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Let's assume you're right and this leads to a price increase. Is it better to let the price increase or deny people medical care? I would argue the price increase is the better, more humane choice. From that perspective, the *real* problem is that people need insurance to be able to afford medical care in the first place. A humane system would not restrict medical access based on income. In my experience, the less you get paid, the *harder* you're expected to work. As we saw in the pandemic, outside of the medical field, it seemed that a majority of people forced to continue working were the low paid, hard working workers, so there's real world evidence that regardless of how much or how little the capitalist class values them as individuals, the work they do is critical for the functioning of society and the economy, so I don't see any justifiable reason to deny them medical care.

Well that's the thing, insurance is what makes health coverage expensive. Costs would have to be lower to get enough business. And hospitals wouldn't run extra tests just to get insurance companies to fund new equipment. And there is the hospital/doctors side. Hospitals and doctors pay boatloads for insurance. If the medical field could bypass the need for liability insurance, costs would go down. And with all that, there's no reason we can't still have health care for people who can't afford it. We could look at the housing market as another example. If loans werent a thing, houses would be far cheaper than they are today. Most folks don't have 300k liquid to drop on a house. A quick search shows people in the US earn ~60k a year. Goods and services that market to the majority of the people have to fit that budget.

I fundamentally disagree that insurance is the root cause of it being expensive. The root cause is a combination of the immense expertise required to properly diagnose and treat, and the supplies required to do the job. Pharmaceuticals and sterilized equipment and expensive machinery for tests and treatments, etc., etc. Insurance may exacerbate that, but you can't ignore a decade of training to be a doctor, the engineering experience to build their tools, the manufacturing techniques required to make sterile tools, the biochemical knowledge and experience to be able to create the drugs, etc. Insurance may inflate the cost some, but the price floor is already very high. Something similar can be said for housing and mortgages. Have you seen modern build quality? It's fucking cardboard and paper mache over wood framing. It's the cheapest shit possible, and it's still gonna set you back hundreds of thousands of dollars. It takes tons of manhours and thousands and thousands of dollars in supplies, and that's before you even start really finishing it so it looks ready for move in. Getting rid of mortgages wouldn't magically fix home prices. It would just turn the vast majority of us into renters because there's no fucking way most people manage to save up the six figure sum for a house while paying modern rent prices.

Oh, I fully agree that materials, equipment, and specialized labor are expensive, but would those costs not be forced lower if no one is able to pay for them? Would the medical system just die away in spite of the demand? I doubt that. I've heard, though haven't researched, that dental and medical work in Mexico is often, not only cheaper, but more advanced. And it's well known that medication is cheaper in both Canada and Mexico. So, expense, at least for drugs and equipment, is flexable. As for housing, if people can't buy at the current prices, they will drop. Without loans, either labor or material costs will have to go down. When it comes to both of these industries, there is a permenant demand. People need health and housing. Will wages go down? Probably. Maybe the doctors, the secrataries, drug manufacturing workers, raw material workers, everyone in the chain? The market will adapt.

I'll give you the pharmaceutical costs, those are inflated in the US. I don't think it's just insurance doing it, but it's complicated, so let's set that aside and just agree they could come way down in many cases. As for Mexico, though, keep in mind that a much lower cost of living means that the doctor can more happily take a comparatively lowered wage, as can their clinic staff. That's a major portion of the cost of care, and it's not something we're likely to be able to replicate in the US. The equipment, I'm not so sure how flexible that can really be. These things have lots of unavoidable costs. Raw materials cost what they cost, and other industries aren't going to cut the medical field deals out of kindness. High tech equipment is full of expensive circuitry that almost every industry needs these days. Build quality has to be high enough to ensure high accuracy for quality results, which requires skilled labor and extra time to get it right. Anything where mistakes can cost lives will probably require extensive documentation. The medical industry may not totally die out, but it could definitely suffer and shrink. Doing things right costs a lot of money. Not enough people being able to pay doesn't change that. There's a minimum price floor for any product because there's always a minimum investment to produce it. If profit becomes impossible, medical care will tend to be offered near well off communities capable of supporting the practices. For housing, people ALREADY can't afford housing. Millenials and younger are just fucked. They're not getting homes at nearly the same rates previous generations did. Landlords are buying them up, though, because you're right that there's permanent demand. That's why it results in a huge group of permanent renters.

I don't have anything more to say on the medical industry. As for housing, I believe houses are finally comming down a bit due to interest rates and other factors. But I'll leave it at that. Thanks for the discussion, always a pleasure to see people's view points. o7.