291–300 of 556 posts
Tell that to little Alfie. When you have an unconditional "right" to consume someone else's labor, the inevitable result is tyranny, rationing and the force of government determining outcomes.
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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…
Can you describe this vis-a-vis England or France? I am confused as to how you think the US has been at healthcare longer or how an interruption occurs.
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So because Republicans will fuck up any government in an effort to prove that government doesn't work, we shouldn't have government?
No, in the first place, you shouldn't have a significant percentage of elected officials in the government who will fuck up any government in an effort to prove that government doesn't work. If you do have that, then it is highly unlikely that your country will be able to implement a health care system that is competitive with Canada, Japan, Netherlands, etc. But beyond that, it's very unlikely that your country will…
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What country is that?
Presumably not one that spends twice the world average per capita on healthcare like the US.
Sounds like Venezuela, which I would not hold up as a gleaming example of good governance.
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Care for them under the universal system, but bill the cost of the universal system directly.
My mom got injured while hiking in a country with universal care. She hobbled to the next town, found a clinic, and got treated. Then she wanted to pay. First, the person at the clinic said: "What do you mean, you don't pay for health care." My mom explained that she was from another country. It turned out they didn't even have the means to take her money. Treating a few foreigners for free might actually be cheaper…
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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…
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).
If you get cancer, would you rather be treated in the US or Europe? Survival rates are significantly higher in the US, so I know what I'd choose. And yeah, I'll pay more, too, because I want high quality doctors.
If you don’t get cancer, where would you rather live? Life expectancy is significantly higher in Europe for lower average cost of medical care. There’s not necessarily a conflict between checkups and chemo, and surely some of the difference is due to population-level differences in poverty, diet, and lifestyle. But it’s worth remembering that it can be rational to trade slightly worse specialty care for better genera…
All derived from figures that don't account for how much more you pay in taxes for that "free or cheap" healthcare.
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.
Universal health care helps startups.
You just need it to become the norm for employers not to provide healthcare insurance.
So for example (and I am NOT saying we should actually do this) if they would simply pass a law forbidding employers from including health coverage as part of their compensation packages, then everyone would be buying their own insurance (on exchanges or wherever) and startups along with every other business would be relieved of the burden.
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Europe these days, at least I'd be treated like a human being and not a cash cow. Survival rates in the USA were better in the 1960s but most of the OECD now has much lower mortality rates from a diagnosis of cancer than the USA. One exception is the UK but the margin is very narrow. What the USA is good at is over-treatment which can extend life expectancy of a cancer patient a little bit (days, weeks on average) bu…
I can understand that perspective. But are you really treated more humanely in Europe? Instead of a cash cow, you're a statistical number that determines where you will get placed in the queue and how long you'll wait. In the US, you at least have the potential for autonomy to pay the best doctor you can find you to treat you as soon as possible. That autonomy (or illusion thereof if you're a cynic) is a core compone…
I've lived in the US and in more than one country with universal healthcare, and know quite a few people in similar situations. Some prefer living in the US, but I'm not familiar with a single person who, given a choice, would take the US model over the European model. Do you?
I wonder if "better cancer outcome in the US" is actually a result of selection bias, because the really poor people don't even get diagnosed, e.g. the money quote from [0]:
"""Danielle Scott, an employee at the store where Savastano bought the winning lottery ticket, told WABC that Savastano used the money for a visit to the doctor because he was uninsured. It was then he learned he had cancer, she said. """
[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2018/02/02/lotter...
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Excellent. We are in agreement that the American government can and does provide a health insurance program that covers lots of people and has the property that people don’t seek to leave it. Perhaps the idea that everyone be covered in such a system is not so far fetched.
> We are in agreement that the American government can and does provide a health insurance program that covers lots of people and has the property that people don’t seek to leave it. People literally are leaving it, to the fullest extent that they legally can. It's not a small number, either. About 40% of Medicare patients aren't on the government-run system at all, and that number has consistently grown over the yea…