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Our spending on healthcare is grossly and immorally inefficient. A change is needed. One reason for the ineffiency is that public welfare is subordinate to sp

• fastball 8y ago
  Just because something has worked for other countries does not mean it will work for the US.
  • sykh 8y ago
    Never said otherwise. I made the statement in response to the view that government run necessarily means inefficient. Clearly the converse is true. There are lots of examples.
  • beagle3 8y ago
    That's true, but since there is an example (tens of them, actually) where it does work well, then the prior should be that it could and should work in the US, and if one thinks it wouldn't work in the US, it should come with an explanation.
    • fastball 8y ago
      The explanation is that the US is huge and UK/Germany/Sweden/whoever is not. Efficiency doesn't scale proportionally to size, unfortunately.
      • sykh 8y ago
        That, even if true, does not support your argument. You need to show that the inefficiency in a universal care system in a country as large as the U.S is greater than the current system that we have. The evidence is that this is not true.
        • fastball 8y ago
          I don't need to show that, as I am not the one advocating a fundamental restructuring of the status quo. You need to show that the policies implemented in other countries will continue to work efficiently at the scale of the US, as you are the one advocating that course of action. "This policy worked well in [some place that is not the US]" just isn't good enough.
          • beagle3 8y ago
            This claim, taken ad absurdum, is equivalent to “you can never conclude anything from prior examples because conditions are different”. And you have, in fact, gone ad absurdum.
            • fastball 8y ago
              You can't definitively conclude anything about example B from the results of example A if the two examples are different. That's not what I'm saying though. All I'm asking is for you to show me how you will mitigate the problems that will crop up when you try to implement a similar system to the UKs at the scale of the US, because the US has 5x the population of the UK. That's not a negligible difference in scale, and if this can't be shown at all, that is a problem.
              • beagle3 8y ago
                You assert that problems will crop up, but fail to mention which problems. You are arguing that any data anyone brings up is irrelevant, without bringing up any data. You keep comparing the UK to the US, but a much more apt comparison is e.g. UK to CA, and the entire EU to the entire US. UK has twice the population of CA, and better bang/buck and health outcomes. EU compares similarly to the entire US. The EU is at this point in time, a federation slightly more disjoint but ultimately of similar structure to the US. Why not build an independent single payer healthcare system in each US state, with reciprocity among them? That is directly comparable to the european system, and has been shown to scale and work efficiently and well.
          • 8y ago
      • beagle3 8y ago
        The US has less than 400M people, the EU has more than 500M, so you are factually wrong. The EU is divided to states, just like the US; healthcare is locally managed with reciprocity between the EU members. Which gives you a model for a scalable US implementation if you desire. You are entitled to your own opinion, but you are arguing against facts. The US is smaller population wise.
        • fastball 8y ago
          I didn't say that the US was larger than the EU... I said the US is significantly larger than any one country in the EU, and each country in the EU has its own health care system. What is being discussed in this thread is a US-wide health care system, which is definitely not equivalent to what is currently happening in the EU.
          • beagle3 8y ago
            Each country in the EU has its own health care system, but in most senses they are regulated EU wide, and reciprocate with each other - if a French person needs urgent care in Italy, he will get it, and the distinct single payer systems will do the accounting. Said French person can also legally move to Italy, and will be covered by Italian single payer system from day one. The EU has only one medical "FDA"-like authority, which is - in fact - a huge problem for the UK post Brexit because they have to set one up for themselves now. The EU has, effectively, a EU-wide health care system. It is more federated than the US, by virtue of only recently become a union. It is also less uniform because of different history, tradition, and languages. These are things that make it harder to build than a US-wide, and yet, it works and is significantly more efficient than the US, while catering to more people. Of course the existing US-wide health care system is not equivalent; it is dysfunctional. You claim, but fail to demonstrate, that a functional one cannot be built, despite example in the EU that faces harder objective conditions.
            • fastball 8y ago
              If a French person needs urgent care in America they'll get it too. I think you're giving too much credit to "EU reciprocity agreements". Nowhere did I claim that a functional health care system cannot be built in the US. Good straw man though.
  • deleted 8y ago
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• Andre_Wanglin 8y ago
  >Our spending on healthcare is grossly and immorally inefficient. Yes, because it goes to treat chronic preventable (voluntary) conditions and to keep rich old people alive for a few hours or days longer. The way to handle those freeloading on the system is to abolish the system, not increase its scope.
  • sykh 8y ago
    I see that in the parable of the farm workers you would be the one hired at the beginning of the day.