Reddit reviews The Primal Prescription: Surviving The "Sick Care" Sinkhole

Good start.
https://www.amazon.com/Primal-Prescription-Surviving-Sick-Sinkhole/dp/1939563097

But essentially the cost of complying with regulations drives the cost up.
Regulations make the services artificially scarce, driving the price up.
The subsidies encourage high prices since the consumer never bears that burden.
You've probably taken a prescription drug. Also probably a generic prescription. It takes close to a decade to bring a drug to market the first time. Then once the 17+ year patent is up, the entire process of screening and testing the drug must be done again. Multiple rounds of clinical trials. Duplicating the multiple rounds of clinical trials and still dwarfing the number of people actively taking the exact same drug everyday. Then you get a generic version. So 25 years maybe? From the time a drug is discovered until it's affordable? And the original company isn't charging a premium just to be evil. They have to fund the years of clinical trials for 100 other drugs that don't make it and for the next lifesaving drug they can produce.
A decrease in regulation could help ease this cost.

Let's say your church has a number of doctors who want to open a small hospital. They get funding from the church members and get ready to open. Oops they haven't received a certificate of need. The other hospitals and clinics in the area don't think they need another hospital and this you cannot open and cannot provide low cost healthcare. Who has more power to influence these bureaucrats, the small hospital or a large region hospital company?

> What would be the subject of your next book? I'm reading Choice right now and I think it's wonderful.

Thanks! I am working on a book with the other members of the Nelson Nash Institute that summarizes the content of our seminar. So it's a combination of Austrian macroeconomics and the mechanics of IBC.

(If you don't know what this means, check out:
https://lara-murphy.com/ )

> 2.) How would you respond to the question in this post?:
> I've been listening to a lot of contra Krugman and the Tom Woods show which often argues in favor of free trade. One argument that Bob Murphy often uses against protectionism is that it is silly to argue that if China or anyone else gave us a bunch of free stuff that it would hurt us, and by the same measure, them selling us a bunch of stuff for very cheap doesn't hurt us either. However, in Poverty Inc, a libertarian documentary that rails against the way Foreign Aid currently works, makes a compelling case to show that all the free stuff our governments and charities flood third world countries with (clothing, food, etc) is actually keeping these countries from becoming economically advanced by limiting the ability of local farming, textile, and even technology industries to develop and grow the economy. So which is it? Does free stuff hurt an economy, or not?

That's a great point, and I had the same doubts when I saw that documentary. I explicitly pointed out the apparent contradictions here:

http://consultingbyrpm.com/blog/2016/08/misguided-charity-and-standard-free-market-arguments.html

There were a lot of things documented in that video that definitely hurt the alleged beneficiaries (like "aid" to dictators that merely propped up their regimes), and I'm sure that massive and irregular dumps of medical supplies could be better timed to not have a flood/drought rhythm, but when push comes to shove, I don't think sending free goods to Africa makes Africans poorer.

> 3.) How would you respond to this common progressive argument: "Single payer/universal healthcare works in other countries, so why shouldn't the U.S. do it?"

My book on US health care / health insurance is here:

https://www.amazon.com/Primal-Prescription-Surviving-Sick-Sinkhole/dp/1939563097

We actually were going to devote a whole chapter to international comparisons, but the manuscript was already way too long.

I'm sorry that I don't have a really great answer for you. I don't know enough of the specifics to be able to confidently say, "Ah yes, the deal in Sweden is such and such, and when we think of New Zealand, keep in mind blah blah blah..."

However, the standard comparisons that say, "The US spends the most per capital on health care and has only a mediocre outcome," definitely leaves a lot of stuff out. For one thing, we sure as heck don't have laissez-faire in the medical sector. If they got rid of FDA and state-based medical licensure, you'd see prices plummet without a huge change in quality.

For another thing, there is definitely anecdotal evidence that these other countries have long queues for standard procedures. There are lots of stories of Canadians coming to US to get hip replacement etc. So if Canada seems to be OK, it's partly because the Canadians can avoid the failures of their own system by crossing the border.

Well actually our health care isn't 100% privatized, we haven't had fully private healthcare since the 1700's. With requirements to open hospitals such as "certificates of need" it actually creates a monopoly on healthcare in different areas. Government regulation has artificially driven up the price of healthcare. The privatization of healthcare is a discussion no one has the exact answer to especially in the developed world.

If you are interested in reading up on the topic a book I recommend is: The Primal Prescription
It may take a more libertarian view than most would but it is insightful none the less.
Amazon link:
https://www.amazon.com/Primal-Prescription-Surviving-Sick-Sinkhole/dp/1939563097/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1493728989&sr=8-1&keywords=primal+prescription

For anybody looking to read more on this topic and get a free market perspective of how the government has been screwing healthcare up for decades and what to do about it, you won't find a better book than The Primal Prescription by Bob Murphy and Doug McGuff, an ER doctor.

If you guys want to read a really good book about why our medical care is so messed up, readgoodp://www.amazon.com/Primal-Prescription-Surviving-Sick-Sinkhole/dp/1939563097/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1457047297&sr=8-1&keywords=Primal+prescription


Without abolishing the AMA (turning it into an accreditation instead of a license) and abolishing the FDA (can also keep as an accreditation), prices of health care will still be insanely high. The reason health care is so expensive is because the AMA artificially restricts supply and the FDA makes the cost of bringing treatments to the market insanely high. If the pharmaceutical industries are forced to compete with overseas companies with the FDA intact they will never be able to being new medications to the market due to the inability to recoup the costs of FDA approval. THAT cannot be solved without aboloshing the FDA. Simply opening the market will really damage drug development and that is why these things never get enacted.

The other things mentioned will only have minor reductions in costs and expanding the tax deduction will be a huge increase in federal spending.

Still gold ideas though unfortunately they are missing the source of the problem so cannot completely cure this beast.

It is disappointing that he did not respond to his, however, I believe he did not want to answer because the response would have been quite long and he wanted to answer as many people as possible.

I do have resources that you can look up for your answer as to what would the free market do concerning healthcare.

First, pretty much any articles on mises.org about healthcare will help explain the free market approach: https://mises.org/search/site/healthcare

I highly recommend Primal Prescription by Robert Murphy. You can get a peek into his coauthor's mind in this podcast: http://tomwoods.com/podcast/ep-541-just-how-much-has-government-screwed-up-health-care-an-er-doctor-explains-and-tells-us-how-to-fix-it/

I also recommend listening to any, if not all, of Tom Woods' podcasts on healthcare. He has a book about Bernie Sanders, and Chapter 7 is about healthcare and capitalism: http://tomwoods.com/d/bernie.pdf

I understand that this is a long list of resources, but you seem to be more deep into the discussion than the average joe.

For the shortest response to your post: https://www.facebook.com/WeAreCapitalists/posts/232060390298844

if youd like a book that explains why health care cost is so high in the us, check out this book:

http://www.amazon.com/Primal-Prescription-Surviving-Sick-Sinkhole/dp/1939563097?ie=UTF8&keywords=primal%20prescription&qid=1464463538&ref_=sr_1_1&sr=8-1

spoiler alert: its government intervention

All answers you need:

http://www.amazon.com/Primal-Prescription-Surviving-Sick-Sinkhole/dp/1939563097

Stay healthy.

Regulation is always justified with a very broad brush, because from a high level it always sounds good. To expose the problems with it, you have to drill down into the details and examine very specific effects.

The good news is you can start absolutely anywhere. I have yet to run into an example of regulation that didn't create worse problems than it set out to solve.

Take, for example, the VW emissions scandal. Eric Peters explains in a Tom Woods interview how it was caused by overregulation. He also has a gazillion blog posts on auto overregulation generally and VW specifically.

Or take the housing market. Sowell does a great job of showing how regulations pile up, layer after layer, trying to patch the problems caused by the previous round of regulaton.

Or take pharmaceuticals.

Or take childcare.

Or take healthcare.

Or take food waste.

Or take fisheries management.

Or take toilets.


Pick any regulation, and google the libertarian take on it. You'll find the case against it.

Can I live under the one he promised at the ratifying conventions and the states agreed to? The one that would never ever ever be used to justify universal healthcare. Again you simply say general welfare and commerce clause. Literally 4 words, 4 words justify totally control over Americans and state sovereignty. You are insane. I am not saying that lightly.
You are trying to rewrite history.

Need an economist. Bob Murphy.
The Primal Prescription: Surviving The "Sick Care" Sinkhole https://www.amazon.com/dp/1939563097/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_aD5rDbVTHQEZD

Again Hamilton wanted a national government. He lost, the federal government was established. Then he spent his life dismantling the federal government. Lincoln came along and continued his work.

Now we have what we have.

>Can you point me to a health economist that shares your views?

https://www.amazon.com/Primal-Prescription-Surviving-Sick-Sinkhole/dp/1939563097. Bob Murphy would be one.

> Can you point me to a developed country whose health system resembles your vision?

It doesn't exist, though some folks in America operate on a system I like. Check out the Surgery Center of Oklahoma - no insurance, prices right on the website for all kinds of procedures.

>If fixing healthcare is as obvious as you've described, there should be a chorus of health economists singing its praises.

Not likely. Just like there is ample evidence of the business cycle and it's government causes, with Hayek even winning a nobel prize for it in 1974, yet the mainstream today is full of traditional Keynesians who think the Fed saves our asses. From an incentive point of view, free market solutions are not popular with large businesses or politicians, so they don't get the time they'd deserve.