4 ms·
> has significantly worse problems of obesity and drug overdoses Which can easily be caused by a destructive and broken healthcare system leaving the ill unabl
by zanny 7y ago
> has significantly worse problems of obesity and drug overdoses
Which can easily be caused by a destructive and broken healthcare system leaving the ill unable to seek treatment and thus left to fend for themselves.
Even for those with insurance the costs - in time, in bureaucracy, in often money when your insurance provider refuses to cover - are unreasonable to consider seeing a doctor in a thousandfold situations that Europeans never even second guess. Because they don't need a waist deep paper trail to go to their physician, because they won't get a dozen different bill collectors harassing them in every legally gray way possible, because they don't need to break out the checkbook on the way out to pay the minimum barrier to entry extortion at the end.
- ve55 7y agoThe reason I disagree with this is because our healthcare system is largely built upon treating someone after they have an apparent issue, instead of preventing the issue. It seems very difficult for a healthcare system to stop someone from becoming obese to begin with, or stop someone from abusing drugs that is intent on it and not seeing anyone intentionally, or stop problems like depression by their root cause instead of attempting to fix all of these things afterwards. I'd be surprised if you really think a healthcare system by itself could be powerful enough to stop obesity.
- narag 7y agoActually it happens. You go to the doctor with some side effect, like headaches or high blood pressure and they nudge you to go to the dietist. Of course you can refuse, but there are a lot of kind and caring professionals and you know it won't cost you money, so it works sometimes.
- ve55 7y agoRight, but the keyword there is 'nudge'. If you are already having headaches and high blood pressure due to your diet, your diet should have been modified long ago. Similarly when people have cardiovascular issues and atherosclerosis, the time to change things was likely decades ago, not after they've already damaged their body so much. Sometimes these 'nudges' help patients, but getting someone to significantly alter their life is very hard.
- narag 7y agoStill there are much less obesity over here.