Live data from Hacker News

Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change

werd.io

1–10 of 167 posts

Re: Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change

#7

Good article in general but such a misleading headline and framing. The problem, as described in the article's body, is employer-provided health insurance, not private healthcare.

Yeah, the article sort of conflates the two.

It's funny that he (accurately) quotes the Cato Institute as being opposed to employer-provided health insurance... and then implies that the sole alternative is the NHS. Um, I'm pretty sure that's not what the libertarian Cato Institute was suggesting!

Re: Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change

#8

Private healthcare isn't the problem, lack of free healthcare is the problem. I would much rather live in the UK where private healthcare is good and reasonably priced than Canada where in most places it's simply not available.

Yup. Recently drove 6 hours (each way, twice) to get to a Canadian private clinic to get treatment. This saved approximately a year (or more) of waiting in the public system for a routine outpatient procedure that takes 30 minutes to perform. I was lucky this option was even available within driving distance though.

Canada's public healthcare system is massively overloaded and it seems to be getting worse.

I really didn't appreciate how much of a problem this is in my 20s and 30s (while I didn't need much healthcare) and it was easy to assume the bellyaching from older folks was overblown. Time makes fools of us all.

Re: Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change

#9

Private healthcare isn't the problem, lack of free healthcare is the problem. I would much rather live in the UK where private healthcare is good and reasonably priced than Canada where in most places it's simply not available.

Americans have been propagandized like crazy and don't really understand what can actually be done. "Single-payer" is treated as a synonym for "universal health care." "Private" is seen as mutually exclusive. People will say we should/shouldn't have something like Europe, then describe a system that only a handful of countries have.

Re: Private healthcare makes industries less innovative. It's time for change

#10

Private healthcare isn't the problem, lack of free healthcare is the problem. I would much rather live in the UK where private healthcare is good and reasonably priced than Canada where in most places it's simply not available.

All doctor's offices in Canada are in fact private businesses. It's not actually a fully socialized system.

It's just there's a single payer. Those businesses bill the provincial government instead of you. Most of the dysfunctions in the Canadian system come down to provinces screw around with billing and payment and funding.

Take your dissatisfaction with the way the government manages payments to the voting booth instead of advocating dismantling what is on the whole a quite equitable system that has a history of actually producing very good health outcomes.

I actually have on the whole extremely pleasant experiences here in my corner of Ontario. And then I hear horror stories.

The system is underfunded and inconsistent. The province is to blame for that.

Post reply on HN