The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence • Hacker News Board

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#401

Post by tzs » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 1:21 AM UTC

kirth_gersen wrote: post #160

toast0 wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

$200 doesn't seem that crazy if they are buying several phone lines. I assume he pays at the least his wife as well, so that's two. If they have home internet bundled in as well, that would easily explain that figure. All to say, AT&T. He may also have a home phone line for a fax machine. It is perhaps a bit disingenuous to bundle it all together, but it also isn't the main point of the article.

What he said was:

> Having a $200/mo smartphone is now a participation cost for many things such as getting access to your banking information remotely, medical records, and work / school.

That makes it sound like this is the minimum that you have to pay to get a smartphone and service to get by in modern life.

$200/mo is definitely high for that. An iPhone 17 Pro Max with maxed out storage (2 TB) is under $85/mo for 24 months.

A Visible+ Pro prepaid plan is $45/mo ($37.5/mo if you pay for 12 months at once) if you don't use one of their frequent promo codes to get a discount.

That includes unlimited premium data on Verizon's 5 G UWB, 5 G, and 4 G LTE networks, support for a cellular smartwatch, 4K UHD video, and unlimited mobile hotspot. By "premium" data they mean no deprioritization. Visible users get the same priority as user's of Verizon's own postpaid plans.

The hotspot is only 15 Mbps, so you probably wouldn't want to rely on it if you have frequent or long internet outages, but I've found for the occasional short outage it was fine for email, HN/Reddit/etc, and YouTube videos.

This will be massively more than enough to cover the smartphone hardware and service needs for everything probably 99% of the US population needs to get by, at $130/mo.

Note that includes getting a new top of the line iPhone every 2 years. With a more modest phone and keeping it for 5 years we are looking at more like $60/mo.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#402

Post by eudamoniac » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 1:27 AM UTC

machomaster wrote: post #397

eudamoniac wrote: post #354

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> unlimited high-speed internet are requirements for participation in society I pay $7/mo (not a typo) for 1GB mobile data via US Mobile, and I have never hit that cap in many years. I just don't stream video or audio unless on WiFi, which is not a hardship. Respectfully, what on earth are you talking about?

My monthly mobile internet usage is 5-25GB. And this is me working from home using wifi, having cheap internet (slow, but unlimited) and barely being outside. Phone wifi usage is 150-250GB/month.

Well, I have to wonder what you are doing on your phone. I don't restrict my usage at all outside of video and audio streaming, so I'm befuddled as to how you use 10-50 times more data than I do.

Last month, 429MB used:

107 YouTube music

91 Google maps

70 Firefox

22 Amazon

Miscellaneous other small amounts

WiFi usage 26GB

I don't doubt that you use a lot of internet, but that amount is far away from a "requirement to participate in society" .

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#403

Post by eudamoniac » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 1:33 AM UTC

machomaster wrote: post #235

peter422 wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

> The quality of health care in the US is significantly higher than anywhere else in the world. Simply not true. Infant mortality and under-five mortality rate (U5MR) are one of best simple indicators of the quality of healthcare. USA's mortality is x3 (!!!) of the countries on top. This puts USA around place 50 in the world, worse than Russia...

It's obesity, mostly

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#404

Post by octoberfranklin » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:45 AM UTC

array_key_first wrote: post #389

octoberfranklin wrote: post #204

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes but hospitals are an essential part of Enumeration At Birth. Government loves anything that assists its people-tracking machinery. It will never ever ever discourage pregnant women from doing something that would make reliable Enumeration At Birth more difficult.

Hospitals are also quite good for giving birth, because human bodies are extraordinarily bad at giving birth. As fun as it sounds to go back to 25-50% infant mortality, I would prefer we keep this in hospitals and do cesarian sections and other interventions when necessaru.

Will somebody please think of the children !!?!?!?!

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#405

Post by weregiraffe » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:48 AM UTC

greenavocado wrote: post #336

weregiraffe wrote: post #308

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men would rather build a continent-sized car-dependent infrastructure that deal with mentally ill homeless people on the subway...

Correct. Lack of accessibility is a feature when you live around bad people and the legal system doesn't function to eliminate the threat

The radio said 'No, John. You are the bad people.'

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#406

Post by hellotomyrars » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:56 AM UTC

aleksejs wrote: post #370

hellotomyrars wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Based on what? Why even leave this comment if you’re just going to say “would likely be worse off” without giving literally any evidence or even suggestion of why. Insurance is a pool. The bigger your pool the more you spread the risk/load. It’s brain dead simple. Medical care is a human right, beyond that. Nothing about our system makes any sense and it is built to pad so many pockets in entirely opaque ways between…

> God forbid you have an accident and you end up at the wrong hospital when the one down the road is in-network but the one they took you to is out-of-network and you wake up owing thousands of dollars. If you examine the statement of benefits for your plan, you will find that it says something similar to this: > Emergency Services are covered at the in-network cost-sharing level as required by applicable state or fe…

You’re right. The No Surprises Act did make this a lot better. However it still doesn’t cover ground transport (and specific state laws do in some cases.)

Additionally for post-stabilization care the hospital is going to shove a lot of papers in your face and they’re probably not going to tell you that one of them is the one that says you agree to pay to whatever those services and waive your protection against balance billing. Yes they’re supposed to present it on its own and with your full consent and yes you can dispute that but people sign the forms and then still get screwed.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#407

Post by coolThingsFirst » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 9:41 AM UTC

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…

George Carlin put this very succintly: "it's a big club and you ain't in it".

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#408

Post by bossyTeacher » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 10:24 AM UTC

I know this article is American in its subject, so I am curious what do American voters who don't want public healthcare but don't want the status quote, would think is a economically feasible alternative that is available to all demographics regardless of income level

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#409

Post by a_tartaruga » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 5:53 PM UTC

ErroneousBosh wrote: post #371

a_tartaruga wrote: post #295

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The two biggest benefits are reduction of iatrogenic harm and comfort for the mother delivering. Midwives are medical professionals who have the equipment and expertise to intervene in the most common scenarios that require it.

Okay, that's a fairly interesting take on it. So - no pain relief, and if anything goes even a tiny bit sideways you just throw your hands up and expect to lose both the mother and child? And you actually pay for this?

Pain relief is a major reason to go to a hospital. There is no safe way to get pain relief in a home birth. It is obviously a very personal choice.

> if anything goes even a tiny bit sideways you just throw your hands up and expect to lose both the mother and child

Of course not. This wrong in two important ways. Midwives are medical professionals. They can administer medicine. Most notably they can administer Pitocin to stop hemorrhage after the placenta is delivered. This is the most common cause of maternal death during labor.

The other way this is wrong is it ignores the option of transferring to a hospital in an emergency. Midwives assess medical risk and can make the call to transfer. Delivering mothers who are overwhelmed can also make the call.

> And you actually pay for this?

The midwife model of care has many advantages over common OBGYN practices. As one example midwives are often delivering 2-3 babies a month instead of many every day. As another example the person delivering your baby is someone you have actually met before and have built a rapport with. Some hospitals try to make this happen with doctors but it is commonly not the case.

Overall the tradeoff is worth it to many people -- it's about 1% of births in the US.

Re: The healthcare market is taxing reproduction out of existence

#410

Post by encrypted_bird » Wed, Dec 03, 2025, 10:45 PM UTC

expedition32 wrote: post #341

anon7000 wrote: post #334

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Risk is not the only factor. Premium cost is probably the more important one for most. If someone can afford the $40k deductible option, but not the $5k option, you’ll just have to accept the risk. Increasing earnings significantly right now is harder than hoping medical bankruptcy won’t matter in the long run. 30% of US households make less than $50k. That’s more than 100,000,000 people in homes with less than $3.6k…

In my country people are already complaining about a 300 euro deductible (my mom has a chronic illness so she hits that every year)... I surmise that either Americans are all rich and have 40k in savings that they can lose with no sweat or America is hell for anyone not rich

It's the latter.