171–180 of 257 posts
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The fungus or the steroid cream?
Which have you tried? :) p.s: anyone that downvotes this, you should really allow HN to be a place with a small dosage of humor sometimes!!
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I'm fully aware that some people will suffer because of this. That doesn't mean that we should force our views and our beliefs on those that do not share those, even if we have the science on our side. There are some pretty basic elements at play here and if you want to over-rule the right to basic bodily integrity you're going to have to do better than to quote statistics. By that rule we should force everybody to e…
Do the people and babies who cannot be vaccinated not have a right to their own bodily integrity as well? If that's really what you care about, then it seems better to require most people to get mild vaccines than to force some people to get deadly illnesses.
Of course they do, but their bodily integrity does not extend to forcing others to give up theirs.
I realize this is a difficult subject because it seems so obvious to people schooled in biology and statistics but the 'greater good' here is that we have a society where you get to make that choice. That there is a price to pay for that is something that right now a majority of the non-scientifically trained people feels is a trade-off worth making.
Freedoms always carry a price, and in some cases that means that people die. Those can be old people, young people or people somewhere in the middle but it is unavoidable.
From a purely rational perspective this may not make sense to you but people are not purely rational beings, they tend to feel they should have a right to say 'no' to someone that wants to stick a needle in their arm for 'the greater good'.
The only way I see to solve this is to encourage education and to hope for informed consent, not force.
Anti-vaxxers for the most part are people that have been duped either by religion or by fear mongering that vaccinations are bad, this makes it an education issue, not an our-way-or-the-highway issue.
I've done this, without feedback. The reason was that doctors seem to come in several varieties when it comes to bringing their ego to work and my doctor had a serious case of that. I was dehydrated after an operation and when he asked if he could do something for me I asked for some water, the doctor then ordered someone else not in the room to come and get me a glass of water. He couldn't be bothered to walk to the…
Alternate explanation is that the nurses are unionized. Simply filling up a cup of water may result in a greivence against the hospital. More than likeli the Dr. is instinctively covering his ass. I'm an engineer. I can't carry a part from one lab to another. Must have a hourly paid union member do that. If I'm caught and they file a greivance, the company has to pay them 1 hour of my salary, then I get chewed out by…
Not a chance where I live.
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It's really sad that it's impossible to discuss healthcare without people jumping into their pigeonholes. Healthcare isn't perfect anywhere in the world whether private or public. And even the US healthcare system isn't really market driven.
That's my point. Any suggestion which starts with "this is unsustainable because the market isn't driving incentives right..." has completely missed what's going on in healthcare first and foremost: it's your life, and it's worth everything to save it. Opening with "let's have a market" isn't opening with a cogent position, since rational actor economic theory is completely unable to deal with this (sure, there might…
My premise is that you can never spend enough money on healthcare. There is always a need for better treatment, more treatment, new machines etc. Even if you taxed people 100% you could still spend more money because as you say it's worth everything to save it.
But a political system is made to prioritize the resources that we have and so a singlepayer system cannot escape to have to come to terms with the boundaries of the budget it's given.
There are many areas where a patient will not be treated or where the system decides it's not worth continuing to pay for some treatment.
In a singlepayer system it gets decided what gets treated in a system which is more open to demand the market decides.
None of these are without fault it's just important to keep their limitations in mind. This is why ex. the french system as much rave reviews it's gotten also sets limits to who it will treat.
We can then have a discussion about whether it's better that everyone gets access to the same treatment or whether it's better that some people can get access to better treatment methods than others.
But to ignore that a single payer system comes with it's own problems such as limits on how many people can be treated and for what and how long, is not taking the discussion serious.
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I'm not so sure about "have their priorities straight there". Using the state to manage healthcare brings up strange priorities: "Should we cover kidney transplants or should our soldiers have real bullets in their guns this year?", "Should we build the new transit line or increase coverage to include penile transplants?", etc. I don't want people voting based on their appendix, their bad knee surgery, or a skin rash…
You say it's inevitable. Surely, then, you have some evidence of this trend actively weakening countries? It's easy to sketch convincing strawmen. But if you could actually point to somewhere that is choosing between kidney transplants and bullets, I'd eat my hat.
Plenty of single payer systems decides how long they are going to keep someone on treatment, what kind of products they allow them to be treated with etc.
A single payer system is based on a budget which means that budgets size is based on how it's prioritized.
Does it spread well on toast?
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14120784 and marked it off-topic.
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It's not that simple. Single payer systems also decide who to treat and for what sicknesses, what machines to buy etc. The reason why the US system is so expensive is because of perverse incentives given to the industry. As long as you can afford it I would rather be treated in the US system than the French or Danish system.
>It's not that simple. Single payer systems also decide who to treat and for what sicknesses, what machines to buy etc. So does the US, they just use one's wealth as a proxy to arrive at demonstrably worse results for everyone overall. If you want to have a system where one's income determines their ability to survive because you have enough money and that works for you right now, go ahead. But at least drop the pret…
You can be of the opinion that everyone should get access to the same treatment or you can be of the opinion that they shouldn't and that people who can afford better treatment should be able to.
All I was doing was point out that a single payer system has it's own issues as well.
Whether you are a fan of one or the other is more a political discussion.
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Chemo is often every week or month for a period of time, but the surgery is probably a one off. I'd go for it if I was able.
If you need cancer surgery and you want the best you do the opposite-- fly to the US. E.g. MD Anderson has many patients come from all over the world for surgery.
Ok, now this is just being obtuse. Parent post said single payer encourages checkups. You said "but there are still people that don't get checkups in Denmark". Those two points are completely orthogonal. Single payer encourages checkups, yes. Still some people won't get them, yes. Drop the sophistry.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14120716 and marked it off-topic.
The primary reason I have left healthcare providers has been the poor quality of their administrative staff. There are too many qualified doctors in the major metro area I live in to put up with ones where I can't quickly and efficiently make an appointment, can't get an appointment in a timeframe that is useful to me, and where their staff can't seem to successfully process routine insurance claims with major insura…