Why would I want to make such arguments?
Walmart is what I had in mind.
Then you should have said so. A hospital or at least a clinic or doctors office was a reasonable assumption without any statement otherwise. Your post only mentioned "ER Visits" so I went with that.
A clinic at Walmart would still have to cover more than its marginal costs. It would have to cover fixed costs, overhead and profit. The total of that should be lower at a Walmart clinic than at a hospital.
Moving some other treatments away from hospitals might not be a good idea, or might be a good idea but very difficult due to legal/regulatory and medical culture issues. Blood pressure, body temperature, weight, and general checkups and simple treatments, maybe ECGs why not. That type of thing is already happening. Not as automated as in your scenario but that's more of a technological and engineering change than a cultural change. Easier to advance technology then it is to change people. The law, regulation, and/or legal and medical culture might require a doctor or at least a PA or RN to be there not just the technician but still you're saving money over hospital care, and even more if it could be more automated.
And while I'm filling out details, I shouldn't miss your overall point, that automation could drive greater efficiency and lower costs in medical care. That's clearly possibleeven if I'm not as optimistic about lower costs as you are.
other than to cause the price of the service to be 10x or 100x what it actually costs
I think your example was more of 100X or even 1000X, considering only the marginal costs. 10X (or more but less than 100X) considering non-marginal costs as well is more realistic. And also to the extent you can move more things to cheaper clinics rather than hospitals you can also reduce the marginal costs. |
