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Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

economist.com

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Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#121

Post by sykh »

rukittenme wrote: post #66
sykh wrote: post #6

When a person gets a life threatening disease they ought not worry about whether or not their treatment will leave their family in penury. This is especially so in a nation as wealthy as the U.S. The American healthcare system is immoral and I hope it drastically changes. Americans need to change their underlying notions of what it means to be a society. An author was once made fun of for suggesting that it takes a v…

> When it comes to public funding for public goods we tend to worry about some poor person getting something they don’t deserve. The go it alone I’ve got mine, fuck you attitude is unhealthy. 1/3 of our GDP goes to "the village". We spend trillions every year on the things you want most . Education, healthcare, environmental protections. You name it; we spend money on it! 70 million people use medicaid. 44 million pe…

Our spending on healthcare is grossly and immorally inefficient. A change is needed. One reason for the ineffiency is that public welfare is subordinate to special interests. All universal healthcare systems in the world are cheaper on a per capita basis than the American system. A change is needed. I’m not advocating for more money. I’m advocating for a change in perspective by our leaders.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#122

Post by mikeash »

austincheney wrote: post #51

When the issue of universal health care comes up with regards to US policy I often see those emotional arguments pulling on the heart strings. Unfortunately, this is a distraction. I know this sounds cold, but it comes down to money. Healthcare in America is expensive. The problems appear to be commonly identified by various forms of research and including things like pricing inefficiencies of drugs, malpractice insu…

Seems like you have the cart before the horse. Universal health care would be a way to address those inefficiencies and solve those financial and administrative problems.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#123

Post by conanbatt »

monocasa wrote: post #86
conanbatt wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> When a person gets a life threatening disease they ought not worry about whether or not their treatment will leave their family in penury. You can't start any economic argument by saying that paying any cost is a must. You will get fleeced. It is not true that universal healthcare pays for everything. The most expensive and experimental treatments will not be covered ever by the system, and it shouldnt.

> You can't start any economic argument by saying that paying any cost is a must. You will get fleeced. ... in an open market.

In a government program you get fleeced twice, first by extra taxes, and second by worse services.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#124

Post by ordinaryperson »

arcticbull wrote: post #44
ordinaryperson wrote: post #18

Universal health care is a euphemism for the poor and sick getting their medical care subsidized by the wealthy and healthy. Morally, caring for the sick seems like the right thing to do, but it's like when I hear Bernie Sanders call for "free college education": he doesn't mean free, he means the wealthy subsidizing it for others. Universal health care implies just distributed costs, but the focus should be on bring…

There's some serious mental gymnastics going on here to justify that the US spends 2x the next country per capita on health care expenditure and still doesn't manage to pay for all its citizens. Especially when the federal government has already taken all its worst customers (the old) and thrown them into a socialized pool (medicare) without anyone to balance out the risk. Wasn't there a writeup recently that wealth…

> Wasn't there a writeup recently that wealth distribution isn't materially distinguishable from luck?

Some researchers in Italy created a computer model of human talent and ran a simulation. Not sure you can model talent, but more importantly that argument means no one is really successful, just lucky. Steve Jobs: no talent. Jeff Bezos: no talent. Barack Obama: no talent. All just luck.

> If someone is too poor to get their horrifyingly contagious disease treated until its too late and it spreads to you, you're still sick, and you may still die, cover or no cover

Again, I'm not wealthy, so these taxes would not affect me. But I'm not sure you're correctly modeling transmission vectors for communicable diseases.

> If you believe in the value of a college education, then you believe it will increase the productivity of that individual...This in turn benefits the wealthy who likely hold equities

You're saying rich people should pay really high taxes because poor people getting an education will cause the stock market to go up? Uh...not sure that's how it works.

I believe everyone who wants one should have access to a college education. But just declaring it 'free' and raising taxes on one group doesn't seem like a sustainable strategy.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#125

Post by AstralStorm »

ubi_now wrote: post #55
kingkawn wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No need to fight over which one gets to be called number 1. Both are components of a whole vision; a healthy, thriving populace, building off the successes of one another to create a better experience for everyone, rich and poor alike.

You don't need government programs to do that.

Please provide any example of successful large scale non governmental program that achieved such a lofty society wide goal.

Note that military and intelligence is government funded and probably the field where US has the biggest achievements.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#126

Post by edanm »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #91
edanm wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Penn Jillette also believes global warming is a conspiracy. Ummm, no he doesn't? This was something he believed in the past but has since changed his mind about.

Well, he spouts whatever makes a youtube video gets hits. Without research or background. He is an entertainer after all. What he actually believes is probably unknown.

That's a fairer criticism, although I disagree. You could say "what he actually believes is unknown" about anyone, really. He makes his views quite well known, at least from what I've followed him.

Still, I think replying to someone's quoting Penn with the equivalent of "well he denies climate change, so why would we listen to him?" is pretty pointless for a debate, especially when what you say is wrong! We might as well throw out the ability to quote anyone, since basically everyone has some view that someone disagrees with.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#127

Post by Daishiman »

austincheney wrote: post #114
slantedview wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun fact that most Americans don't know: We _ALREADY_ spend more than enough on healthcare as a nation to fully fund healthcare for everybody. It's just that, unlike in other countries, our current system routes that spending to various for profit entities that don't involve actually providing care. tldr; Lack of funding is not a legitimate argument against providing healthcare to Americans.

Doesn't that suggest health care in America is too expensive? Increasing funding to an inefficient system doesn't sound like a sustainable or extensible solution.

The inefficiency is in the private sector.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#128

Post by commandlinefan »

austincheney wrote: post #51

When the issue of universal health care comes up with regards to US policy I often see those emotional arguments pulling on the heart strings. Unfortunately, this is a distraction. I know this sounds cold, but it comes down to money. Healthcare in America is expensive. The problems appear to be commonly identified by various forms of research and including things like pricing inefficiencies of drugs, malpractice insu…

I've always wondered to what extent the high cost of health care in the US is subsidizing universal health care in other countries. If it actually costs millions of dollars to create and test a single medication, but that medication is cheap in other countries and expensive in the US, universal health care in the US may drive up the actual cost everywhere else.

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#129

Post by RangerScience »

e40 wrote: post #79
merpnderp wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you think the private healthcare system is immoral, you should take a look at the 100% government ran healthcare system that is the VA. You literally couldn't make up worse things than their administration has been caught doing with little or to consequence. If the VA is the best the US government can do, with some of the most sympathetic citizens, then it is incapable of doing better than our private system.

This is one of the straw men that is often brought up. There are a million reasons why the VA is messed up, most of which have NOTHING to do with healthcare. Congress has underfunded our troops for decades, related to healthcare and not. Something as simple as body armor is often purchased with personal money. A woman that works for me is high up in the Marines and I hear stories that disgust me. I do not know how Co…

I haven't heard these stories and would like to. Where can I find more?

Re: Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits

#130

Post by Balero »

merpnderp wrote: post #8
adaml_623 wrote: post #4

Just going to throw this out there. Non universal health care is analogous to half the roads in a city being toll roads. Society can still function and you can mostly get to where you're going but it's not close to efficient.

Why are toll roads not close to efficient? In my state the toll roads are by far the nicest best maintained roads and the tolls are extremely reasonable and collected without having to slow down or stop at a booth.

They work for highway, bridges etc. I think OP was suggesting something like every road in a city being a toll road, with a different toll per road. How much infrastructure would be needed to make this drivable, get the different road owners their money, make sure that each road owner is maintaining it.

Better to have these huge number of interconnected roads maintained by one group responsible for them.

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