3 ms·

Look, this shouldn't be seen either as for or against socialized medicine. Sweden has that, but their political infighting rendered their infrastructure moot,

Look, this shouldn't be seen either as for or against socialized medicine. Sweden has that, but their political infighting rendered their infrastructure moot, and they're now the single worst offender. It has to do with if the systems in place are accessible and capable of responding in times of crisis. South Korea and Mongolia have very different looking political structures and medical infrastructure, but their ability to effectively provide and enable their infrastructure to those who need it sets them leagues apart from the US and Sweden.

rayiner 6y ago
You're the one who mentioned America's supposedly "ridiculously inferior health care infrastructure." Whatever political problems we had in terms of coordinating a response, our "health care infrastructure" itself held up admirably. NYC got hit harder than Italy, but unlike Italy did not run out of hospital beds.
- KirinDave 6y ago
  No, it hasn't. Suggesting unutilized capacity is "our infrastructure" working as intended is a ludicrous metric. It can be gamed simply by refusing to provision some capacity. The numbers that matter are what actually prevents death and injury (and the count of death and injury that represents the human costs of these failures). America still isn't testing at sufficient scale. Contact tracing isn't happening at scale. The federal government is actively discouraging these effective strategies. Also: Italy faced a national outbreak, New York did not. It's simply a category error to expect overflows even if those numbers do matter to you.
  - xyzzyz 6y ago
    America still isn't testing at sufficient scale. Contact tracing isn't happening at scale. America is now running more tests per capita than the socialized healthcare systems of Western Europe. These systems don’t do contact tracing either. The argument here is not that the US healthcare system is perfect, but rather that socializing it is not going to solve any problems it has.
    - JSavageOne 6y ago
      The whole point of universal healthcare is that everybody gets access to care, regardless of their employment status or wealth, and doesn't have to pay exorbitant fees or declare bankruptcy for it. Also testing in the U.S. during the last couple months of the coronavirus pandemic was very hard to get and extremely inadequate. None of my friends in NYC who requested tests were able to get access to tests.

rayiner 6y ago

You're the one who mentioned America's supposedly "ridiculously inferior health care infrastructure." Whatever political problems we had in terms of coordinating a response, our "health care infrastructure" itself held up admirably. NYC got hit harder than Italy, but unlike Italy did not run out of hospital beds.

KirinDave 6y ago
No, it hasn't. Suggesting unutilized capacity is "our infrastructure" working as intended is a ludicrous metric. It can be gamed simply by refusing to provision some capacity. The numbers that matter are what actually prevents death and injury (and the count of death and injury that represents the human costs of these failures). America still isn't testing at sufficient scale. Contact tracing isn't happening at scale. The federal government is actively discouraging these effective strategies. Also: Italy faced a national outbreak, New York did not. It's simply a category error to expect overflows even if those numbers do matter to you.
- xyzzyz 6y ago
  America still isn't testing at sufficient scale. Contact tracing isn't happening at scale. America is now running more tests per capita than the socialized healthcare systems of Western Europe. These systems don’t do contact tracing either. The argument here is not that the US healthcare system is perfect, but rather that socializing it is not going to solve any problems it has.
  - JSavageOne 6y ago
    The whole point of universal healthcare is that everybody gets access to care, regardless of their employment status or wealth, and doesn't have to pay exorbitant fees or declare bankruptcy for it. Also testing in the U.S. during the last couple months of the coronavirus pandemic was very hard to get and extremely inadequate. None of my friends in NYC who requested tests were able to get access to tests.