[mav1178]

Originally Posted by AKADriver

My FIL went back to Korea to get his lymphoma treated for that reason. The care was more 'bare bones' and assembly-line like by US standards but every bit as effective and far less expensive even having to pay more OOP because he hadn't paid into the system in decades. This kind of medicine in the US suffers from the same problems that Corbic sees in education - when costs are covered by expensive insurance policies, just like colleges are paid for by jumbo student loans, they're incentivized to make care more expensive and luxurious and push for more and more-expensive testing because this boosts profit, but it doesn't improve health!

Exactly this.

My issue is with how the system is structured cost-wise in the US. There is very little incentive to do things that go beyond your sources of funding... so if the state government tells you to teach a certain way, you teach that way or you lose money.

Same with medical, the hospitals keep saying "oh this is how our pricing is built into our system"... so why is it so stupid?

Even car parts is almost in the same realm. The concept of a 30-50% markup from cost was actually something that Japanese companies did when they first entered the US market 20+ years ago, believe it or not. Like if you are a Greddy WD, your cost is somewhere around 35-40% off MSRP and a regular dealer buying from a middle man pays 25% or so off MSRP.

Japan domestic dealers doesn't have this type of markup, at least not on that scale... they value direct dealers more, so there is no incentive to lower the price artificially (from MSRP) to sell more volume.