Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits • Hacker News Board

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

#151

Post by ordinaryperson » Wed, May 02, 2018, 3:17 PM UTC

shin_lao wrote: post #71

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…

As a healthy wealthy individual, more than happy to pay for sick people that cannot afford healthcare to become healthy. It is in my direct interest to have as little sick people as possible in the country where I live.

Sure. But what if the costs keep skyrocketing? Say you pay 50% in taxes now -- you cool with 70%? 80%?

Presumably there's a limit to what you're willing to pay.

I am in favor of higher taxes but it's impractical to assume just paying for universal health care at all costs is a viable strategy.

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

#152

Post by thanatropism » Wed, May 02, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

fsloth wrote: post #58

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…

I'm from a country that has public health and free college education (Finland). I much prefer paying bit more in taxes than having to have a bad conscience knowing that a lot of the people living in my country would not have the same options as myself. I'm not exceedingly wealthy but I make more than the statistical average employee.

Do you think this is related to Finland being much, much, much more homogeneous demographically than the US?

I was going to say "ethnically homogeneous", but that isn't even the core of the issue. The US has populations with vastly divergent cultural backgrounds and outlooks (there's even a few types of white people); it's harder to argue that Hassidim in NYC should care for Crips in outer LA.

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

#153

Post by malyk » Wed, May 02, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

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.

Imagine your city is a grid...N/S streets are numbered, E/W streets are lettered.

Toll roads wouldn't be efficient if 5th-18th ave are toll roads (operated by multiple companies/agencies) and then Fst-Hst and Ost-Xst were also toll roads. You'd never be able to get across the city.

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

#154

Post by sykh » Wed, May 02, 2018, 3:18 PM UTC

conanbatt wrote: post #139

sykh wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a well known fact that all medical care systems ration care. A person in America who gets cancer, say, often times faces bankrupt and financial ruin. The same can not be said of people in other wealthy nations. I fail to see your point. All healthcare systems ration care. Not all of them lead to financial ruin at the rate the American healthcare system does. My statement stands. A person ought not face financia…

> A person ought not face financial ruin. The logical consequence of this is that any cost must be paid. And if the person cant pay it someone else does. So if someone gets a rare cancer whose treatment has 1% effectiveness and costs millions, it should be paid by someone else. The principle is wishful thinking, not economics. We as people every day make trades of our life for money. We pick a means of transportation…

Your first paragraph is false and indeed can not be true in any system that rations care. All health care systems ration care since no soceity has enough resources to cover and pay for all possible needed health services. Here resources includes number of qualified workers.

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

#155

Post by chiefalchemist » Wed, May 02, 2018, 3:19 PM UTC

merpnderp wrote: post #10

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…

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.

> "If the VA is the best the US government can do..."

It's not the best Uncle Sam can do. It's the best it wants to do. It's the (minimal) "best" is has to do.

Sure there's plenty of verbal grandstanding - by both politicians, the public, and the private sector (e.g., NFL) - about supporting the vets and their families, but actions speak louder than words. (Verbally) supporting the vets is good branding. It's that simple. That's all it takes.

Put another way, if the US brought back the draft and the armed forces made up a wider cross-section of society (i.e. poor, rich and in between) priorities would change. Actions would speak louder than the words.

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

#156

Post by arcticbull » Wed, May 02, 2018, 3:19 PM UTC

ordinaryperson wrote: post #124

arcticbull wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 g…

> Steve Jobs: no talent. Bezos: no talent. Obama: no talent.

I'm definitely not saying that. What I am saying is that their talent had to be coupled with an immense amount of luck, being in the right place at the right time, and things falling in line just right for them.

> 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.

They would absolutely affect you -- you'd get medical care. It's also not fair to say you don't pay taxes even if your marginal tax rate is 0% as your employer pays ~15% of your salary on top in payroll taxes, and your employer could also be taxed to provide healthcare as some countries do. Even San Francisco follows such a model with Healthy SF.

> 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.

A quick google search yielded all sorts of great reading material on how that could work [1], [2] and [3].

Of course correlation is not causation and if you reject that data, the reality is you participate in a society -- would you rather your peers be uneducated or educated? Healthy or sick? Terrible roads or good roads? Drinkable water? On fire? Ultimately those of the highest means have the highest responsibility to that society to give back.

[1] https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/08/12/edu...

[2] http://siteresources.worldbank.org/EDUCATION/Resources/27820...

[3] https://nces.ed.gov/programs/coe/indicator_cmd.asp

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

#157

Post by chimeracoder » Wed, May 02, 2018, 3:19 PM UTC

monocasa wrote: post #41

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.

The VA was a good system not too long ago, but the past couple decades has seen it get extremely underfunded in a starve the beast strategy. It used to be a black eye in the Republican's view of healthcare, but they sure fixed that.

> The VA was a good system not too long ago, but the past couple decades decades has seen it get extremely underfunded in a starve the beast strategy. It used to be a black eye in the Republican's view of healthcare, but they sure fixed that.

While it's tempting to blame any failure of national healthcare on Republicans, this is simply not factually accurate.

It's been at least two generations since the VA was anything resembling a good model for healthcare, and it's not simply the Republicans to blame for that, nor is it merely a problem of funding.

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

#158

Post by ams6110 » Wed, May 02, 2018, 3:19 PM UTC

seren wrote: post #34

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…

In countries with "universal healthcare", there is a big incentive from the organization paying the costs of exams to emphasis preventive care because ultimately, they won't run a deficit every year. And usually, it has a big bargaining power because its decide if if will reimburse the medicine or not. See for example : http://www.pmlive.com/pharma_news/france_agrees_lowest_soval... Similarly, there is a big incentiv…

There isn't really. In this case, the organization paying the cost has the power to confiscate whatever it needs from the citizens to fund its expenses. They are not operating with the financial motivational pressures of a business or even a non-profit organization.

All of government is a big cost shared by everyone paying into the common fund. That doesn't seem to have created any incentive at all to control spending. Quite the opposite in fact.

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

#159

Post by knieveltech » Wed, May 02, 2018, 3:19 PM UTC

SamReidHughes wrote: post #146

rogerb wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a simple thought experiment that helps: - an american citizen break his leg, he is not insured. Do you A: let him die B: take care of him ? if your answer is A - you are a terrible person, but you hold a consistent position. if your answer is B - the only question that remains is what is the most economic, efficient way to take care of this person ? b is universal health care. if you think you can do A with e…

What if they're not an American citizen? What if they're also in a different country?

What if they aren't? Are there criteria that can be met that make the decision to leave someone injured on the side of the road morally sound?

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

#160

Post by thanatropism » Wed, May 02, 2018, 3:20 PM UTC

nisa wrote: post #15

There are lots of problems you can avoid when you are able to regularly get a checkup from your doctor. Also not everything is only a cold and having someone who can check early for complications might save a lot of lives or prevent people from far worse conditions. Last but not least: Access to mental health services like cognitive behavior therapy that replace or supplement only eating pills might help a lot of fol…

> cognitive behavior therapy that replace or supplement only eating pills might help a lot of folks with addiction and raises productivity.

This is a nice sentiment, but would you quantitatively argue that this is a good investment?