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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

#281

Post by Consultant32452 »

frgtpsswrdlame wrote: post #221
Consultant32452 wrote: post #173

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The most economically efficient way to pay for B is to allow the free market to drive the cost of care so low that the person is either able to pay for it, or the cost through charity is trivial. This has the double benefit of not attempting to rectify one moral wrong (person does not receive care) by committing another (violent coercion by the state).

I don't see how you can define the state taking money from the wealthy to buy healthcare for the poor as violently coercive but not also define a corporation withholding necessary care from a poor person as violently coercive.

Doing nothing is not violent or coercive. It may be morally wrong for a person to do nothing, but it's not violent or coercive.

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

#282

Post by [deleted] »

willvarfar wrote: post #120

In these kinds of discussions I like to promote this interesting TEDx talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A9UmdY0E8hU "Where in the world is it easiest to get rich?" Spoiler: the talk shows that statistically the Nordic countries lead the world in millionaires and billionaires / capita, and in rags-to-riches. The talker offers the opinion that this is because its of the strong social safety net, education and healt…

[deleted]

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

#283

Post by conanbatt »

Frondo wrote: post #209
conanbatt wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I feel like throw-away statements like this almost come out of a different era, like the platform Reagan ran on, "government isn't the solution, it's the problem" or whatever. They're claims that are so simply phrased, people can repeat them without thinking critically about them, but if you do, and start unpacking them, the claims are either wholly unsupported, or unknowable. "Taxes == get fleeced" ... no. Or, at le…

> "Taxes == get fleeced" ... no. Or, at least, not as a matter of course. Maybe some taxes are bad, or unfair, but we can judge each tax on its merits.

Sure. I pay private healthcare and i also pay a medicare tax. Im already getting fleeced for a service I don't use.

> "Government program provides worse services" ... no. Or, at least, not as a matter of course. Maybe some things the private sector does better? But a huge swath of civic life relies on government services because, well, that's by definition what government provides, the building blocks of civic life.

Government is just unable to provide something more efficiently than the private market, it has to be a very particular case for that to be true. What i can do is provide services no market can provide. (like security, legal, etc). A private legal system would run afowl, private armies would be civil war, etc. But thats not because the government is efficient,its because it cant be provided otherwise. I would never call 3.6 trillion defense spending efficient.

The argument in favor of public run healthcare is that private healthcare is unable to do it not that the government is better at doing it.

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

#284

Post by Kequc »

I've lived in countries that have socialized medicine and ones without and my experience was dramatically different. I was always taught that socialized medicine was better. However I never got half decent care until I bought private health insurance.

My whole life I've been on government healthcare plans, across various countries. Imagine my shock when the first time I called my private health insurance provider at 34, it worked well. They chose the clinic I would go to, when I arrived to my appointment I was immediately ushered in to meet a physician. The physician was able to diagnose many problems within a couple of minutes, and I was asked to call my insurance company back so they could approve a series of tests and treatments.

I waited half an hour for approval and I then immediately saw two different doctors and had an x-ray all before leaving the building.

The clinic is interested in actually treating me and giving me the best care possible so that I don't come back. This ensures they get repeat business from my insurance company. Socialized medicine never gave me that kind of care or expediency in my life. The problems were all fixed.

One of the problems I've had for 10 years. Doctors were never able to diagnose it properly or it was "come back in 2 weeks, try this medicine, try that, etc." They were not interested in treating me they were interested in seeing me again and again because they were getting paid by the state.

I'm sure there are anecdotes to the contrary but I am completely sold on private healthcare. It's also fantastically cheaper. In Germany for example I was paying 800/month for healthcare, half "paid by my employer", which would really be my money. My current private healthcare costs about 380/year.

Diagnosed immediately, immediate care. I can buy as much or as little as I want and don't have to subsidize others. I'm encouraged to stay in shape and healthy.

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

#285

Post by Clubber »

jdub wrote: post #210
rukittenme wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh yes. Everyone who disagrees with me has a limited mindset. You could have used your open mind to read about a European (within this comment thread) who is having trouble with "the right" in his country: > This is a principal reason why the US was crossed off my list of countries where I would work and live. I fight against the privatization that is occurring within healthcare in my native country, Iceland. We used…

The controversy that surrounds universal healthcare systems goes something like this: "I am disappointed by my treatment in the system!" "Do you want to privatise it?" "Absolutely not."

In the US, the first sentence holds true, it just costs a lot more.

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

#286

Post by mac01021 »

khawkins wrote: post #9

From the Hackernews guidelines: "Off-Topic: Most stories about politics, or crime, or sports, unless they're evidence of some interesting new phenomenon." This post is clearly political and calls for universal health care have been around for decades.

Stories about who is winning an election, or about how many votes a candidate is going to lose because of some comment she made during her campaign are not of interest.

But there is a difference between politics and policy. The effects of various policies and how to construct policy to achieve a given effect are topics that will be of great interest to most hackers. Hacking society is what legislators do all day long. That's why you see stories like this one getting upvoted.

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

#287

Post by narrator »

The big riddle is how do you get the health care costs in the U.S back in line with the rest of the world, which doesn't necessarily have single payer. I'm a big fan of Singapore's public/private hybrid which delivers excellent results for a very low percent of GDP. We spend double as a percent of our GDP on health care vs all other developed nations.

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

#288

Post by DanBC »

austincheney wrote: post #233
stevenwoo wrote: post #212

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Does the healthcare marketplace of every civilized country of the world outside of the United States not count as research or an experiment in real life consequences?

No, I don't think these alternate examples are relevant. I suspect, and this is not my field of expertise, the largest differentiator is history. The US has been developing its health care system, uninterrupted, longer than other nations. It is much easier, politically, to build a great system if you start from scratch and have excellent examples at hand of what not to do as compared to modifying a deeply entrenched…

> The US has been developing its health care system, uninterrupted, longer than other nations.

The NHS is 70 years old, and it partly exists because Welsh coal miners set up cooperative insurance schemes. These worker's medical aid societies started in the early 19th century.

https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/wales-news/welsh-history-...

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

#289

Post by mter »

dnomad wrote: post #207
mter wrote: post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The thing with the VA isn't that it's all bad. It's that the percentage of completely inept people seems higher than in a normal hospital. Normal hospitals don't have multiple scandals of reusing insulin pens on different people, reusing colonoscopy bags, killing people, paralyzing people and periodically losing all of our records. A lot of veterans who are covered by the VA are like me. Technically covered because o…

Again, this is not true. Read the studies comparing VA care to private care. You're actually better off going to a VA hospital than most private hospitals.

I've been to a VA hospital. My brother/dad/uncle have been to the same VA hospital. Our experiences have all been poor.

If you were told that you'd get an appointment some time in the future and they sent you a notice randomly in the mail a few months later, you probably wouldn't be happy with the service. If your doctor was over an hour late, you wouldn't be happy. If you had a friend that was paralyzed after a spinal tap (my dad's buddy) then you probably wouldn't hold the VA in high regard.

You are the first veteran I've ever met who had good experiences at the VA and who doesn't know anyone that has been crippled by the VA.

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

#290

Post by dv_dt »

mc32 wrote: post #104
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…

Universal healthcare benefits people with no coverage, which is good, but it also, in the case of nationalized healthcare, i.e. not privately run, leads also to lower quality care for people already with coverage where experience is people who can afford it, will when other than the most routine things, seek private care. Given that, it looks like a two tiered system might work best. One which works like the current…

When you look at other modern nations, all with better performing healthcare systems than the US, there is a mix of arrangements. The common factor is public gov't control of drug prices and procedures. The arrangement of how the administration of the care is allocated varies all across the spectrum, from fully nationalized, to hybrids, to mostly private administration. But I'm inclined to think that public health experts setting cost ceilings by drug & procedure is the critical element.
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