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People regularly oversimplify this problem as socialized vs private healthcare without considering why American healthcare is so broken. If you look carefully a

People regularly oversimplify this problem as socialized vs private healthcare without considering why American healthcare is so broken. If you look carefully at the problems, you see that they won't go away if the government replaces private insurance and expands Medicare for everyone. These problems include a tremendous shortage of doctors [0]. Even Canada and the UK have more doctors per capita, and they are known for extremely high wait times (the jokes of the socialized medicine countries, so to speak). There are a number of possible reasons for this, most notably the hassle of occupational licensing (12-14 years of expensive college + 'indentured servitude' residency in the US). Nonetheless, American healthcare science is still ahead of the curve and subsidizes socialized countries -- ~60% of all new drugs between 2001-2010 were invented in the US, and foreign dignitaries of socialized medicine countries often still get important procedures done in the US [1]. It would be interesting to see how the R&D dynamic plays out if America loses its market incentive to innovate in the space, and no other developed countries have the financial incentive left. [0] https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS?end=2018&most_recent_value_desc=true&start=1986 https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.MED.PHYS.ZS?end=2018... [1] https://xconomy.com/seattle/2014/09/02/which-countries-excel-in-creating-new-drugs-its-complicated/ https://xconomy.com/seattle/2014/09/02/which-countries-excel...

keenmaster 7y ago
Our medical licensing system isn’t “indentured servitude” in the long run. It is convoluted precisely to benefit medical practitioners by artificially decreasing the supply of labor and reducing competition. Medical organizations largely want our med school and residency status quo to remain. Only recently, after bizarrely warning of an impending doctor surplus in the 90’s, have they stopped lobbying against increases in the number of residency positions.

keenmaster 7y ago

Our medical licensing system isn’t “indentured servitude” in the long run. It is convoluted precisely to benefit medical practitioners by artificially decreasing the supply of labor and reducing competition. Medical organizations largely want our med school and residency status quo to remain. Only recently, after bizarrely warning of an impending doctor surplus in the 90’s, have they stopped lobbying against increases in the number of residency positions.