Mason Bailey
EEE-2083
October 19, 2022
Discussion Paper: Econ Talk on Free Market Healthcare
During this podcast, Keith Smith talks with Russ Roberts about his upbringing with his Surgery Center and on providing 100% transparency with prices that include everything in it. Smith worked in a hospital in the 1990s and saw that patients were surprised with how much money was needed to be paid for their time at the hospital. Smith realized that the hospital's plans were “ballooning” which meant that hospital workers were being paid way less than they should be. Therefore, Smith and his co-worker knew that what they were witnessing wasn’t right and that they needed to do something about it. Him and his partner walked away from their jobs to open up a Surgical center in OKC that would be 100% transparent with their customers about their pricing. This would be the entrepreneurial side of what they were trying to achieve. Smith and his co-worker took a risk that could have turned out to be a greater loss for them if their idea didn’t work out. The way that the two started up their business with no idea how much they would actually be charging was interesting to me. During their first sale, they priced it at an astonishing 1,900$ which was 10x less than what the hospital was pricing the procedure at.
**Discuss why it is interesting
**
Listening to this podcast was very interesting to me because of how much was talked about in the medical perspective. In the medical field, we usually don't get a full inside listen on how things are priced or why the pricing is for a certain procedure. But, during the podcast, Smith was perfectly clear on all steps that needed to be taken in order to achieve his dream. Smith seems like he truly cares about his motto of being truthful and transparent to all of his clients. I believe that if he didn’t care as much as he did then he would’ve probably never left to make his own surgery center. I also thought that what was said about why hospital bills are so high and costly was interesting. Some things talked about were the way prices and costs are determined, premiums, and why waiting times are so long. All of these topics play a role in corrupting the system to where health care becomes unavailable to a lot of the U.S.
elaborate on the interaction/relationship between entrepreneurship and society from the perspective of the movie/podcast
Smiths’ main purpose of his surgery center was to be up front with everything instead of blatantly lying and/or hiding stuff about their prices to potential customers. In his eyes, he just wants society and people that are interested in surgery to be able to pay the right price for what they want. He’s not looking for any extra money or anything like that. By Smith doing all this in his company, it shows the greater part of entrepreneurship and how it can affect society even if it is a specific part of it. By caring for people for not only their money, but how they would be truthfully spending it.
