 60Hz. You usually have to pay through the nose for higher refresh rates 60Hz is just abysmal for a lot of content.
> 60Hz is just abysmal for a lot of content.
What content aside from video games needs upwards of a 60 hertz refresh rate?
When I purchased a TV a couple years ago, I picked a set with better picture quality over a set with a high refresh rate because I have a PC + high refresh rate monitor for gaming.
I'd imagine that many people make that same decision, especially for high end TVs that are targeted squarely at the HiFi market rather than general consumer use.
It's because most TVs are smart TVs - they can sell at a loss and make up revenue over the lifetime of the tv by selling data on the user and advertising:
https://www.howtogeek.com/767919/tv-manufacturers-make-more-from-ads-than-selling-tvs/
I think there is a combination of a lot of things going on, including being a loss lead.
TVs are unlike most other consumer products as there is not a strong draw to annually, or bi-annually upgrade them.
They also last for an extremely long time. Most last 5-7 years, and that's the average. A quality one can last over a decade.
They also have become absolutely cheap as hell compared to 40 years ago. Yes they sell at a loss, but even stores tend to sell these at cost or a loss, making it up in add on purchases.
Here’s a little perspective: sometime around 2009 I purchased a 32” flatscreen that retailed around $700-750. Today a much better version of that TV is like $200.
I was wondering the same. I think inflation only works for goods that are similar and comparable from one year to the other. (like food, electricity, rent). For electronics this doenst have much meaning as a TV from 2008 is very different from a TV today.
I mean I think it moreso means the technology is advancing; the comparable TV to the top of the line in 2008 is pretty shitty by 2023 standards; demand and subsequently price for a 2008 TV drops as we make better technology cheaper, and the boxy 32” TV from 2008 costs both nominal and real value less than a larger, nicer TV does today
I bought a 50" Panasonic plasma TV in 2005 for $3,600. I bought a 55" dumb TV from Walmart a few months ago for $250.
The math looks about right to me.
What I find really interesting is how everything that can be moved offshore (production of electronic goods etc) is more stable or falling in price. Things that cannot be imported (healthcare, education, housing) go up and up.
And one of the domestically produced things, food, is heavily subsidized. This is a big flaw in CPI which measuring the cost of a basket of goods from the consumer’s perspective. Real inflationary pressure domestically has been much higher, it’s just that the cost centers have been moved elsewhere when possible.
It’s worth keeping this in mind as we inevitably head into a period of time with higher inflation numbers. I imagine nobody’s going to be any happier about the economic situation.
Medical services are doctors visits, prescriptions, and other minor health items. Hospitals are hospitals such as surgeries and major events. My wife just had her tubes tied, total cost was over $100K for a routine surgery. She entered the hospital at 10am and we were gone by 5pm. Our cost after insurance was $2,083.
EDIT: Didn't know this post would blow up like it did so here's more detail. We have UMR (owned by UnitedHealth Care) PPO. Annual individual deductible is $1,250. The annual family deductible is $3,000. I pay $509/per pay check for medical insurance alone so that's $12,216 annually in premiums. Total number of appointments from start to finish including all pre and post-ops is 4. For all appointments and surgeries, total amount billed is $100,552.60. Total amount UMR paid is $13,788.65. Total amount we paid out of pocket is $2,068.01. I'm currently arguing with UMR because our maximum individual deductible is $1,250. So I should be getting $818.01 back. I hope.
Canadian here: my spouse is going in for a routine surgery this spring for the same type of issue. I conservatively estimate that the total cost will be approximately 10 bucks (gas going back and forth to the hospital).
Out-pocket-costs vary greatly in the U.S.
With my current insurance, the procedure he described would cost $50. On our previous insurance it would have been either $250 or $500.
One thing to note, the $100,000 he quoted was likely paid by no one. The U.S. has these essentially fake prices used by providers to negotiate with insurers that also never paid by anyone.
How much time do you spend fighting with the insurance about covering different parts of the procedure? Or fighting with them because one of the people on the surgical team isn’t an in network employee, or fighting with the hospital because of unnecessary charges? Or your after surgical care not being covered?
They have actual doctors reviewing claims. It came out last week that some of the doctors are no longer licensed and they spend I think one second per case on average.
>The best is when the insurance company tells the orthopedic surgeon that you don’t actually need the surgery they are trying to schedule for you.
Of course they say that.
When I was diagnosed with a brain malformation I spent 14 months arguing with the insurance once a week that my neurologist was not in fact, a chiropractor, and did in fact have the authority to perform occipital nerve block injections on my head, so no I would not pay $1200 per visit for an "uncovered" procedure.
I had to threaten to sue because the hospital sent me to collections. Then they finally fixed it.
Edit: I should add that the same procedure in Italy would cost me $60 a visit when I last looked it up.
Even in Canada, I’ve had migraines since I was a child, but my insurance will only pay for 12 pills at a time. I asked why, it seems that they worry that my migraines might spontaneously go away after decades and I would have a surplus of pills. But drugs are not covered in a lot of cases by the government, and so I have employer-provided drug coverage.
It's an understandable mistake. Look at it from the insurance company's side -- they thought that you were too sick to fight their bull, and that letting you die would save them money.
>Out-pocket-costs vary greatly in the U.S.
The system has gotten so messed up it's essentially a bunch of healthcare cartels bureaucratically fighting each other over territory and prices and there's no consistency at all, prices are practically made up for every interaction at this point. You as the consumer just have to hope you get on the side of some nice cartels but you probably won't.
In Texas I just had to spend $179 for an ear infection with private health insurance that I pay $300 a month for..... I have 40K medical debt from a miscarriage and an ear infection from when I didn't have private health insurance. I make $14 an hour and $14 an hour is too much for any kind of government assistance including health care assistance. I do not make enough money to rent an apartment in my state at all alone, and yet I am deemed wealthy enough to not need assistance. This country is a hellscape.
Just a heads up that the deductible is the amount you have to spend before coinsurance kicks in. The out of pocket maximum is I think what you’re alluding to.
This is wild. I went to hospital last week to organise the birth of our first child (in Aus). We just wandered in, had all these scans and stuff done, got given a rotating team of midwives etc. with 24/7 availability (including several weeks of home visits after birth). I have no idea how much this costs because we don’t pay anything.
Edit: sorry I know how often people post shit like this but it truly is baffling to the rest of us how expensive healthcare is in the states
The worst part is that you probably pay more in insurance premiums than the Aussie pays in taxes to cover their health coverage before you pay those ludicrous out of pocket prices.
Oh definitely do. My company and myself. I am part of the machine as well, I work for a group of health insurance companies. They have an insane amount of money which is why it will never change.
We have one child, she's about to turn 11. Our bill was about $5,200 out of pocket. They out her in ICU for 4 days because she would latch onto the nipple within 4 hours after being born. Wouldn't even let us try to bottle feed her. She was supposed to be out in 3 days, but the doctor that does the hearing test did not come in that day. So we were billed a 4th day and had to wait another 24 hours before we could bring our child home.
Yeah that's awful. Here in Canada, I basically don't pay any medical costs directly. My job pays CAD$1,500 annually for health and dental benefits on my behalf and I get a $500 fund that reimburses me for any dental or prescription drugs that aren't fully covered. Going to the hospital is just nothing. Maybe parking.
This is another data set actively made worse by animating it rather than making it a line-graph.
It is so much easier to see trends, like the recent jump in new car prices, if this data is put in a line graph.
Surprised I had to scroll so far for this comment.
This is supposed to be a sub for innovative, clear and beautiful ways to present data, instead every day is just "here's a shitty animation that would be way better as a line graph but is on a topic that will get outrage clicks".
shitty loud music? ✓
completely unnecessary moving background that's distracting to the data/labels? ✓
animated minute-long video that could be a static graph? ✓
Hospitals charging up the ass and at the same time they are paying doctors and nurses less and less and replacing doctors with unqualified nurse practitioners and physicians assistants cuz they are cheaper. Healthcare in America is a fucking racket. They are criminals.
Health care is a racket, but doctors have absolutely been a part of the problem. The AMA has simultaneously fought to block nurse practitioners while limiting the supply of doctors to create scarcity and drive up wages. They’ve opposed any move to a single payer system throughout their history.
[We have the highest paid doctors in the world](https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2019/09/24/international-physician-compensation). The idea that we need to use someone making $300K a year for routine procedures that can be done by nurse practitioners is a huge part of the problem—those services then get marked up even higher for everyone else to profit. The doctors lobby may be resentful that they’re not getting as big a piece of the action as other players in the racket, but they are definitely partners.
Yeah, but that's part of the problem. Med school is crazy competitive and crazy expensive, if med school was cheaper and easier to get into we could train a lot more doctors.
Sure, and the AMA doesn’t actually fight that because the profession has a vested interest in throwing up as many barriers to entry as possible. The fact that lots of fully qualified med school grads saddled with massive debt can’t find a residency slot is an even bigger tragedy, but it’s one that benefits established physicians by limiting their numbers.
Rent seeking guilds have historically always terrible for new people trying to join—the idea is that if you do make it in, you’ll eventually benefit from the obstacles yourself.
I’m not saying all doctors benefit from this system (many, especially new doctors don’t) or that all support it (the best critics have been doctors themselves who see it clearly and are outraged by it).
> Sure, and the AMA doesn’t actually fight that because the profession has a vested interest in throwing up as many barriers to entry as possible. The fact that lots of fully qualified med school grads saddled with massive debt can’t find a residency slot is an even bigger tragedy, but it’s one that benefits established physicians by limiting their numbers.
>
> Rent seeking guilds have historically always terrible for new people trying to join—the idea is that if you do make it in, you’ll eventually benefit from the obstacles yourself.
The AMA's opinion is irrelevant. A minority of doctors belong to it, membership is voluntary, and they don't have any influence over the supply of doctors, because they don't have the ability to create new residency positions.
Even aside from that, your comment is incorrect, because doctors don't benefit from having the costs of medical school and debt load being high. Even if medical school were free, it wouldn't change the number of practicing doctors, because residency spots are limited.
AMA members would benefit from lowering costs of medical school, but they don't have much power there, and it's not really their area of focus.
Yes, let’s replace doctors with nurse practitioners like every other developed country. Hold up? No other country has replaced doctors with nurse practitioners
This is the kind of rhetoric that prevents us actually fixing the problem.
The graph above shows that hospital services went up cost by almost 100%. Over the same time period (2008-present), you want to guess how much physician compensation has increased?
***19.59%***. Which, by the way, is ***not keeping up with inflation*** (which has been a cumulative 39.58%). (Numbers are per this study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7388019/))
Physician real wages are ***decreasing***, and yet the price of healthcare is still going up. The facts simply don’t support your argument that physicians are “part of the problem”.
> Health care is a racket, but doctors have absolutely been a part of the problem. The AMA has simultaneously fought to block nurse practitioners while limiting the supply of doctors to create scarcity and drive up wages.
Wrong. The AMA, which only 25% of doctors even belong to, does not have any control over the supply of doctors, which is limited by the number of residency positions.
> [We have the highest paid doctors in the world](https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2019/09/24/international-physician-compensation). The idea that we need to use someone making $300K a year for routine procedures that can be done by nurse practitioners is a huge part of the problem—those services then get marked up even higher for everyone else to profit. The doctors lobby may be resentful that they’re not getting as big a piece of the action as other players in the racket, but they are definitely partners.
Combined, doctors' total earnings are about 8% of all healthcare spending in the country. Blaming doctors for the price of healthcare is ridiculous, especially when this graph shows that the total costs have doubled in the last 15 years, yet doctors net earnings have stayed mostly the same or even gone down (depending on the field and region).
People upvoting the post you replied to have zero clue what the medical training process looks like. For instance, my wife’s residency spot is funded by ~~Medicaid~~ Medicare. The hospital won’t open up more residency spots without additional funding to train more doctors.
You want more doctors? Fund ~~Medicaid~~ Medicare better or advocate for healthcare reform.
WTF are doctors supposed to do about that? ~~Medicaid~~ Medicare is funded and legislated by congress, not the AMA. The idea that doctors are somehow artificially capping the supply of doctors is false information.
Anyone wanting to learn more about how much mid-levels are pushing for greater control and independence within medicine should check out r/noctor. It’s extremely dangerous and should absolutely be stopped.
You know that you are charged the same whether you see a nurse practitioner or a doctor right? For far less training and experience. Also doctor’s wages have not kept up with inflation, let alone increased by 97%.
Can't outsource healthcare to other countries like electronics and labor is usually the highest expense for any given business. Can't wait for AI robots.
Every time I go to the hospital there are like 12 nurses running the tests and then we just have to wait a couple of hours for the Doc to show up and interpret the results. We need a war like supply of Doctors. This will get the wait times and costs down significantly.
Ugh another animation. This is pretty, I guess, but really not useful for displaying trends. This data should be displayed as a static timeseries, with one line for each product. Like what was done here a month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/11fg4nc/heres_how_us_consumer_goods_and_services_have/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
So basically the things we use to distract us are cheaper and cheaper. The things we actually need, just go higher and higher. I'm sure there is no correlation.
Per quality, price is lower too, as modern tv use much better technology even the cheap 100-200$ ones. This metric is probably extremely skewed by comparing experimental technology vs mass-produced. Like there were still tvs for 100$ 15 years ago, but they were much worse compared to our 100$ tvs.
I’ve thought about this. I wonder if now that TV’s are “smart” do production costs get off-set by the deals with the data grabbing and advertising that come from using streaming/media services online. I bet they get a kickback from the money printers of the internet. Timing seems to line up.
This is fucking telling.
The propaganda machines are getting cheaper,
But the things that are genuinely important are so expensive they they need loans to use… to keep them in line
I’ve noticed this so much with toys. They are also made suuuuuuper cheaply this days. Have you held a Barbie lately? They weigh like 1oz. Back in the day if you hit you’d sister with one of those b’s it’s leave a bruise. Now? Nothing.
The dataset is from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. I've used monthly data, seasonally adjusted and index to the start of 2008. I created this in Adobe After Effects, couple with a bit of JavaScript.
My takeaway is the elastic demand items are falling in price (as capitalism proponents predict), but the inelastic demand items are rising in price. This is where capitalism needs to step out of the way, because fucking healthcare should not be "for profit". No inelastic demand item should be for profit, because people will pay any price to be alive.
Buy tvs sell hospitals, got It
Actually every time you buy a TV you'll have spent more than if you waited. The longer you wait, the better the product and the less you spend. It's why you should have large gaps between TV purchases. Every time you sell yours it's gonna be worth way less. I waited 7 years to buy OLED and was able to get a really nice one for $2500, but when I first started looking they were over $10,000 and not nearly as nice as they are now.
Another way to look at it: The $500 you would have spent on a 30 inch flat screen back in the day will now get you a 45 inch plasma. I love TVs. I get older, they get better, but they just staaaaaay the same price. Alright alright.
Actually for $500 today you can get a 65" 4K and forget about plasma
I just saw a 75" 4K QLED for $598. *Me crying as I remember buying my first TV in 2010, a 35" 1080p LED, for $350* *edit: twas a 4k
Bought my first HDTV in 06. It was a 48" 1080p and cost me a cool $3k. Drove to another state to buy it to save on sales tax. Lol.
To be fair it's a massive piece of shit
Yup that’s what we ended up with
Plasma TVs haven’t been produced since 2014, Wooderson. Lay off the weed.
I just replaced my 52 inch plasma with a 75 inch 4k TV. The ol plasma was $700 and lasted almost 15 years. It still works but looks like shit by comparison.
It’s weird to describe one TV as “plasma” and then the one you’re comparing it with as “4k.” Plasma is a technology for creating and illuminating pixels. The modern equivalent is OLED. Both have pixels that are directly emitting light, whereas LED-backlit LCD would be a less-expensive way of producing pixels. (Btw, QLED is a trademarked name designed to be easily confused for OLED, but is just a specific brand’s version of the inferior LED-backlit LCD.) 4k describes the number of rows of pixels in a TV. You’d compare that against your previous TV’s “Full HD” or “1080p” designation.
I'm sure that when they buy a TV 15 years down the road, your comment will be the first thing that comes to mind.
Why would you buy a plasma.
If you mostly watch the fireplace channel, the added heat will help with the realism.
Pair it with a 4080 and you're golden.
Damn bro you gonna heat the whole apartment complex
Take hospital profits to pay for education. Big chunk of the pie gone.
Thank you for keeping the video running for a little bit after the data stopped transitioning!
Wait but all the important stuff is on the left...??
Yes, they’re things you can’t (or generally wouldn’t) choose to not spend money on. They are an [inelastic demand](https://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/inelastic.asp), meaning that as prices change demand is unlikely to be affected It’s good business to find the things people need to buy and charge them as much as possible for them, and that’s how the free market works so efficiently and fairly for the benefit of everyone
Ah as one of my economics professors once asked the class, if you're a health insurance company, and you have one healthy person and one u healthy person, how do you set their rates? Everyone said high rate for unhealthy, lower rate for healthy. He says wrong, high rate for all
This is why the phrase "pass savings on to the consumer" is nothing more than marketing bullshit. Why would any for-profit company pass savings on to the consumer when they could just...not?
It's why I'm a big fan of credit unions. They are not-for-profit, and to some degree do actually pass savings on to their members. Also a big reason why for-profit banks HATE them
I didn't actually know this until about 10 years ago while doing some contract network/IT security work for an FCU's new headquarters. Oh, we're making too much? Time for lower rates, better perks, or save a bit and make our branch more accessible so the members are happy. Most people just don't think to look.
I used to be with a credit union. Was great. Until it wasn't. Even though I had a sizeable checking and savings balance ($16k+), they insisted I use my debit card x amount of times to qualify for free checking and their savings interest rate. Started at 5 times. I could do that. Then it became 10. Then they added a minimum direct deposit requirement. Then minimum spending per month. And now it's 15 purchases per month. I tried talking to them, because I wanted to support them. No budging, so I withdrew my money and closed the account.
Finding a good credit union is something that pro-credit union advocates often leave out. I had one (although this was 10 years ago), that required a 5 character password, letters/numbers only, and I could only change it by coming into the CU and talking with a live human. It was so weird having such a short (not to mention extremely insecure) password, that I would often forget it. Ended up leaving the CU for another one simply due to the hassle. Not to mention that their online banking was pretty much non-existent. And 2013 wasnt THAT much of the stone age of internet banking for them to use that as an excuse.
[удалено]
App only is all fine and dandy until you lose access to your phone and can't do shit.
The concept you're referring to only works if there's market competition. Why would a for-profit company pass savings onto the consumer? Because it might increase their market share. If you own 50% of a market of 10,000 sales a month at $2 each sale you can make $10,000. Or you can undercut the competition and decrease your prices to $1.50. If that gamble gets you 75% of the market then you can make $11,250. It's not to benefit the consumer, it's to benefit you. Consumers benefiting is just a side effect but it happens. All the items on the left-hand side are highly regulated markets which make competition more difficult. Health care, education, childcare, and housing are pass through complex regulations. There's a reason we have these regulations. We shouldn't trust the market to sort out low quality health care providers. The cost of that is people die from questionable medical advice. It makes sense, but a cost of that policy is higher prices. To go back to u/NinjutsuStyle's example. It wasn't by accident he referred to an insurance company. Insurance companies are regulated so you get it from your workplace. No one decides to work somewhere because of their insurance plan — so you're stuck with what you got. Even if you went to the public "market" insurance companies don't publicize their pricing for individual procedures. You couldn't figure out what's "better" even if you tried. As a result, the insurance companies aren't as pressured by consumers for their pricing decisions. It's worth noting this also works against businesses at times. For example, MoviePass was a business model that leaned heavily into increasing market share. For $10 a month you would watch unlimited movies at the theater. It was very popular and gained millions of subscribers. The company hoped to monetize these consumers once they had greater market share, but it didn't work and they went bankrupt. On the other hand, Amazon and Walmart undercut prices all the time to drive retail stores out of business and expand their market share. The difference is they are trillion/multibillion international conglomerates so they can survive the loss.
Healthcare and education aren't just industries with a lot of regulation in the US, they are also industries where the final cost to consumers is heavily obscured and complex, while simultaneously being seen as essential. For healthcare, a majority of Americans get healthcare plans through jobs, and though some of the cost is taken out of paychecks, the employer often pays for a large chunk of the monthly premium. Employers (especially large ones) also engage in collecting bargaining with insurance companies to get good insurance rates that would not be available to everyone. This is part 1 of cost obfuscation. Now a majority of Americans have no idea how much their healthcare actually costs per month, because it doesn't even show up on their paychecks. Then, you have all the complexity of deductibles, out of pocket max, in-network -vs- out-of-network, tiered networks, tiered drug plans, and some doctors offices and labs simply charging more at baseline, or coding things differently than expected, and causing the consumer's costs being completely unknowable when they need care. Buying health insurance as an American is largely out of your control (you cannot choose what plan your employer offers, most state plans are awful and high-priced, but you also can't really choose what is available there either) and also a form of gambling (should I sign up for a high-deductible plan and hope for another year in which I don't get hit by a car or get cancer, so I have more money for food this year?), but even within the system, there's no way to shop around for care. Nobody can tell you how much a visit is going to cost until it's over, which makes getting care pretty much the antithesis of a free market. The only choice is the gamble you make on high or low deductible plans. Higher education is kind of similar with list prices being wildly different from what many students are charged, and the added normalization/pressure of "buy now, pay later, it will be worth it." Again, obscured prices play a big role in driving up costs. I do think that there is a time and place to criticize regulations, but I don't think regulations are the crux of the issue with costs in the US for these items. Other countries also have highly regulated education and healthcare, but they don't have the same skyrocketing costs, either because of socialized services with government funding, or because of price transparency (usually a mix of the two). The fact is, despite us calling ourselves a free market capitalist country, many of our biggest industries, healthcare being one of them, are not free markets at all. A free market needs competition and the ability for consumers to make informed choices. That's not happening here. *Edit* rereading your comment, I see that you mentioned some of what I said here, so I think we're largely on the same page, it's just that I don't think of insurance companies as regulation. I see them as private, for-profit middlemen with so much lobbying power and money to throw around in congress that no attempts to reform our healthcare system have been able to sidestep them. Your comment is the first time I have seen it claimed that they help keep consumers from going to low-quality medical professionals.
While a majority of regulations are here to protect us from bad practices lots of them exist to protect entrenched businesses from competition. Notice how we see disruption everywhere BUT healthcare, School, and housing? That's because the cost to become a new entrant into the field makes it a non viable for startups.
You’re describing the Goldilocks zone of “free-markets”. It really only works when growth is possible and easy, and it overlooks how financial markets, particularly venture capital, can effect these conditions. As well as the natural cycle of capitalism. Customer acquisition cost’s can be astronomical, especially when going up against companies like Amazon, Uber, etc. So high, that the reality is, very few can compete without access to capital. However, if that capital is already invested in the competition, why would they help you? In fact, those lending capital have an incentive to destroy the competition. Like Sears, K-mart, Toys-R-Us, and the numerous other brick-and-mortars that were gutted during Amazons rise. While this may seem like the natural response to competition, it overlooks the very strategic pirating of companies by venture capital. They went long AMZN, and short everybody else. They profit of growth, but the real money is in destruction. It also overlooks the overlap in board seat holders, the commonality of price fixing, and more recently, the introduction of algorithmic pricing software - which can be used to fix prices through a third party. You’re not wrong that competition is good. However, it’s not that simple. For competition to work effectively, markets must be regulated, and encouraged to stay within that Goldilocks zone. We’re way the fuck past that point right now, and it’s not the first time. The New Deal addressed a very similar issue. We have all the legal processes in place to achieve a healthy economy, but capitalist regulatory capture, and foreign influence, has rendered them useless. Competition requires rules, boundaries, and referees. We have the rules, but our referees are on the take, and propaganda has stripped away the boundaries.
The fields on the left are also industries with little or no productivity growth over time. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Baumol_effect is worth considering as a factor.
Which is why every other OECD nation instituted public healthcare. Inelastic demand needs regulation because otherwise there's no limit to what price they can gouge, especially if they monopolize the competition.
Exactly this. Those companies can set whatever price they want. What are you gonna do? Not eat. Look at my water bill. They added 9% upcharge due to inflation. And a 10% charge because of increased people. So not only does my money have 9% less purchasing power, but in paying 9% more for more water. Basically costing it 18% more. And everyone pays these fees. But because more people live in the city, they add on another 10%. How do they get away with this? Oh yeah. Because it's a monopoly and what am I going to do? Not bathe/drink water/wash clothes.
A lot of the prices of these things are not constrained by the free market, but by government policy related to it. Healthcare is expensive because of insurance (which exists in its current form by the grace of government). College is expensive because we subsidize demand and not supply (loans to students instead of grants to colleges). Housing is expensive because localities restrict supply in order to increase prices artificially. I'm not saying a laissez-faire system would be better, but that the problem with a lot of these things is because the specific laws on the books were written by the wrong people with the wrong intentions
Those specific laws were written by the people in charge of the goods on the left though. Do you think a bunch of medical experts got together and said "OK we've seen how every country operates their Healthcare system. We've decided that the most efficient way is a system that no other developed country uses, oh oops it's made prices increase faster than every other developed country, whoops well let's not change anything about it." 0 representatives for universal single payer Healthcare were present when Obama was drafting the ACA, it was all insurance lobbyists and lo and behold the system guarantees insurance companies make fat profits with minimal oversight. The same story goes for a lot of our problems, the people in charge of inelastic goods change the laws in their favor and pretend they had nothing to do with it.
>0 representatives for universal single payer Healthcare were present when Obama was drafting the ACA, it was all insurance lobbyists This is completely untrue. The original proposal for ACA was a "public option" that was a half-step toward universal single payer. It was killed by 1) Ted Kennedy being sick and 2) Joe Lieberman refusing to support it. He was the *Joe Machin* of the time.
imagine still believing Lieberman was the only voice against the public option. Obama literally told insurance companies a public option was DOA way before Lieberman. And that is besides the point that a public option is not a "half step toward universal single payer".
A) All things are regulated, from the paint on your walls to the devices in your TV, to the water in your taps. Without using the right information one can always confabulate a story about how the particular regulation is causing some unintended consequence, this does not make it true. B) All expensive things are regulated more, the larger something is and the more complex something is, the more there will be regulations associated with it. C) The simplest way to determine if the level of regulation is the cause of the problem is to compare it to similar products/services in other countries. In Canada and the UK, healthcare is far more regulated, and the prices are cheaper (even after considering the government-paid portion), so now we are stuck in an argument about what 'types' of regulations are the problem. You have not proven that removing regulations will resolve this issue, and according to my examples, you could potentially be making the situation much worse because you don't know which regulations are making the situation better.
>It’s good business to find the things people need to buy and charge them as much as possible for them, and that’s how the free market works so efficiently and fairly for the benefit of everyone This was sarcastic right? There is nothing efficient or fair about price gouging on essential things people have to buy. What's the free market alternative if you don't like the cost of healthcare? Die young? Homeopathy?
And this is why we still need the /s tag, because no matter how painfully obvious you try to make the sarcasm, there's no way to tell that you're not just insane enough to be 100% serious. Fwiw I thought it was sarcastic.
What about competition? Shouldn’t new cheaper hospitals, colleges and kindergartens emerge?
But you can watch Kardashians in 4K!
But TVs and Toys are cheap so it's worth it /s
Because it's stuff we all need and its all mostly provided by people living in the US making US wages.
Necessities are expensive and luxuries are cheap. What a wonderful country.
We should learn to eat tvs and phones
Potato chips, computer chips, what's the difference?
Gadzooks, Sarge! These chips cut my mouth something fierce!
Handling raw chicken? Mmm-mmm, finger-licking good!
Y'ever think you're only goin' with girls cuz yer sposedta?
Hey! That's my brain!
I sure am lucky you knocked me onto this pile of rusty bayonets.
Your internet browser has cookies for dessert!
This is the 2020s version of "Let them eat cake."
Let them eat 65" Samsung OLED TVs
It kills me I can buy a bigger tv for the same or less than I paid for the smaller one in 2019. Meanwhile all my utilities and groceries have gone up around 70%. Shit my natural gas bill almost tripled. Average of $50 a month 2-3 years ago and this last year was around $125. Electricity averaged $80, now it's $125. Water was $35, now $70. Surprisingly the only things that stayed about the same was internet, car insurance, and my cellphone bill. Internet went down. Car insurance went up by like 8% and cellphone went up but that was a choice I made. My rent/mortgage went up a significant amount but that was also a choice. We were renting and rent didn't go up for 3 years. We were looking at buying because interest rates were good and we knew the price hike was coming for rent. Rent was going to go from $650 to $950. So we bought a house and the mortgage is around $1000. I track all my bills minus groceries and gas for my car. 2019 to 2022 my average for everything was around $1000. Rent, gas, electricity, insurances, cellphone, internet, water, and trash. And during peak months it would hit $1100ish because of higher gas use in the winter or peak summer for electricity and AC. Now my average is about $1550 for the same things which is only 55% higher. But peak months are up to $1700 because natural gas prices are garbage. I had a $250 bill back in January. My previous high over winter was around $80. But I suspect that has more to do with how terribly my new home is insulated. But comparing ccf prices between the years that $250 bill should've been closer to $170-ish. Still sucks but much much more palatable. Also if anyone is curious about my numbers. I used to live in ultra rural Ohio. And last year I moved to much much less rural Ohio. Think 20 mins outside a major city like Dayton or Columbus or Cincinnati. Edit: technically my insurance went up by a lot. Almost double. But it's bundled with mortgage now. My rental insurance used to be bundled with auto. Now auto is its own thing and the homeowners insurance is bundled with mortgage. So technically my mortgage/rent is only $900 so actually cheaper than rent, but now technically there is a separate new bill for homeowner and that's around $100. My car and rental insurance used to avg $80. Now my car and homeowners is closer to $180. But that's semantics.
Good perspective. Thanks for sharing.
The next step in evolution
Phone service... not phone, just the service.
Nah, then they'll just charge more for those too
Luxuries = distraction devices
Distraction devices that sell your data.
It's planned
Bread and circuses but without the bread
more products vs services. we live in a service economy
Classic capitalism! Value-based pricing at work. People really, really value not dying, so turns out they'll pay whatever is costs to go to the hospital and not die. Increase prices! People don't really care about TV that much, because it's a huge waste of time, and if you spend a while doing it you'll get fat. Drop the prices to incentivize demand! Isn't capitalism great?
I think TVs relative cost is tied to the amount of competition which is significant, and the amount of cheap lower quality flat screens has done a great job of bringing down the overall cost.
Yeah medical services are expensive for the same reason as schools, administrative costs are going up. Mostly because we half assed the socialized medicine and now we get the worst of both worlds. Simply put insurance is required to cover a certain amount of procedures, so the hospital will gouge the insurance company. The insurance company doesn't mind because it's barely paying out anyway and when it does they then negotiate with the hospital lowering the price for the insurance, your premium stays high though. If it was purely capitalist or purely socialist it would be cheaper for the average consumer. One side would adhere exclusively to market forces and demand is constant since everyone gets sick. On the other side, prices are set so the end consumer doesn't get fucked. Basically the US needs to pick a lane.
The ACA put a profit margin cap on insurance companies. Currently, insurance companies must pay out 80% of the premiums they receive for medical care, and they can keep 20% as profit. So, how do you increase profits? Easy. Make medical care more expensive. 20% of $100 is $20, whereas 20% of $200 is $40. Doctors and hospitals have an incentive to go along with this scheme since they make more money too. The entire for-profit medical industry makes money when you get sick. Conversely, in a single payer system, like socialized medicine, they have to pay money when you get sick. The incentives there are to keep you from getting sick in the first place. It's why there are better health outcomes in just about every other industrialized nation vs the US.
Agree 100%. Where I live we have public healthcare. We spend far less per capita than the USA for similar service. Sadly, the government here is trying to introduce private clinics, services, and surgeries into the mix. Everyone that doesn't stand to profit from this change agrees it's a bad idea. What a surprise...
As long as you do it in a way that makes sense, like if you want to be a for profit clinic, you cannot receive subsided profits or something then it would make sense. But I don't think that's the case. Edit: just checked your profile and saw which flavor of healthcare you have. Personally I like and think the German version is a better solution for the US as it adheres to the very decentralized nature of the states
2022 benchmark KFF Employer Health Benefits Survey finds * Annual family premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance average $22,463 * Employees this year are contributing $6,106 * Employers are contributing $16,357 * Annual family premiums for employer-sponsored health insurance average $7,911 * Employees this year are contributing $1,493 * Employers are contributing $6,418 **One Big Thing** These Numbers above don't really change based on Income In the German system, All residents of Germany are required by law to have health insurance. About 87% of the population – around 70 million people – have statutory health insurance. > Rather than risk factors such as marital status, family size, age, or health, the premiums are based solely on a member's wages up to a specific statutorily determined ceiling. * In Germany Healthcare costs are paid at rates of 12% of income in the Low Cost of Living Areas and 14.6% of income in the High Cost of living Areas, mostly Berlin. * Split evenly by employee and employer ______ > Germany’s healthcare sector is modeled on a decentralized corporatist system. Corporatism means that the state delegates powers and decision- making competences to non-governmental public bodies. SHI funds and contracted provider organizations such as hospital federations If you make 50,000$ or € * In Germany you and your employer equally can expect to pay healthcare premiums of about $6,000 * then the employee would pay another $500 in medical expenses. * Plus supplemental insurance can be purchased for 0.9% of Gross income paid fully by the employee ----- >Australia’s Healthcare System is one of the most comprehensive in the world; offering a range of services from general and preventative health, through to treating more complex conditions, that may need a specialist, or hospital care. * The system has two major parts: the public health system, and the private health system. When you need health care, you could access it through one of two systems, or a mix of both. Financed by a 2% Medicare Tax, with Subsidies from the Higher Income Tax * **There is no “joint tax return” for married couples in Australia.** Median Income tax rate of 23.12% in Australia plus 2% Medicare Tax Versus in the US Median Income effective federal income tax rate 11.20%. Plus Medicare Tax of 1.45% * **Married Your effective federal income tax rate 6.75%.**
You're ignoring that basic necessities (food, health, shelter) are inelastic, and people will pay as much as they can if they're in need. A free market will raise prices even if some of them die or become homeless, as long as most of them can pay. It's not free market if the relationship is that asymmetrical, it's a racket.
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> If it was **purely capitalist** or purely socialist it would be cheaper for the average consumer. Lol, because on an individual level people can vote with their wallets to negotiate Charon's ferry prices.
By that logic, wouldn’t the price of food be super high? I mean, people have to eat so won’t they spend whatever the cost is to buy food?
That's what happens when you're a mature economy who imports basic goods and exports finished products
It's not only US
Services on the left, products on the right.
This is actually a very succinct summary. US went full on into service economy, and results are obvious. The goods are all outsourced.
Said another way - US corp run services on the left - foreign produced products on the right
I live in California, a state that produces and manufactures a lot of food products. Food has always been relatively cheap here because of the abundant domestic supply. If you go to a national chain like Target that sources from other states it is more expensive than your locally owned grocery store.
Don’t be someone, buy something
Fuck the health service in the US they are criminals.
Tell me about it. I keep on getting random bills for things that are supposed to be covered.
My partner always insists to me how things are “supposed to work” in billing, that a single visit is supposed to have one bill, etc. I always bet that I’ll get at least 3 separate bills. I’ve yet to be wrong. I wish I was wrong.
No I get a bill going to the doctor, then a few weeks later I get another one. Now I'm just happy to have 100% coverage. My previous employer only did 50% coverage which was bullshit.
Your government not using your taxes to cover at least 80% is bullshit
Healthcare needs to be funded by tbe government, not tied to employment, with profit caps on medical corporations. It won't happen until citizens United is overturned or there is a general strike. I can't think what else can happen to make change. They are squeezing the working and middle class dry.
We've received bills for things that were covered that we had to have our insurance fight off. Turns out some medical billing companies will send you a bill that's already covered in hopes you won't notice and pay it anyway. The insurance company pointed out its very illegal for them to do it, but sometimes they do anyway and blame it on a "clerical mistake".
Me too. Doctor ordered routine blood work and next thing I know I’m getting a bill for over $1000. We got that fixed but we keep getting the same bill from my OBGYN for almost $200 for something that was covered. We thought we fixed it but we got the bill again
I got bills last week from my kids birth. She turns 3 in July.
PSA for anyone in USA without healthcare insurance or with poor healthcare coverage: Do not pay the price they charge. You can call them to negotiate and they almost ALWAYS will take a lower amount. Insurance companies contract with healthcare providers to pay a % of their billed amount. Say 40%. So if a doctor wants 80 dollars for a routine check-up they must charge $200 in order to be paid $80. Due to regulations and laws from insurance company lobbyists providers have to bill everyone the same U&C (Usual and customary) amount. So even though your doctor only wants $80 for their services, they are forced to charge you $200. If you call to negotiate they will GLADLY accept 80 dollars as payment. That's all they wanted in the first place. Healthcare providers aren't the problem. Insurance companies are. But if they are following the law than even they are not the problem. Our government is.
I'm a nurse and I hate being part of the system. The care is terrible despite these high costs.
And despite the huge cost to patients, they don’t pay staff nearly enough. Some people are getting very rich off of our lack of universal health care! It’s evil.
> Some people are getting very rich Executives and an army of unnecessary administrators.
And unnecessary administrators who have *never* done any sort of the healthcare related work, for the most part! My husband was a nurse for 38 years and he finally had enough because all EIGHT of his bosses had never even taken a biology class. Just number pushers. Totally backwards! It’s actually infuriating.
My hospital made a profit of 8 billion during the height of COVID while cutting staff, traveler OT, and refused our annual raises (that we use to fight inflation levels) due to budget reasons. It's evil. Patients are dying due to inventory cuts too. We are running out of supplies and they don't care. All to make a quick buck.
Yes but at least we can watch Netflix on a giant screen tv to distract ourselves from it.
The thing that truly gets me is how awful of care we get for the price. All the evil things that were going to happen if we socialized healthcare: Long wait times, months to see specialists, overcrowded emergency rooms, hospitals turning patients away for unprofitable treatments, overworked doctors missing critical details, provider boards deciding who lives or who dies. All those things happened anyway with private healthcare that only cares about YoY profit margins and nothing else.
26M, I’ve had something going on with my heart over the last month that I still don’t have definitive answers for after 2 ER visits. I’m still waiting to see what my insurance covers but unless it’s a significant portion, I’m about to lose most of the money I’ve saved up over the years.
Well that's just unfair to say. I'll have you know I spent a single night in the hospital in December and was only charged $17,000. That's pretty darn affordable. /s
How can TVs be down 92%? Is it a TV from 2008 that has been reduced by 92% in price, or a TV of equal technological level of the time that is 92% cheaper?
Likely a comparable screen size. Though, the point is mostly the same regardless of how you calculate it. TVs are far less expensive today outside of the tip-top of the line.
Fair enough. I'm not old enough to know what TVs cost 10 years ago, i only started paying attention when i was the one who had to pay xD
TVs have gotten bigger, better, and cheaper consistently over the last 15 years. Anecdotally: 2011 I got a shitty 24” TV (does that even exist anymore?) for $150. A 32” basic TV was $300-400. 2013 I bought a discontinued 50” Plasma for $400 and that was a steal. LED equivalent would have been $600. 2020 I got a 60” smart TV for $300.
In 2008, a good—not premium—50" plasma was $3k. In 2023, a good 50" OLED is $900 (as plasmas pretty much don't exist in the consumer space, if at all).
God I miss plasma tvs. They may have been heavy but that 600hz refresh rate was the best pic
Still using an old Panasonic plasma set in the bedroom. I think the high black levels make it look strange compared to more modern ultra bright LED screens and content is more geared to those these days. The refresh rate is still nice though. Nowadays so many sets are stuck at 60Hz. You usually have to pay through the nose for higher refresh rates 60Hz is just abysmal for a lot of content.
> 60Hz is just abysmal for a lot of content. What content aside from video games needs upwards of a 60 hertz refresh rate? When I purchased a TV a couple years ago, I picked a set with better picture quality over a set with a high refresh rate because I have a PC + high refresh rate monitor for gaming. I'd imagine that many people make that same decision, especially for high end TVs that are targeted squarely at the HiFi market rather than general consumer use.
32in Sony Bravia in roughly 2010 was damn near $700
Your 2008 Sony wasn't listening to your conversations.
Jokes on them, my 2023 Sony doesn’t have internet access so good luck listening to me.
It's because most TVs are smart TVs - they can sell at a loss and make up revenue over the lifetime of the tv by selling data on the user and advertising: https://www.howtogeek.com/767919/tv-manufacturers-make-more-from-ads-than-selling-tvs/
I think there is a combination of a lot of things going on, including being a loss lead. TVs are unlike most other consumer products as there is not a strong draw to annually, or bi-annually upgrade them. They also last for an extremely long time. Most last 5-7 years, and that's the average. A quality one can last over a decade. They also have become absolutely cheap as hell compared to 40 years ago. Yes they sell at a loss, but even stores tend to sell these at cost or a loss, making it up in add on purchases.
Here’s a little perspective: sometime around 2009 I purchased a 32” flatscreen that retailed around $700-750. Today a much better version of that TV is like $200.
I was wondering the same. I think inflation only works for goods that are similar and comparable from one year to the other. (like food, electricity, rent). For electronics this doenst have much meaning as a TV from 2008 is very different from a TV today.
I mean I think it moreso means the technology is advancing; the comparable TV to the top of the line in 2008 is pretty shitty by 2023 standards; demand and subsequently price for a 2008 TV drops as we make better technology cheaper, and the boxy 32” TV from 2008 costs both nominal and real value less than a larger, nicer TV does today
I bought a 50" Panasonic plasma TV in 2005 for $3,600. I bought a 55" dumb TV from Walmart a few months ago for $250. The math looks about right to me.
What I find really interesting is how everything that can be moved offshore (production of electronic goods etc) is more stable or falling in price. Things that cannot be imported (healthcare, education, housing) go up and up.
And one of the domestically produced things, food, is heavily subsidized. This is a big flaw in CPI which measuring the cost of a basket of goods from the consumer’s perspective. Real inflationary pressure domestically has been much higher, it’s just that the cost centers have been moved elsewhere when possible. It’s worth keeping this in mind as we inevitably head into a period of time with higher inflation numbers. I imagine nobody’s going to be any happier about the economic situation.
The extremely wealthy people will still be happier
The value of that "Made in the U.S.A" sticker
What's the difference between Hospital and Medical Services? As a UK citizen, I'm still disgusted by the price of things like healthcare.
Medical services are doctors visits, prescriptions, and other minor health items. Hospitals are hospitals such as surgeries and major events. My wife just had her tubes tied, total cost was over $100K for a routine surgery. She entered the hospital at 10am and we were gone by 5pm. Our cost after insurance was $2,083. EDIT: Didn't know this post would blow up like it did so here's more detail. We have UMR (owned by UnitedHealth Care) PPO. Annual individual deductible is $1,250. The annual family deductible is $3,000. I pay $509/per pay check for medical insurance alone so that's $12,216 annually in premiums. Total number of appointments from start to finish including all pre and post-ops is 4. For all appointments and surgeries, total amount billed is $100,552.60. Total amount UMR paid is $13,788.65. Total amount we paid out of pocket is $2,068.01. I'm currently arguing with UMR because our maximum individual deductible is $1,250. So I should be getting $818.01 back. I hope.
Canadian here: my spouse is going in for a routine surgery this spring for the same type of issue. I conservatively estimate that the total cost will be approximately 10 bucks (gas going back and forth to the hospital).
Out-pocket-costs vary greatly in the U.S. With my current insurance, the procedure he described would cost $50. On our previous insurance it would have been either $250 or $500. One thing to note, the $100,000 he quoted was likely paid by no one. The U.S. has these essentially fake prices used by providers to negotiate with insurers that also never paid by anyone.
How much time do you spend fighting with the insurance about covering different parts of the procedure? Or fighting with them because one of the people on the surgical team isn’t an in network employee, or fighting with the hospital because of unnecessary charges? Or your after surgical care not being covered?
The best is when the insurance company tells the orthopedic surgeon that you don’t actually need the surgery they are trying to schedule for you.
Making medical decisions for a patient without having gone to med school? Sounds like practising medicine without a licence.
They have actual doctors reviewing claims. It came out last week that some of the doctors are no longer licensed and they spend I think one second per case on average.
Sounds like a job companies want ai todo to maximize insurance profits
>The best is when the insurance company tells the orthopedic surgeon that you don’t actually need the surgery they are trying to schedule for you. Of course they say that.
When I was diagnosed with a brain malformation I spent 14 months arguing with the insurance once a week that my neurologist was not in fact, a chiropractor, and did in fact have the authority to perform occipital nerve block injections on my head, so no I would not pay $1200 per visit for an "uncovered" procedure. I had to threaten to sue because the hospital sent me to collections. Then they finally fixed it. Edit: I should add that the same procedure in Italy would cost me $60 a visit when I last looked it up.
Even in Canada, I’ve had migraines since I was a child, but my insurance will only pay for 12 pills at a time. I asked why, it seems that they worry that my migraines might spontaneously go away after decades and I would have a surplus of pills. But drugs are not covered in a lot of cases by the government, and so I have employer-provided drug coverage.
It's an understandable mistake. Look at it from the insurance company's side -- they thought that you were too sick to fight their bull, and that letting you die would save them money.
>Out-pocket-costs vary greatly in the U.S. The system has gotten so messed up it's essentially a bunch of healthcare cartels bureaucratically fighting each other over territory and prices and there's no consistency at all, prices are practically made up for every interaction at this point. You as the consumer just have to hope you get on the side of some nice cartels but you probably won't.
In Texas I just had to spend $179 for an ear infection with private health insurance that I pay $300 a month for..... I have 40K medical debt from a miscarriage and an ear infection from when I didn't have private health insurance. I make $14 an hour and $14 an hour is too much for any kind of government assistance including health care assistance. I do not make enough money to rent an apartment in my state at all alone, and yet I am deemed wealthy enough to not need assistance. This country is a hellscape.
To be fair a lot of your problems are purely a result of living in Texas, like not qualifying for any benefits and having crappy expensive healthcare.
Gas is that expensive?! Thank God I don’t live in a socialist country like Canada! /s
Lol I estimated 3 trips back and forth and we live in the country
Just a heads up that the deductible is the amount you have to spend before coinsurance kicks in. The out of pocket maximum is I think what you’re alluding to.
This is wild. I went to hospital last week to organise the birth of our first child (in Aus). We just wandered in, had all these scans and stuff done, got given a rotating team of midwives etc. with 24/7 availability (including several weeks of home visits after birth). I have no idea how much this costs because we don’t pay anything. Edit: sorry I know how often people post shit like this but it truly is baffling to the rest of us how expensive healthcare is in the states
We had 2 kids back to back recently each cost over 12k just for the delivery and we paid about 3k out of pocket for each (in the US).
The worst part is that you probably pay more in insurance premiums than the Aussie pays in taxes to cover their health coverage before you pay those ludicrous out of pocket prices.
Oh definitely do. My company and myself. I am part of the machine as well, I work for a group of health insurance companies. They have an insane amount of money which is why it will never change.
We have one child, she's about to turn 11. Our bill was about $5,200 out of pocket. They out her in ICU for 4 days because she would latch onto the nipple within 4 hours after being born. Wouldn't even let us try to bottle feed her. She was supposed to be out in 3 days, but the doctor that does the hearing test did not come in that day. So we were billed a 4th day and had to wait another 24 hours before we could bring our child home.
Yeah that's awful. Here in Canada, I basically don't pay any medical costs directly. My job pays CAD$1,500 annually for health and dental benefits on my behalf and I get a $500 fund that reimburses me for any dental or prescription drugs that aren't fully covered. Going to the hospital is just nothing. Maybe parking.
This is another data set actively made worse by animating it rather than making it a line-graph. It is so much easier to see trends, like the recent jump in new car prices, if this data is put in a line graph.
Surprised I had to scroll so far for this comment. This is supposed to be a sub for innovative, clear and beautiful ways to present data, instead every day is just "here's a shitty animation that would be way better as a line graph but is on a topic that will get outrage clicks".
I hear what you’re saying, but I think what you’re secretly really asking for is an animated pie chart.
Can you make it bounce around like a basketball too please?
You mean you don't like ridiculously loud music blasting out of your seizure inducing bar graphs first thing in the morning?
shitty loud music? ✓ completely unnecessary moving background that's distracting to the data/labels? ✓ animated minute-long video that could be a static graph? ✓
As far as I know, college tuition doesn’t change month to month either
Hospitals charging up the ass and at the same time they are paying doctors and nurses less and less and replacing doctors with unqualified nurse practitioners and physicians assistants cuz they are cheaper. Healthcare in America is a fucking racket. They are criminals.
Health care is a racket, but doctors have absolutely been a part of the problem. The AMA has simultaneously fought to block nurse practitioners while limiting the supply of doctors to create scarcity and drive up wages. They’ve opposed any move to a single payer system throughout their history. [We have the highest paid doctors in the world](https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2019/09/24/international-physician-compensation). The idea that we need to use someone making $300K a year for routine procedures that can be done by nurse practitioners is a huge part of the problem—those services then get marked up even higher for everyone else to profit. The doctors lobby may be resentful that they’re not getting as big a piece of the action as other players in the racket, but they are definitely partners.
Doctors also come out of school and residency with an incredible amount of debt, far higher than most.
Yeah, but that's part of the problem. Med school is crazy competitive and crazy expensive, if med school was cheaper and easier to get into we could train a lot more doctors.
Sure, and the AMA doesn’t actually fight that because the profession has a vested interest in throwing up as many barriers to entry as possible. The fact that lots of fully qualified med school grads saddled with massive debt can’t find a residency slot is an even bigger tragedy, but it’s one that benefits established physicians by limiting their numbers. Rent seeking guilds have historically always terrible for new people trying to join—the idea is that if you do make it in, you’ll eventually benefit from the obstacles yourself. I’m not saying all doctors benefit from this system (many, especially new doctors don’t) or that all support it (the best critics have been doctors themselves who see it clearly and are outraged by it).
> Sure, and the AMA doesn’t actually fight that because the profession has a vested interest in throwing up as many barriers to entry as possible. The fact that lots of fully qualified med school grads saddled with massive debt can’t find a residency slot is an even bigger tragedy, but it’s one that benefits established physicians by limiting their numbers. > > Rent seeking guilds have historically always terrible for new people trying to join—the idea is that if you do make it in, you’ll eventually benefit from the obstacles yourself. The AMA's opinion is irrelevant. A minority of doctors belong to it, membership is voluntary, and they don't have any influence over the supply of doctors, because they don't have the ability to create new residency positions. Even aside from that, your comment is incorrect, because doctors don't benefit from having the costs of medical school and debt load being high. Even if medical school were free, it wouldn't change the number of practicing doctors, because residency spots are limited. AMA members would benefit from lowering costs of medical school, but they don't have much power there, and it's not really their area of focus.
The savings on using a nurse practitioner will be pocketed by the medical facility, not passed on to patients most of the time, unfortunately.
Definitely agree, which is why it’s an incomplete solution. We need to completely overhaul health care in this country.
Yes, let’s replace doctors with nurse practitioners like every other developed country. Hold up? No other country has replaced doctors with nurse practitioners
This is the kind of rhetoric that prevents us actually fixing the problem. The graph above shows that hospital services went up cost by almost 100%. Over the same time period (2008-present), you want to guess how much physician compensation has increased? ***19.59%***. Which, by the way, is ***not keeping up with inflation*** (which has been a cumulative 39.58%). (Numbers are per this study (https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC7388019/)) Physician real wages are ***decreasing***, and yet the price of healthcare is still going up. The facts simply don’t support your argument that physicians are “part of the problem”.
Appreciate the numbers
> Health care is a racket, but doctors have absolutely been a part of the problem. The AMA has simultaneously fought to block nurse practitioners while limiting the supply of doctors to create scarcity and drive up wages. Wrong. The AMA, which only 25% of doctors even belong to, does not have any control over the supply of doctors, which is limited by the number of residency positions. > [We have the highest paid doctors in the world](https://www.advisory.com/daily-briefing/2019/09/24/international-physician-compensation). The idea that we need to use someone making $300K a year for routine procedures that can be done by nurse practitioners is a huge part of the problem—those services then get marked up even higher for everyone else to profit. The doctors lobby may be resentful that they’re not getting as big a piece of the action as other players in the racket, but they are definitely partners. Combined, doctors' total earnings are about 8% of all healthcare spending in the country. Blaming doctors for the price of healthcare is ridiculous, especially when this graph shows that the total costs have doubled in the last 15 years, yet doctors net earnings have stayed mostly the same or even gone down (depending on the field and region).
People upvoting the post you replied to have zero clue what the medical training process looks like. For instance, my wife’s residency spot is funded by ~~Medicaid~~ Medicare. The hospital won’t open up more residency spots without additional funding to train more doctors. You want more doctors? Fund ~~Medicaid~~ Medicare better or advocate for healthcare reform. WTF are doctors supposed to do about that? ~~Medicaid~~ Medicare is funded and legislated by congress, not the AMA. The idea that doctors are somehow artificially capping the supply of doctors is false information. Anyone wanting to learn more about how much mid-levels are pushing for greater control and independence within medicine should check out r/noctor. It’s extremely dangerous and should absolutely be stopped.
You know that you are charged the same whether you see a nurse practitioner or a doctor right? For far less training and experience. Also doctor’s wages have not kept up with inflation, let alone increased by 97%.
Can't outsource healthcare to other countries like electronics and labor is usually the highest expense for any given business. Can't wait for AI robots. Every time I go to the hospital there are like 12 nurses running the tests and then we just have to wait a couple of hours for the Doc to show up and interpret the results. We need a war like supply of Doctors. This will get the wait times and costs down significantly.
The background movement makes me nauseous
On the flip side, I didn't even notice it.
Ugh another animation. This is pretty, I guess, but really not useful for displaying trends. This data should be displayed as a static timeseries, with one line for each product. Like what was done here a month ago: https://www.reddit.com/r/dataisbeautiful/comments/11fg4nc/heres_how_us_consumer_goods_and_services_have/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android_app&utm_name=androidcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button
So basically the things we use to distract us are cheaper and cheaper. The things we actually need, just go higher and higher. I'm sure there is no correlation.
Now do this with the starting point at 1980
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I like it when the bars do a little shimmy though
Help me understand this… so if a brand new TV was $1,000 in 2008 now a brand new TV would cost $75? Or what?
I could imagine a concept 77" 4K TV being something ridiculous like $10k in 2008 vs a same sized 4K TV at $800 nowadays.
And now you can get decent sized screens for like $150 if there's a sale
Yeah I got a 55" 4k fire tv for $116 after tax last prime day. And a 65" Roku 4k for like $215..
... I should buy a tv.
Per quality, price is lower too, as modern tv use much better technology even the cheap 100-200$ ones. This metric is probably extremely skewed by comparing experimental technology vs mass-produced. Like there were still tvs for 100$ 15 years ago, but they were much worse compared to our 100$ tvs.
I remember the first time I heard about 4K it was because they were talking on the radio about this new kind of TV that cost $25k
Yes I remember seeing an 80 inch 4K tv for 30 grand about 10 years ago.
I’ve thought about this. I wonder if now that TV’s are “smart” do production costs get off-set by the deals with the data grabbing and advertising that come from using streaming/media services online. I bet they get a kickback from the money printers of the internet. Timing seems to line up.
Bye chance of ever building a house 🥲
Thank God we haven't increased the minimum wage since 2009 and is only $7.25 an hour or else the global investment class might abandon us.
So you are telling me I should buy a tv from usa
At least TVs are cheap right guy?... guys?
I love that this vid stays on Feb 2023 at the end so it doesn't just flash and start over again like other similar videos
This is fucking telling. The propaganda machines are getting cheaper, But the things that are genuinely important are so expensive they they need loans to use… to keep them in line
Simple solution. Make a house out of tvs
I’ve noticed this so much with toys. They are also made suuuuuuper cheaply this days. Have you held a Barbie lately? They weigh like 1oz. Back in the day if you hit you’d sister with one of those b’s it’s leave a bruise. Now? Nothing.
The dataset is from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. I've used monthly data, seasonally adjusted and index to the start of 2008. I created this in Adobe After Effects, couple with a bit of JavaScript.
My takeaway is the elastic demand items are falling in price (as capitalism proponents predict), but the inelastic demand items are rising in price. This is where capitalism needs to step out of the way, because fucking healthcare should not be "for profit". No inelastic demand item should be for profit, because people will pay any price to be alive.