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A ticking time bomb: healthcare under threat across western Europe

theguardian.com

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Re: A ticking time bomb: healthcare under threat across western Europe

#41

Post by guerrilla »

naasking wrote: post #40
virtual_void wrote: post #17

Services, such as healthcare, public infrastructure, public transport, energy etc should be run by the state. There is always a conflict of interest when companies run these things because they care about profit / shareholder return more than they care about the people. Now, the fact that the state is often corrupt is another problem that should also be fixed but i just don’t buy the argument that companies should ru…

> when companies run these things because they care about profit / shareholder return more than they care about the people. We can accept that without also accepting that governments care about the people either. The top-level care about re-election, and the managers that survive party transitions care about their budgets, their fiefdoms, and maybe sometimes their employees rather than the public write large. Corpora…

> Corporations are kept in line with proper competition, where possible. What feedback mechanism is their to keep government bureaucracy in line? Sometimes they have audits, but those are never detailed or frequent enough.

No they aren't. This flies in the face of all the evidence right in front of you. They just form cartels and monopolies. The US where everything is private and is the most expensive (by far!!) with the least covered and worst outcomes compared to the one's we're talking about. You're ignoring ALL the evidence just to bolster your ideological nonsense.

Re: A ticking time bomb: healthcare under threat across western Europe

#42

Post by naasking »

negamax wrote: post #35
brainchild-adam wrote: post #33

I, for the life of me, cannot understand how something as essential as healthcare does not take priority over comparatively less essential things. It must be an unintended result of our complex societal setup with each stakeholder pursuing their own limited gain with no regard for the bigger picture, because it just makes no sense. Same is true for other essentials such as firefighting, basic infrastructure, etc. Why…

Healthcare is expensive and have massive fines built in for good reasons. Government jobs are for life with little to no repercussions. Also they might not align people correctly with incentives. We need government run programs with private sector like efficiency.

> Government jobs are for life with little to no repercussions.

This is one of the main problems: without some kind of feedback mechanism, this means bureaucracy can only monotonically grow which means inefficiency can only increase. At some point that inefficiency starts making private healthcare look competitive.

Re: A ticking time bomb: healthcare under threat across western Europe

#44

Post by crote »

wolongong942 wrote: post #16
ghostDancer wrote: post #3

It's an organized dismantle coming from the right wing parties, they cut resources and spending creating waiting lists and the deviate people to private services. The promotion of private healthcare it's all over, super cheap prices for now, till the destroy the system and then I guess we will get a super expensive scamming healthcare like in the USA. In Spain several hospitals that turned private were returning to b…

Right wing parties haven't had much say in western Europe as of recent, unless you've re-defined right wing. We're having the same issues here in NZ and it accelerated with a left wing govt.

Since 2000, left-wing parties have ruled for the past X years in:

Ireland: 0 years

The Netherlands: 2 years (Kok - 2000-2002)

Belgium: 3 years (Di Rupo, 2011-2014)

France: 5 years (Hollande - 2012-2017)

Germany: 6 years (Schröder - 2000-2005, Scholz - 2021-now)

United Kingdom: 10 years (Blair - 2000-2007, Brown - 2007-2010)

Austria: 18 years (Fischer, 2004-2016, Buren - 2016-2017, Van der Bellen - 2017-now)

So yeah, with the exception of Austria and arguably perhaps the UK, western Europe is pretty right-wing. In general, Western Europe has been very heavily on the neoliberal train since the 90s, including a significant amount of privatization. The current state of healthcare is a direct result of this.

Re: A ticking time bomb: healthcare under threat across western Europe

#45

Post by wilde »

brainchild-adam wrote: post #33

I, for the life of me, cannot understand how something as essential as healthcare does not take priority over comparatively less essential things. It must be an unintended result of our complex societal setup with each stakeholder pursuing their own limited gain with no regard for the bigger picture, because it just makes no sense. Same is true for other essentials such as firefighting, basic infrastructure, etc. Why…

We’re paying a ton of money in America and have worse results.

Re: A ticking time bomb: healthcare under threat across western Europe

#46

Post by [deleted] »

brainchild-adam wrote: post #33

I, for the life of me, cannot understand how something as essential as healthcare does not take priority over comparatively less essential things. It must be an unintended result of our complex societal setup with each stakeholder pursuing their own limited gain with no regard for the bigger picture, because it just makes no sense. Same is true for other essentials such as firefighting, basic infrastructure, etc. Why…

[deleted]

Re: A ticking time bomb: healthcare under threat across western Europe

#47

Post by negamax »

naasking wrote: post #42
negamax wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Healthcare is expensive and have massive fines built in for good reasons. Government jobs are for life with little to no repercussions. Also they might not align people correctly with incentives. We need government run programs with private sector like efficiency.

> Government jobs are for life with little to no repercussions. This is one of the main problems: without some kind of feedback mechanism, this means bureaucracy can only monotonically grow which means inefficiency can only increase. At some point that inefficiency starts making private healthcare look competitive.

That's pretty much it. Government jobs are lower paid because money comes from taxing private sector. Career growth there is all about how big of a team in numbers someone has reporting to them.

Re: A ticking time bomb: healthcare under threat across western Europe

#48

Post by crote »

notpushkin wrote: post #34
wolongong942 wrote: post #16

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right wing parties haven't had much say in western Europe as of recent, unless you've re-defined right wing. We're having the same issues here in NZ and it accelerated with a left wing govt.

I've seen those terms redefined so many times that now I think right-wing and left-wing don't mean anything really, outside the context of US politics.

Interestingly, right-wing . left-wing is usually defined specifically for the European political spectrum. The United States has a liberal - conservative divide, but it is vastly different from what we see in Europe.

If anything, left/right does not mean anything in the US due to the radically different Overton window. As a European, I would consider the Democrat party to be right-wing. If you want left-wing, you have to go as far as Sanders or AOC.

Re: A ticking time bomb: healthcare under threat across western Europe

#49

Post by naasking »

guerrilla wrote: post #41
naasking wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> when companies run these things because they care about profit / shareholder return more than they care about the people. We can accept that without also accepting that governments care about the people either. The top-level care about re-election, and the managers that survive party transitions care about their budgets, their fiefdoms, and maybe sometimes their employees rather than the public write large. Corpora…

> Corporations are kept in line with proper competition, where possible. What feedback mechanism is their to keep government bureaucracy in line? Sometimes they have audits, but those are never detailed or frequent enough. No they aren't. This flies in the face of all the evidence right in front of you. They just form cartels and monopolies. The US where everything is private and is the most expensive (by far!!) with…

> The US where everything is private and is the most expensive (by far!!) with the least covered and worst outcomes compared to the one's we're talking about. You're ignoring ALL the evidence just to bolster your ideological nonsense.

Do AMD and Intel have have a cartel, or do they have a healthy competition that drives down prices and improves product quality? That's direct evidence against your claim that a) I'm ignoring "ALL evidence", and b) that all corporations form cartels to avoid competition.

The fact that sometimes corporations form cartels does not entail that they always form cartels. The evidence is in fact overwhelming that this usually doesn't happen, but where it does I agree that the government should enforce its competition laws.

Finally, you didn't provide an argument refuting the point that government bureaucracy has an equally large problem in monotonic growth. Even if it were true that corporations always formed cartels, which it's not, it's not clear that this would always be a worse situation than that presented by monotonic growth and the inefficiencies that follow. Yes, the US has a serious healthcare problem. Other countries with privatize health insurance don't suffer from these problems, eg. consider Switzerland and Singapore.

Re: A ticking time bomb: healthcare under threat across western Europe

#50

Post by threatofrain »

naasking wrote: post #49
guerrilla wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Corporations are kept in line with proper competition, where possible. What feedback mechanism is their to keep government bureaucracy in line? Sometimes they have audits, but those are never detailed or frequent enough. No they aren't. This flies in the face of all the evidence right in front of you. They just form cartels and monopolies. The US where everything is private and is the most expensive (by far!!) with…

> The US where everything is private and is the most expensive (by far!!) with the least covered and worst outcomes compared to the one's we're talking about. You're ignoring ALL the evidence just to bolster your ideological nonsense. Do AMD and Intel have have a cartel, or do they have a healthy competition that drives down prices and improves product quality? That's direct evidence against your claim that a) I'm ig…

The previous post was making descriptive claims about US healthcare but then you responded with an abstract principle supported by an example in chips. It’s much more apt to go straight to your very last sentence.
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