link to original reddit post by /u/sneedsformerlychucks


To my understanding, ancaps believe that American healthcare is so expensive due to regulations (partially true) and that the solution to expensive hospital bills and treatments is to gut all regulations. But in practice how does this actually work? I assume your idea is "you pay $10 and you get put on a waitlist for treatment but if you pay $40 you'll get it faster or using newer equipment," but how do you know it's going to work like that and not "if you only pay the base price we're not going to wash the needles before using them again. You need to upgrade to our Healthcare+ for $5/month if you want clean needles."

Realistically I can't see how a healthcare system without any regulation whatsoever will always adhere to basic guidelines of health and safety for even the budget consumers. You can say it's the consumer's job to be a conscious consumer and to choose a good provider, but in practice most people don't have the time to research the pros and cons of every medical treatment they ever receive and decide which one they need. If were the case GPs wouldn't even exist.

In an emergency situation where time is of the essence, a consumer (or the person making their medical decisions) is not going to just take a few leisurely minutes to shop around for the best ER company or to research the treatment the doctor pushes on them that they insist is necessary for their life or look up whether the doctor is accredited.

Litigation to punish providers of bad treatments is kind of a bandaid, not a solution. A lot of dangerous treatments don't show their negative effects until long after a person finishes their treatment. For a non-medical example, think about asbestos. By the time asbestos gives you cancer it's been twenty odd years that you've probably had asbestos in your house, but you used it as a packing material for years and so have millions of other people by the time the first person starts showing signs of an asbestos-related disease, so of course you didn't know better. You can sue the company that makes asbestos but the financial compensation doesn't reverse mesothelioma. Realistically, no amount of money can compensate for getting cancer. While things like that do slip by regulatory bodies all the time, they do offer some recompense in that they can ban the bad treatment from ever being provided again. Without governmental regulatory bodies in place, companies can settle their suits quietly and in private, they can keep selling asbestos, and patrons unaware of the negative effects will keep buying it.