5 ms·
> if it were strictly worse... Ohai goalpost. When did you get there? The existence of .eu-to-.us medical tourism is utterly orthogonal to the availability of
by rosser 8y ago
> if it were strictly worse...
Ohai goalpost. When did you get there?
The existence of .eu-to-.us medical tourism is utterly orthogonal to the availability of research in those countries. If you honestly took ten minutes to try, you'd be able to find dozens, if not hundreds of trials in every .eu member state, plenty of which are at least comparable to, if not more advanced than what's available in the US.
I could go to .eu or .in or .mx or .th, or any of dozens of other countries, to get access to medical treatments and procedures that are by many, if not most, measures superior to their alternatives available here, but which aren't available here (just one, token example: RISUG), or are vastly more expensive here, but have comparable — or, again, better — outcomes there.
Most of those places offer varying degrees of socialized, if not universal, medicine.
- conanbatt 8y agoIt means there are things the US healthcare provides that universals systems don't, and in a practical way that affects people, not purely in the world of ideas. The great folly of the world universal is that it implies everything would be available, and its a step in the opposite direction: a set of things will be made available, and the things that aren't will be delivered by the private market. Private care is still a thing in most universal care countries. And even with private and public, us still produces something for people that could get free treatment.
- rosser 8y agoDo you know what else affects people in a practical way, and not purely in the world of ideas? Having to choose between medicine and the rest of life's necessities. "Can I afford both my kid's insulin and my rent this month?" That's a real-world consequence which, offhand, only the US healthcare system offers.
- conanbatt 8y agoI disagree, I think this is the real-world consequence of the US regulatory environment.
- rosser 8y agoHow, exactly, has regulation driven the price of a drug we've had for decades up hundreds, even thousands, of percent, most of which increase happened after it was out of patent protection?
- conanbatt 8y agoWho stops you from buying insulin outside the US and re-selling it in the domestic market?
- arcticbull 8y agoFascinating that drugs in Canada are perceived as so much cheaper than in the US, and yet, you know that Canada doesn't have a socialized prescription drug program? Instead, provincial health programs negotiate drug prices. You know who can't do that? Individuals. Also, Medicare.
- conanbatt 8y agoPurely because of government intervention.. The medicare example is quite an interesting one as well. The US doesn't have the political momentum to let medicare negotiate pharma prices, and before such a basic thing is even changed, you want to hand over the entire health care insurance industry to the government?
- arcticbull 8y agoYes. At some point making tiny adjustments to an overwhelmingly backwards and world-leadingly inefficient system is going to be harder than starting fresh.
- conanbatt 8y agoOkay, but if the small changes were disastrous, whats the guarantee that the big ones will not be?