Post-apocalyptic life in American health care

Post by daft_pink » Mon, Dec 25, 2023, 5:56 PM UTC

Post by pitaj » Mon, Dec 25, 2023, 6:27 PM UTC

margalabargala wrote: post #86

pitaj wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What do you mean "return to an NHS model"? The US never had anything of the sort. To answer your question: Ban employers from paying for health insurance as a benefit. If individuals see directly how much it costs, that will put much more pressure on prices. And employees don't have to worry about losing their insurance if they lose their job. Some other gradual options: - end the AMA licensure monopoly, making docto…

> end the AMA licensure monopoly, making doctors more plentiful lowers prices and increases quality I see how this would lower prices, but it's not clear how this would increase quality. Naively I would suspect it would, at least initially, lower average quality.

Post by specialist » Mon, Dec 25, 2023, 6:31 PM UTC

ufocia wrote: post #128

andutu wrote: post #19

My boyfriend woke up one day to find out they couldn't pee. After a few ER visits and an MRI, they determined he had Stage 2 bladder cancer. However, because they had the audacity to seek immediate medical treatment for a life threatening health issue, they have now been saddled with thousands of dollars in medical debt. I had to personally dip into my earnings from my Big Tech internship to help pay some of it off.…

Not an ad hominem attack or a microaggression, but hopefully constructive criticism. Your use of the "them" pronoun makes the post confusing. Does it refer to "they," presumably the doctors, the employer (job), the insurance, UT Southwestern, or to the gendered "boyfriend." Since you already decided to use a gendered noun, perhaps use it instead of the "they/them" or use a matching gendered pronoun "he/him" to distin…

Post by mikem170 » Mon, Dec 25, 2023, 6:39 PM UTC

holoduke wrote: post #92

mikem170 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A lot of money is spend on end-of-life care, trying to keep someone alive on their deathbed for an extra month or two, and people don't seem to want to talk about the diminishing returns of some of that care, and the opportunity costs - the other people that could have been helped more with those resources. It's a thing, even if ignored. We're paying big premiums for that to insurance companies as part of our wages a…

But your taxes are too low. For example the Netherlands does have a good system. But a 50k car costs 120k in the Netherlands. From your 80k salary 35k goes to the state as taxes. On most products you buy 21% is tax. If someone dies his money is 50% tax. Give 100k as a present. 30k is tax. And so on.

Post by burnerburnito » Mon, Dec 25, 2023, 6:45 PM UTC

dsign wrote: post #112

addicted wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> They pay little, but there was an instance where one of their physicians had to appeal to insurance to get a scan done (thankfully the insurance acquiesced). It doesn't make sense and all this debate around single payer healthcare is just obfuscation and distraction from investigating actual solutions. Single payer is literally a complete solution to the problem you’re mentioning before. So why is it obfuscation an…

It’s an ideology issue. I’m writing from the future. Here in Swerway we have transitioned to a health system that makes people twenty-five years old forever. On the other side of the pond, the last few US administrations have gotten elected on the basis of convincing Americans that it is evil and morally corrupt to live forever, specially if you haven’t earned an ethical dispensation by becoming a billionaire first.