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The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

aaronstannard.com

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Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#121

Post by BeetleB »

losvedir wrote: post #29

Hmm, counting the insurance premiums 100% towards the birth of the child is a bit misleading. Presumably, you'd be paying those even if you didn't have the child. That said, the cost of health insurance for a family is pretty outrageous. My premiums are along the same lines as the ones here (although less noticeable since they're paid by my employer).

> Hmm, counting the insurance premiums 100% towards the birth of the child is a bit misleading.

I see your point, but do you not think that if you're a family of 4, having to pay $40K before insurance kicks in is ridiculously expensive, and out of reach for most Americans?

I'd wager that most self employed folks in the US almost never benefit from insurance (except for things covered by Obamacare which come nowhere near justifying the premiums). The deductibles can be so high that you're pretty much always paying out of pocket.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#122

Post by venturecruelty »

tboyd47 wrote: post #2

The corruption is so entrenched and so out of control, the only way out of this mess is for regular people to just stop using the health care system. Yes, there's no alternative, and yes, it means living a riskier life. It sucks, and it's not what we want to hear, but they can only charge us if we show up and purchase the product, and that's the last lever of power we can wield.

"Healthcare too expensive? Have you considered dying?"

Sorry, what are you going to do when you get into a car accident and they rush you to the hospital? Assuming you're even conscious. "No, I'm voting with my wallet!" flatlines Come on.

What if we used our collective power to fix the system? (Up to and including replacing it with something that works for the majority, and not the minority.)

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#123

Post by adleyjulian »

godsinhisheaven wrote: post #76

A lot of this is an issue of insurance no longer being "insurance" in the classical sense. Insurance covers all sorts of things, my HSA pays for all sorts of things that I never would have even considered, and while that sounds great, it helps to drive up costs. It's somewhat counter-intuitive, but if you dropped all government funding of healthcare tomorrow, healthcare plans would get cheaper. It'd also be total cha…

The majority of spend is in the last few years of life. A man dying of a stroke during the night at age 50 is much cheaper to the system than the same man living to 90 having fought cancer for 10 years.

I'm not advocating against health nor preventive care, however they don't decrease costs nearly as much as you'd expect.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#124

Post by vunderba »

peter422 wrote: post #71
AstroBen wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The quality of health care in the US is significantly higher than anywhere else in the world. Do you have any evidence of that?

15 out of the top 50 and 4/6 top hospitals in the world are in the US: https://rankings.newsweek.com/worlds-best-hospitals-2025 Again, I’m not saying the health care outcomes are better, or the value is better. I’m saying the hospitals are nicer, the doctors are the best, etc. Perhaps this is the wrong thing to optimize for! But we are getting something.

Quoting you:

> "The quality of health care in the US is significantly higher than anywhere else in the world."

Common Wealth Study of 10 Western Countries (U.S. lags far behind the other countries)

https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2...

Peterson-KFF Research

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...

Numbeo Health Care Inex

https://www.numbeo.com/health-care/rankings_by_country.jsp?t...

On an anecdotal basis, I relied on the Taiwanese National Health (NHI) for years and found it vastly superior in terms of quality and cost to the United States.

Perhaps a more accurate claim might be: The quality of the health care system in the U.S. is unparalleled provided that you are in the 1% that can afford it.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#125

Post by Apreche »

emmelaich wrote: post #49

Related: Car Seats as Contraception https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/10.1086/731812 > We estimate that these laws [mandating safety seats] prevented fatalities of 57 children in car crashes in 2017 but reduced total births by 8,000 that year and have decreased the total by 145,000 since 1980.

It’s not the car seats that are the contraception, it is the cars themselves.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#126

Post by throwaway29812 »

mystraline wrote: post #30

> If your answer to “I can’t afford to have children and run a business” is “then don’t,” you are building the political conditions for extremism. This is how every revolution starts: a critical mass of people who conclude the system offers them nothing worth preserving. They don’t just want change - they want revenge. Its "not afford to have children", but instead "not afford to live". And we're already seeing these…

[dead]

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#127

Post by healthy_throw »

peter422 wrote: post #34
o11c wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The amount of money the US Government pays just for that 40% should be enough to cover all 100%. We know this is possible because it happens in other countries, which have shorter waits and more coverage since that talking point keeps being brought up despite collapsing in the face of reality.

The quality of health care in the US is significantly higher than anywhere else in the world. Whether that quality is necessarily (or good) is debatable, but we are getting something for the money. You also are just completely wrong in your main point. We cannot provide the same efficacy of healthcare as we are now for 60% less. We are the richest country in the world, labor costs more here than other places.

It is also significantly more expensive: https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/life-expectancy-vs-health...

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#128

Post by ecommerceguy »

Theres alot of forces tugging at American "healthcare" - lawsuits, uninsured non-payment, subsidiation of 3rd world drugs, heterogeneous population, over eating, under exercise... usa practices reactive medicine. and maybe part of that is due to hectic modern life, but it certainly adds to the cost, time and money, that could potentially be avoided or at least reduced in a more preventive, educated system.

that being said, one can certainly find cheaper insurance (a policy to limit liability) if one knew where to look.

for instance a self employed single male, 27, queens new york, healthy non smoker, can have a national network $300 deductible, aca qualified policy, $329 a month.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#129

Post by AstroBen »

peter422 wrote: post #112
BeetleB wrote: post #100

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 15 out of the top 50 and 4/6 top hospitals in the world are in the US Outliers do not say much about the overall quality of healthcare in a country. Rather obvious lesson in statistics. Reminds me of the Russian mathematician who moved to the US after the fall of the Soviet Union. Most of his essays were criticizing American students, but in one essay he was quite frank: Russians who graduate with math degrees are…

Perhaps my language was too imprecise. My argument is that specifically the best care in the US is the best in the world. We have the best doctors and the best technology and the best treatments. This is not completely universal but it is also generally accurate. Whether or not this care is accessible or the median quality is care is good, that is different. I’m just saying we do get something for the money, it’s not…

So you're saying the US optimizes entirely for the best of the best care, without regard for what happens to the 2nd tier? (that the majority of the population actually use)

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#130

Post by izacus »

toast0 wrote: post #79
mhb wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Also not a big impact on the message, but $200/mo for a phone is a bit disingenuous.

Claiming $200/month for a phone makes one wonder which numbers are valid. I'm not saying everyone needs to make a $100 phone last 5 years and use a $15/month plan, but I'm not even sure how I would get to $200/month in phone bill, even including financing an iPhone 17 Pro Max.

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