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In America, you have to work until you die. The major thing the gig economy takes from people is health care. It's insanely expensive, and the Affordable Care A
by djsumdog 7y ago
In America, you have to work until you die. The major thing the gig economy takes from people is health care. It's insanely expensive, and the Affordable Care Act is a terrible shamble of broken policy. I spent time outside of the US and came back to find health care worse than when I left it:
https://fightthefuture.org/article/returning-to-america-and-the-unaffordable-care-act/ https://fightthefuture.org/article/returning-to-america-and-...
I have a friend who has been fighting brain cancer for over a year. The small company he was working for let him go (although they wouldn't admit it; it was likely over his condition) and his wife has to constant fight her own company's insurance company/policy to get treatments covered (and she is a lawyer; who literally works for a law firm doing mostly corporate liability cases).
In any EU country, you get a terminal illness, you can take time off and live your life. Will you get the same level of treatment as you would in the US? Who cares. You get treatment, and you can spent time with the people you love and appreciate things until you get better or your friends say goodbye. In America, if you do not have a spouse, you just have to keep working until you can't any more .. and then you die.
- jchallis 7y agoBased on the very large revenue from foreign patients who come to America to get cancer treatment on their own dime, those patients and their families care about getting the best treatment.
- stjohnswarts 7y agoYou can't use the 0.1% cases to justify the 90% who will get wrecked financially because of major surgery, cancer treatment, etc because it's so expensive. Medical treatment shouldn't be a for profit business, there has to be a better way, and other countries have a better system (in the sense of doing the greatest good for the most people, and not just the 0.1%) than we do and we can copy the best of them as we will be doing it from scratch.
- cptaj 7y agoI think it can be for profit but it needs regulation on how much you can bleed patients for. Selling pills for thousands of dollars when they cost you a dime to make is simply exploitative.
- PorterDuff 7y agoWhat was the NRE on that pill or the hundreds (thousands?) that didn't work at all? OTOH (or the other other hand), I'll bet that you could make a strong argument for stopping new drug development entirely. Simply sell existing drugs for as little as possible. It wouldn't surprise me if most of that research has insanely high marginal cost with little benefit at this point. I'll bet you'd have a healthier public, on average, if this happened.
- skohan 7y agoThe cost of medication is not strongly correlated to research costs. In the US most drug prices are set via a single factor: how much will people pay for it? Under this rubric, "cheap" lifesaving drugs are viewed as an arbitrage opportunity. If a lifesaving cancer drug costs $20k per month, then why should a comparable MS treatment be "given away" at $15 per pill? Also a huge percentage of new drug research is not geared toward creating new and interesting treatments: it's based on making small changes to existing molecules to preserve efficacy while making something "new" enough to be patentable.
- karlp 7y agoPeople do the same in India, Switzerland, Turkey, etc. medical tourism is very common.
- mtberatwork 7y agoMany Americans also head down to Mexico for various treatments that are more affordable. https://www.newsweek.com/thousands-americans-cross-border-mexico-affordable-medical-treatment-each-1426943 https://www.newsweek.com/thousands-americans-cross-border-me...
- ska 7y ago> Based on the very large revenue ... It's really not that simple, even if some political talking heads would like you to think so. People travel to the US for some treatments, and people travel from the US for others. It's not even clear if there is a net inflow or net outflow. All this really shows you is that people with the resources to do so are willing to travel for care, which shouldn't surprise anyone. Either for "the best treatment" (which depending on disease and treatment could be many places in Europe, US, Canada, etc.) or for more affordable treatment (cf US residents traveling to Canada for drug renewals).
- JMTQp8lwXL 7y agoThis is why I don't understand why people take gig jobs. Think of the opportunity costs. First off, Uber drivers don't make that much. Then you have vehicle depreciation and maintenance costs. You need to carry an insurance rider that covers rideshare driving. You also need to pay for your own health care. When you add up all these expenses, plus the desire for a living wage, there is no way drivers can be making enough with current rates. When people say you're essentially borrowing against the cost of the vehicle, I don't think they're being gratuitous. There may be low friction to entering the rideshare space by being a driver, but there are plenty of hidden costs.
- stjohnswarts 7y agoEveryone who I've personally known do these jobs only do it temporarily just to make ends meet between real jobs. It doesn't matter how shitty the benefits are if you're going to get kicked out on the street because you missed the rent/mortgage payment. Maybe some people do it "for a living" but I bet most are between real opportunities or making some money for Christmas/vacation/etc
- jshowa3 7y agoThe reason they don't have a choice is because the system is designed to provide the lowest quality of living possible because we haven't done basic things like raised minimum wage with inflation or institute universal health care. Instead we've subsidized all these gig corporations so frequently that one of the biggest ones pays 0 in federal taxes. Something I don't even get the choice to do. It's about time we stop capitulating to desperation.