151–160 of 233 posts
At the end of the day, somebody has to pay for the health care.
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Medicare for all is not a solution. The solution is make health insurance act like insurance. Health service provider needs to post their price like all services and products. They need to compete for our business.
> They need to compete for our business. No, they don't. When you're out of breath with pain running down your left arm and are about to collapse, you're going to try to get to the nearest hospital, not first shop around to see which one has the most competitive rates like you're buying a new car or something.
Another horror storie from america. This rare gem mix otherwise common issues of debt, failling healthcare and jailing.
It's 3 year and half I take interest of the inner working of american society, since Trump declared he didn't understand why the US didn't use its nuke more often.
I think at every article I have reached the bottom... Yet everytime I learn something worse from another story.
America is on the decline. Corruption, greed and madness is literaly ruining the country from the inside.
No country will defeat you ; you will defeat yourself.
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Because for-profit healthcare is immoral, wasteful, and inevitably results in scenarios like the above. A Bismarck system (nonprofit govt sponsored insurance companies that all charge the same and are taken by all doctors) would be fine too, but that's not on the table in the US
I think the point was that there are multiple different reforms that are important, and why health care over another. What if there is a candidate that is for health care reform, but against something else you consider important, but there's another candidate that's for the other reform, but against health care reform? Or there is a candidate that is for health care reform but also for other things your are strongly…
Even for the most urgent issues like universal healthcare that have been literaly implemented by all western countries a long time ago as well as in most developing countries, you say : "But me..."
Since you're not directly affected by the matter, you simply don't care. Even if you could be the next...
You're part of the problem and nothing will never get done in America because of people like you.
Selfishness will break America.
Before your country collapses under its own debt, America will be filled by slaves and a clique of companies and billionnaires owning them.
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> Let's assume that emergency medicine should be provided by cities in the same way as other emergency services like fire companies. What's the argument for doing it that way for all medical services, including the ones that are not time sensitive and allow you plenty of time to shop around and choose the provider with the best combination of price, distance, scheduling availability, etc.? Because for a lot of people…
> Because for a lot of people, there is no real choice involved. If there's one hospital around for hundreds of miles, they realistically don't have the option to go to one further out when their job expects them to be available for work every single day. Federal law requires employers to provide at least unpaid sick leave. That caps the premium a local hospital can charge over competitors at the loss of the day's wa…
Not really. The law you're referring to is the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA), which only applies for childbirth and "serious health conditions". Most things you can shop around for also aren't serious enough to qualify, so you're not entitled to such unpaid sick leave.
But also, it's kinda a moot point because laws like that only apply to people that know them or can afford an attourney. Just like the person in the linked article didn't know she couldn't be harassed quarterly by the court system (rather, just yearly) due to being disabled, those who are most in need of that law are unlikely to know about it nor to have an attourney.
> If it costs $1000 in travel and inconvenience to fly to another city for a procedure then people won't use a local hospital that tries to charge $10,000 more
This assumes that people have both perfect knowledge of their procedure and the prices of all hospitals, and that people value money over convenience.
I know for a fact that I can fly to another country with free healthcare and get a procedure for cheaper than I can get it in the US, but hardly anyone does that regardless. It's just too inconvenient.
I also know for a fact that people rarely have even decent knowledge. Plenty of people buy incredibly overpriced cell-phone plans or internet. The free market hasn't been able to get those prices anywhere close what they should be even though people can switch providers, compare prices, and aren't stressed about their health.
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Why Medicare for all vs other reforms
Because for-profit healthcare is immoral, wasteful, and inevitably results in scenarios like the above. A Bismarck system (nonprofit govt sponsored insurance companies that all charge the same and are taken by all doctors) would be fine too, but that's not on the table in the US
See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8q71hrwUcu0 and the more complete https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rWlk9HreE7U.
He explains how regulation eventually results in a centrally planned setup that is less efficient than what used to happen.
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> Medical providers not being able to provide the total cost for a non-emergency procedure up-front but then expecting people to pay whatever price they make up after the fact is practically fraud. The fact that it leads to outrageous costs is entirely predictable. I’d like to turn the question around and ask folks who believe that the healthcare problem is one of not enough market freedom: what’s an example of a cou…
The Netherlands and Switzerland both have functioning private insurance systems. There are also several functioning hybrid systems, like Germany and Israel. But the primary reason you don't see more successes is the lack of attempts. It's not as if there is a long list of countries with failed free market healthcare systems, either.
My life was ruined by badly done, and even worse ultimately unneeded surgery. That privilege initially cost me many thousands, along with career and insurance going away, and the subsequent struggle to survive since has cost multiples of that. My entire future billed away. For a time I was able to avoid collectors because of a significant savings a frugal life had left me, but as time goes on you have to choose betwe…
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Court is just a building in town. If you are healthy, you can just walk there. The bigger problem in this case is that the people being sent to court probably cannot easily walk there, because they are unhealthy. It’s effectively criminalizing illness.
> Court is just a building in town. If you are healthy, you can just walk there. If you happen to live in town and that town happens to be where the State put the courthouse for that county. Plenty of counties in this country are bigger than Rhode Island -- not just in the middle of nowhere, either.
[1] For the record, Palm Beach County, Fl (main city: West Palm Beach) and Broward County, Fl (main city: Ft. Lauderale), respectively.
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I know sheriffs are elected too. I wonder if some rich person could just spend a bunch of money on ads with no qualifications when it comes to law enforcement and win in their county. Sounds like something a bored millionaire who retired early might do just for fun.
There was an issue a few years ago in Tulsa where the sheriff was deputizing political cronies with minimal training, and one of them,a man in his 70s, fatally shot someone. https://nyti.ms/1aPwG91
It'd be funny if it wasn't something that actually happened.