Simple_Rules t1_itj022j wrote on October 24, 2022 at 12:10 AM

Reply to comment by glass_superman in A Proposal to Price Everything in the Currency of Child Lives Not Saved by phileconomicus

Ironically, you actually make a better argument than the entire article linked - no offense intended.

We do spend absolutely bonkers amounts of money keeping individual people alive, and it is probably true that this is very inefficient on a global scale. But of course, it's much easier to poke at "luxuries" like coffee or vacations than it is to point out that the quality of medical care that some of us are lucky to have access to is so much better than the rest of the world that we might as well live on different planets.

glass_superman t1_itjbzz7 wrote on October 24, 2022 at 1:43 AM

To be fair, hospital pricing is kind of a game where the hospital says, for a completely fictional example, that fixing the valve in my heart costs 327k dollars. And then the insurance says, nah, we'll give you 20k. And the hospital says okay.

So really it cost 20k but the hospital inflated the cost so that, should I turn out to be a deadbeat, then can deduct 327k as a loss or charity or whatever.

Determining the actual cost of saving a life is difficult work.