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I’d like to know that if I have a heart attack or get hit by a bus then I’ll have access to top quality healthcare —- not burnt out understaffed hospitals. Sha

by Nbox9 5y ago

I’d like to know that if I have a heart attack or get hit by a bus then I’ll have access to top quality healthcare —- not burnt out understaffed hospitals. Sharing limited resources is a major role of the government, and managing hospital capacity seems to fall under “promote general welfare” to me. My $0.02

enchiridion 5y ago
It definitely is, but they’re addressing it from the wrong end. If the pandemic could be fixed by the government managing individual behavior we’d be done with it by now. Instead the government should be focused on expanding highly covid specific care capacity. That is by far a better way to spend the covid relief money than distributing it to sustain a nebulous lockdown. As far as I understand from talking with doctors, at no time within the last year have hospitals been at maximum emergency covid capacity, as in hospital beds in the hall ways, cafeteria, etc. This tells me that we are close to the amount of beds we need, and it would be feasible to build out additional capacity quickly, relieve the strain, and get back to normal.
- joshuamorton 5y ago
  > Instead the government should be focused on expanding highly covid specific care capacity. That is by far a better way to spend the covid relief money than distributing it to sustain a nebulous lockdown. This is not something the government can do. It's not something anyone can do. What you're asking for (though you may not know it) is for their to suddenly be more nurses and medical practitioners. That's not a thing that can just suddenly happen, or even happen with 2-3 years of prep. You need a decade to actually functionally increase the supply of nurses and specialists. Now there are lots of short term fixes the government has done, such as activating the national guard in locations (to reduce non-medical load on nurses) and hospitals can pause elective services to free up space and time, but that has huge downsides since it means people get life saving nonemergency surgeries like cancer removal.
  - coryfklein 5y ago
    > You need a decade to actually functionally increase the supply of nurses and specialists. Similar things were said for the vaccine. There is so much gatekeeping in the medical community that is not totally necessary. A doctor or nurse that immigrates to the US from a different country which has better health care than we do cannot practice were without jumping through tons of hoops. That is a pretty straightforward way the government – in a state of national emergency mind you! – could instantly and functionally increase the supply of nurses and specialists.
    - mrcrumb1 5y ago
      Are you suggesting that people rely on unprecedented medical advancements as a policy solution?
      - coryfklein 5y ago
        :lol_sob: Why can't we have nice things mrcrumb1?? Hahaha. But yes. Yes, I'm advocating that people be just a little bit more open minded and flexible about this issue and, ideally, the so many others like it. Sometimes it's quite depressing to consider the giant gap between how society functions today and how it could function if it operated by different rules.
    - Nbox9 5y ago
      Isn’t the shortage of healthcare workers world wide? How does reducing the friction of moving into the US do anything but shift the problem around?
      - coryfklein 5y ago
        Consider the already immigrated medical professionals living in the United States right now that are unable to practice because of the above described licensing issues. To give a couple examples. If a nurse moves to the US and learns he can't practice without going back to medical school, he may opt instead to work a different job and defer his medical career. If a doctor moves to the US and is in the same position, she may choose to remain a stay-at-home mom and let her husband be the primary breadwinner. There's also the arbitrage aspect here: globally we may have a healthcare worker shortage, but it may be more severe in one place than another. Reducing the friction involved in moving the workforce could allow workers that are in relative over-supply to move to an area with relative under-supply, improving the overall efficiency of the system.
mlyle 5y ago
> Sharing limited resources is a major role of the government, and managing hospital capacity seems to fall under “promote general welfare” to me. Sure. It's a pretty delicate balance between individual liberties and preventing bad collective outcomes, though. If you lock down 340 million people for a week-- maybe the net effect is stealing 3.5 days of life's "enjoyment" or "quality" from each. That's 3.3 million years of quality life taken. You need to save 20 years of quality life for 165,000 people to break even. In the first wave we probably exceeded that benefit, but it's highly doubtful any subsequent time passes that bar. And, IMO, if there's ever anything close to a "tie", you need to favor individual liberty. Maybe making people mask "costs" 0.2 days per week-- much smaller cost, but also a smaller effect. I think it's still justified, but only barely... It won't be soon.
spookthesunset 5y ago
Okay, then instead of punishing the general public, how about they go build more capacity? They've had 2 years at this point and they are still freaking out about "overflowing hospitals". It's not fair, ethical or moral to push mandates on citizens at this point.
- azakai 5y ago
  It takes a long time to train doctors and nurses and other relevant staff. Worse, the hard working conditions those people have been enduring since 2020 has led to a lot of burnout and attrition.
  - spookthesunset 5y ago
    That sounds like excuses. This thing is an emergency, right? Well, fix it! Punishing the public with these awful mandates because “it’s too hard” is a huge failure of our government.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]

by Nbox9 5y ago

enchiridion 5y ago

It definitely is, but they’re addressing it from the wrong end. If the pandemic could be fixed by the government managing individual behavior we’d be done with it by now. Instead the government should be focused on expanding highly covid specific care capacity. That is by far a better way to spend the covid relief money than distributing it to sustain a nebulous lockdown. As far as I understand from talking with doctors, at no time within the last year have hospitals been at maximum emergency covid capacity, as in hospital beds in the hall ways, cafeteria, etc. This tells me that we are close to the amount of beds we need, and it would be feasible to build out additional capacity quickly, relieve the strain, and get back to normal.

joshuamorton 5y ago
> Instead the government should be focused on expanding highly covid specific care capacity. That is by far a better way to spend the covid relief money than distributing it to sustain a nebulous lockdown. This is not something the government can do. It's not something anyone can do. What you're asking for (though you may not know it) is for their to suddenly be more nurses and medical practitioners. That's not a thing that can just suddenly happen, or even happen with 2-3 years of prep. You need a decade to actually functionally increase the supply of nurses and specialists. Now there are lots of short term fixes the government has done, such as activating the national guard in locations (to reduce non-medical load on nurses) and hospitals can pause elective services to free up space and time, but that has huge downsides since it means people get life saving nonemergency surgeries like cancer removal.
- coryfklein 5y ago
  > You need a decade to actually functionally increase the supply of nurses and specialists. Similar things were said for the vaccine. There is so much gatekeeping in the medical community that is not totally necessary. A doctor or nurse that immigrates to the US from a different country which has better health care than we do cannot practice were without jumping through tons of hoops. That is a pretty straightforward way the government – in a state of national emergency mind you! – could instantly and functionally increase the supply of nurses and specialists.
  - mrcrumb1 5y ago
    Are you suggesting that people rely on unprecedented medical advancements as a policy solution?
    - coryfklein 5y ago
      :lol_sob: Why can't we have nice things mrcrumb1?? Hahaha. But yes. Yes, I'm advocating that people be just a little bit more open minded and flexible about this issue and, ideally, the so many others like it. Sometimes it's quite depressing to consider the giant gap between how society functions today and how it could function if it operated by different rules.
  - Nbox9 5y ago
    Isn’t the shortage of healthcare workers world wide? How does reducing the friction of moving into the US do anything but shift the problem around?
    - coryfklein 5y ago
      Consider the already immigrated medical professionals living in the United States right now that are unable to practice because of the above described licensing issues. To give a couple examples. If a nurse moves to the US and learns he can't practice without going back to medical school, he may opt instead to work a different job and defer his medical career. If a doctor moves to the US and is in the same position, she may choose to remain a stay-at-home mom and let her husband be the primary breadwinner. There's also the arbitrage aspect here: globally we may have a healthcare worker shortage, but it may be more severe in one place than another. Reducing the friction involved in moving the workforce could allow workers that are in relative over-supply to move to an area with relative under-supply, improving the overall efficiency of the system.

mlyle 5y ago

> Sharing limited resources is a major role of the government, and managing hospital capacity seems to fall under “promote general welfare” to me. Sure. It's a pretty delicate balance between individual liberties and preventing bad collective outcomes, though. If you lock down 340 million people for a week-- maybe the net effect is stealing 3.5 days of life's "enjoyment" or "quality" from each. That's 3.3 million years of quality life taken. You need to save 20 years of quality life for 165,000 people to break even. In the first wave we probably exceeded that benefit, but it's highly doubtful any subsequent time passes that bar. And, IMO, if there's ever anything close to a "tie", you need to favor individual liberty. Maybe making people mask "costs" 0.2 days per week-- much smaller cost, but also a smaller effect. I think it's still justified, but only barely... It won't be soon.

spookthesunset 5y ago

Okay, then instead of punishing the general public, how about they go build more capacity? They've had 2 years at this point and they are still freaking out about "overflowing hospitals". It's not fair, ethical or moral to push mandates on citizens at this point.

azakai 5y ago
It takes a long time to train doctors and nurses and other relevant staff. Worse, the hard working conditions those people have been enduring since 2020 has led to a lot of burnout and attrition.
- spookthesunset 5y ago
  That sounds like excuses. This thing is an emergency, right? Well, fix it! Punishing the public with these awful mandates because “it’s too hard” is a huge failure of our government.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]