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I've had the opposite experience. When talking about the problems of the US health care system compared to national health systems, the number one thing I hear

by ewzimm 10y ago

I've had the opposite experience. When talking about the problems of the US health care system compared to national health systems, the number one thing I hear is that ours is much more expensive and achieves worse results. One of the primary motivations behind people who want to nationalize health care is to reduce costs. Everyone is thinking about costs. The comparison to food is misleading. With food, there's an aligned interest. People go to the store and buy your product. If they aren't satisfied, they buy something else. With health care, most people have few choices. They get whatever plan is assigned by their employer or whatever they can afford within their limited market, often one or two possibilities. Then they go to the hospital, often the only one in the area, which in most cases won't tell them how much it will cost to be treated. There's no free market, no choice, no aligned interests. The interests of the insurance companies are aligned against them. People are paid to deny as many claims as possible. It often takes years of legal battles to get anything paid out, even when it's legitimate. Because even preventative care is unpredictably expensive, most people wait to be treated until the problem is most expensive to treat.

SilasX 10y ago
>I've had the opposite experience. When talking about the problems of the US health care system compared to national health systems, the number one thing I hear is that ours is much more expensive and achieves worse results. One of the primary motivations behind people who want to nationalize health care is to reduce costs. Everyone is thinking about costs. Yes, you can reduce costs and get more per dollar invested; it's still a fallacy to believe that one system will eliminate the problem of people dying because someone refuses to throw further resources at them.
- ewzimm 10y ago
  Basically, the article is a strawman fallacy. It paints national health care supporters as people who think, as you said, that health care as a human right would mean that everybody gets treated no matter how expensive. Nobody thinks that. The goal is to reduce the amount of people who are sick and dying as much as possible. We have data on that in the form of the performance of various systems and their impact on health. The US is still the world's economic superpower, but it's health care system is rated below Dominica and Costa Rica.
  - SilasX 10y ago
    So was I just imagining all the people repeating the line that 'no one should die because they can't afford health care'? Or do you not see how that condition also exists in all the countries that do it right? >The US is still the world's economic superpower, but it's health care system is rated below Dominica and Costa Rica. What is this replying to? What did I say that contradicted this or suggested otherwise, or merited a re-run of "everything wrong with health care in the US" as if I disagreed? I was addressing a specific fallacy, not somehow claiming that everything the US is wine and roses.
    - ewzimm 10y ago
      That low ranking is related to the first thing you're saying. It's what drives advocates of national health care, not the idea that nobody will die. When people are talking about deaths of people who can't afford health care, they're talking about people who don't have the resources to ever get care, the people who don't catch things in the early stages when they're easily treatable and find out too late that their condition has become terminal. The point of national health care isn't to eliminate all treatable deaths no matter how expensive, it's to improve care and accessibility so that it's in a place that aligns with the resources society could reasonably support. When we look at much poorer nations being able to provide much better care, we see that there's a problem that needs to be addressed. That's what people are talking about, not eliminating all deaths.
      - SilasX 10y ago
        Those are all great, subtle distinctions to make. They're also completely different arguments from, and not at all conveyed by "lol poor people die from lacking health care in the US but not Europe".

by ewzimm 10y ago

SilasX 10y ago

>I've had the opposite experience. When talking about the problems of the US health care system compared to national health systems, the number one thing I hear is that ours is much more expensive and achieves worse results. One of the primary motivations behind people who want to nationalize health care is to reduce costs. Everyone is thinking about costs. Yes, you can reduce costs and get more per dollar invested; it's still a fallacy to believe that one system will eliminate the problem of people dying because someone refuses to throw further resources at them.

ewzimm 10y ago
Basically, the article is a strawman fallacy. It paints national health care supporters as people who think, as you said, that health care as a human right would mean that everybody gets treated no matter how expensive. Nobody thinks that. The goal is to reduce the amount of people who are sick and dying as much as possible. We have data on that in the form of the performance of various systems and their impact on health. The US is still the world's economic superpower, but it's health care system is rated below Dominica and Costa Rica.
- SilasX 10y ago
  So was I just imagining all the people repeating the line that 'no one should die because they can't afford health care'? Or do you not see how that condition also exists in all the countries that do it right? >The US is still the world's economic superpower, but it's health care system is rated below Dominica and Costa Rica. What is this replying to? What did I say that contradicted this or suggested otherwise, or merited a re-run of "everything wrong with health care in the US" as if I disagreed? I was addressing a specific fallacy, not somehow claiming that everything the US is wine and roses.
  - ewzimm 10y ago
    That low ranking is related to the first thing you're saying. It's what drives advocates of national health care, not the idea that nobody will die. When people are talking about deaths of people who can't afford health care, they're talking about people who don't have the resources to ever get care, the people who don't catch things in the early stages when they're easily treatable and find out too late that their condition has become terminal. The point of national health care isn't to eliminate all treatable deaths no matter how expensive, it's to improve care and accessibility so that it's in a place that aligns with the resources society could reasonably support. When we look at much poorer nations being able to provide much better care, we see that there's a problem that needs to be addressed. That's what people are talking about, not eliminating all deaths.
    - SilasX 10y ago
      Those are all great, subtle distinctions to make. They're also completely different arguments from, and not at all conveyed by "lol poor people die from lacking health care in the US but not Europe".