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GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

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Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#181

Post by conanbatt »

arcticbull wrote: post #147
conanbatt wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Who stops you from buying insulin outside the US and re-selling it in the domestic market?

Fascinating that drugs in Canada are perceived as so much cheaper than in the US, and yet, you know that Canada doesn't have a socialized prescription drug program? Instead, provincial health programs negotiate drug prices. You know who can't do that? Individuals. Also, Medicare.

Purely because of government intervention..

The medicare example is quite an interesting one as well. The US doesn't have the political momentum to let medicare negotiate pharma prices, and before such a basic thing is even changed, you want to hand over the entire health care insurance industry to the government?

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#182

Post by bostik »

dragonwriter wrote: post #68
sharkweek wrote: post #4

I like to write short stories in my free time. One that I’ve been working on over the last year is one where the concept of “crowdfunded healthcare” evolves into a dystopian game show where people go on TV and share their sob story on why they need money. Then the viewers at home get to choose who gets the show’s prize money each season through a bracket style voting system that crowns a champion at the end. I had to…

Oddly, the only hard to believe thing I see about that scenario as an actual, real thing in the US’s very near future is the use of bracket style voting rather than whole-field voting where some number are eliminated each episode. That would violate a strong trend in the reality competition genre.

Well, the entire genre is built around the concept of competitive elimination.

Do it with access to healthcare and you sure turn the intensity up on elimination.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#183

Post by conanbatt »

arcticbull wrote: post #148
conanbatt wrote: post #103

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At great cost to society. There should be no federal funding on this. This is one of the gravest reasons why healthcare is so expensive in the U.S. It subsidizes big corpo, big hospitals, then subsidizes richest employees, eliminating the most basic price mechanisms for competition. Not only does it do all the subsidizing, but it also makes it expensive by putting extremely costly regulation. But thats a whole topic…

You have a fascinating perspective on medicine and research. Research should be paid for by the people and made available in the public interest. If a private entity does pay for the research they are entitled to protect their inventions for 20 years via the patent program. That doesn't mean buyers or buying organizations shouldn't be allowed to negotiate.

Research should be paid by the people with an interest to pay for research. And the government should put as little stops and costs into that process as possible.

I would find it better that patents in pharma were eliminated, but also that the FDA approval process should be optional. If you want to save lives, you need to loosen up.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#184

Post by conanbatt »

arcticbull wrote: post #149
conanbatt wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I dont know the UK health intimately to compare confidently. I can tell you what it looks like with Argentina. that has universal care. Normally anyone with a dime goes private. Public is a lower-quality, cheaper service. That system is great for the poor, most expensive to middle class. I can also tell you what I think are reasons why US healthcare is so expensive, and they are not fixed by universal care programs.

No, they absolutely are fixed by universal healthcare, as they are everywhere else on earth.

How is universal care going to reduce the shortage of primary care doctors? How is universal care going to eliminate patents for pharma? How is universal care going to make non-profit hospitals cheaper? How is universal care going to eliminate fee-for-service, which has the administrative costs that are the woes of care providers? How is universal care going to reduce healthcare spending?

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#185

Post by Sir_Vival »

obrisintor wrote: post #50
jimrhods23 wrote: post #43

We need to get rid of health insurance companies. They are the reason all of our costs are massively inflated. The same thing is happening in education: universities know that a large percentage of students are getting financial aid, so the true costs are buried in a layer of bureaucracy. Fees and administrative fees continue to go up and the universities will always get their money. The students are then on the hook…

Care to explain your logic? Cat repair isn't so expensive even though everyone with a car has car insurance.

And it's well known that disreputable repair shops will ask you up front how much your insurance is paying you so they can get the full amount.

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#186

Post by raesene9 »

taxicabjesus wrote: post #12

In America health care is supposed to be as expensive as possible. People demand the system spare no expense on their care. I have some notes to write about "the predicaments of old people". Both my grandfathers lived an extra few years thanks to the pacemakers Medicare paid for. But they just suffered for those final years. A lot of old people's problems are related to excess alcohol consumption. IMHO, there would b…

When you say "People demand the system spare no expense on their care." is that really all americans?

So there's no market for cheaper but somewhat less effective health care?

Given that medical bills are the number one cause of personal bankruptcy in the USA[1], it seems really odd that all those people who's lives are getting seriously messed up by this wouldn't want some form of cheaper health care, even if it wasn't the no.1 most effective option.

https://www.thebalance.com/medical-bankruptcy-statistics-415...

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#187

Post by PavlovsCat »

jpernst wrote: post #136
badfrog wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The show Undercover Boss is kind of like that. Every episode some CEO realizes that all of their employees are underpaid, picks one with an especially sad story, and gives them some money to pay for their kid's surgery or college tuition.

There's an interesting book on this topic of individualized philanthropy by the powerful and its effect of masking the deeper systemic problems. It's called "Winners Take All" by Anand Giridharadas. I'm only about halfway through, but the central thesis appears to be that the powerful, even if they truly want to make a good-faith effort to improve the world, will naturally gravitate towards forms of social change tha…

or as Johann Heinrich Pestalozzi put it: "Charity is the drowning of rights in the shithole of mercy."

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#188

Post by toomuchtodo »

refurb wrote: post #175
toomuchtodo wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am. Part C is optional (Medicare Advantage, akin to an upgraded private insurance plan in European universal healthcare systems), and D is prescription drug coverage that a single payer system can administer as part of its system for all participants.

Part C is not an upgrade, it’s soup to nuts. The gov’t just writes the check to the insurer. A type of Medicare health plan offered by a private company that contracts with Medicare to provide you with all your Part A and Part B benefits.

We’re splitting hairs. It’s an upgrade in the sense it replaces primary Medicare coverage while also including supplements (vision, dental, and other such coverage).

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#189

Post by jlebar »

sharkweek wrote: post #4

I like to write short stories in my free time. One that I’ve been working on over the last year is one where the concept of “crowdfunded healthcare” evolves into a dystopian game show where people go on TV and share their sob story on why they need money. Then the viewers at home get to choose who gets the show’s prize money each season through a bracket style voting system that crowns a champion at the end. I had to…

You mean like this? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Queen_for_a_Day

Re: GoFundMe CEO: ‘Gigantic Gaps’ in Health System Showing Up in Crowdfunding

#190

Post by fatbird »

linuxftw wrote: post #170
fatbird wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All the countries that have tried it are less in the red than the U.S. by any financial measure, and have longer life expectancies/lower infant mortality rates/better aggregate outcomes than the U.S., which is typically at the bottom of the scale for first world nations where medical outcomes are considered. And they spend less public dollars per capita than the U.S., which is an ironic twist. The pure, brute facts s…

If it's such an affordable and great idea, why don't CA & NY implement it independently of the rest of the states and let their residents utilize the system? Why does it have to be an every-state solution?

They could, and in fact the medicare block grants in Obamacare are for that purpose. States accepting the block grants expanded access to medicare, massively reducing the number of uninsured. It doesn't have to be an every-state solution, but like any insurance it benefits from economies of scale.

Why don't they? There's a lot of people in CA and NY who don't think it's more affordable and better, notwithstanding 20 or 30 countries who have done it successfully. The private insurance industry is, understandably, a huge lobby against it since it would likely reduce or eliminate their business (the mandate to buy insurance, under Obamacare, was pretty explicitly a payoff to the insurers to accept it because they would receive a huge influx of new customers), etc.

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