<story><title>Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15m of Americans&apos; personal debt</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/12/occupy-wall-street-activists-15m-personal-debt</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>iambateman</author><text>That sentence has tons of insight on the problem of health care. Thanks.&lt;p&gt;As an aside, is there not some elasticity to medical care? People demand more health care for small problems when the price is lower.</text></item><item><author>travem</author><text>Welcome to the joys of a market based approach to healthcare when there is inelastic demand.</text></item><item><author>noonespecial</author><text>This demonstrates an interesting thing about medical debt in particular. They seem to be operating it almost like a market segmentation tool. The richest people simply pay the stated rate, everyone else pays the maximum rate that they are able as it travels down the debt staircase.&lt;p&gt;A more cynical way to look at it? When you get (really) sick, the price for care is everything you have, whatever that happens to be.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>noonespecial</author><text>The biggest problem is that there are both elastic &lt;i&gt;and&lt;/i&gt; inelastic sections of the healthcare market which we have been trying unsuccessfully to treat as if they were the same.&lt;p&gt;We need a payment conduit&amp;#x2F;tax structure for the elastic portion and something that &lt;i&gt;actually behaves like insurance&lt;/i&gt; for the inelastic. The system we have now does neither well at all.</text></comment>
<story><title>Occupy Wall Street activists buy $15m of Americans&apos; personal debt</title><url>http://www.theguardian.com/world/2013/nov/12/occupy-wall-street-activists-15m-personal-debt</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>iambateman</author><text>That sentence has tons of insight on the problem of health care. Thanks.&lt;p&gt;As an aside, is there not some elasticity to medical care? People demand more health care for small problems when the price is lower.</text></item><item><author>travem</author><text>Welcome to the joys of a market based approach to healthcare when there is inelastic demand.</text></item><item><author>noonespecial</author><text>This demonstrates an interesting thing about medical debt in particular. They seem to be operating it almost like a market segmentation tool. The richest people simply pay the stated rate, everyone else pays the maximum rate that they are able as it travels down the debt staircase.&lt;p&gt;A more cynical way to look at it? When you get (really) sick, the price for care is everything you have, whatever that happens to be.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>bowlofpetunias</author><text>And who can judge if those small problems aren&amp;#x27;t symptoms of a much bigger problem? A problem that can only be effectively treated if it is caught early enough?</text></comment>