201–210 of 283 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Nobody is under the impression that there aren't costs to care, so your response feels like you're addressing a strawman argument and isn't really insightful.
Not sure why you think that. There are definitely people who think universal healthcare will cost nothing.
Kaiser is the only non-broken part of the U.S healthcare system. They have never sent me a bill for a surprise out of network anything. Out of network doctors don't work there. All doctors are on salary. You get one bill from one company. No wonder they have been growing like crazy in California.
Sure, maybe the billing part of it is still great, but the care itself is not.
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“Total cost zero”. The cost is never zero. Doctors, nurses, don’t work for free. Infrastructure isn’t maintained without money. It comes from somewhere.
Paying for healthcare via taxes would look very, very similar to how it is now. Because that's how insurance works: you are paying into a pool now to get access to help later. I can't tell if you're being sarcastically libertarian or deliberately antagonistic.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate?
Politicians are often not great especially Teddy Roosevelt - a war-mongering, braggard focused on making a name for the himself and furthering the ‘forward race’. Change if it comes at all will come by... 1. a populist demagogue with unchecked power 2. Or when the market wills it more than likely via technological disruption of some kind Things must get worse before they get better as with all major advancements in h…
Kaiser is the only non-broken part of the U.S healthcare system. They have never sent me a bill for a surprise out of network anything. Out of network doctors don't work there. All doctors are on salary. You get one bill from one company. No wonder they have been growing like crazy in California.
Kaiser is popular and 'a' model of care, but do note that it is extremely limited in coverage and is one of the most draconian in respect to providers. They hire people right out of medschool with the offer to pay their entire student debt if they stay with them for 8 years. They have massive burn out.
The U.S. healthcare system cannot be fixed. Period. Full-stop. The only solution is to nuke it from orbit, pave it over, and start again. It's very easy to point the finger at the conservative party as the one who's screwed it all up, but the other parties are not really putting forward models for successful healthcare systems. If one were to sit down and try to create the most absurd approach to healthcare that guar…
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No, it’s not private healthcare that’s the issue, it’s the absurd layer of regulations that were developed over the past 70+ years. Typically some inefficiency was addressed with regulation that just created a new inefficiency. To give you a good example - 340b is a govt regulation that requires drug manufacturers to give a 23% discount off drugs to hospitals that treat a lot of low income patients. Great idea right?…
In my book, the problems begin as soon as the healthcare system is required to be lucrative. And don't tell me not-for-profit hospitals are not lucrative. It would be even worse without regulations. Care providers would illegally organize into cartels (which is of course already happening) and going to see the doc would then really just be like bringing your car to the garage, with all the 'niceties' that go with tha…
And I've been watching in real time as the government is actively blocking and preventing this same functioning private healthcare system from acquiring covid vaccines. Right now, this "evil" private healthcare provider has all the money and willingness to vaccinate us all for free, but the government is denying it because they want a slice of the potential Profit to pay for the vaccines for the rest of the country.
So you tell me who is evil because of money.
Meanwhile in developing countries, health care is hassle-free and low cost. I spent 24usd for an invasive procedure and meds in Taiwan. I’m honestly happy I left the States years ago because I’d probably be in debt at this point.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Can you elaborate?
Politicians are often not great especially Teddy Roosevelt - a war-mongering, braggard focused on making a name for the himself and furthering the ‘forward race’. Change if it comes at all will come by... 1. a populist demagogue with unchecked power 2. Or when the market wills it more than likely via technological disruption of some kind Things must get worse before they get better as with all major advancements in h…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
In my book, the problems begin as soon as the healthcare system is required to be lucrative. And don't tell me not-for-profit hospitals are not lucrative. It would be even worse without regulations. Care providers would illegally organize into cartels (which is of course already happening) and going to see the doc would then really just be like bringing your car to the garage, with all the 'niceties' that go with tha…
I've seen first hand the opposite in my country, where free market private health care is working almost near perfection. All it takes is minimal regulation and then watching the healthy patient incentives aligning with the profit motive without government meddling. And I've been watching in real time as the government is actively blocking and preventing this same functioning private healthcare system from acquiring…