3 ms·
> A friend of the family was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months to live. She received treatment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and l
by elhudy 4y ago
> A friend of the family was diagnosed with terminal cancer and given six months to live. She received treatment costing hundreds of thousands of dollars, and lived almost two years. In European systems she would have been sent into hospice
I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted, this seems factual.
It’s also the part of the problem that’s never discussed - the big cancerous whale in the room. Culturally, Americans can’t accept that sometimes people are going to die, and let it happen. 2 years of chemo and carT treatments with neurological damage, organ damage, chemo brain, the list goes on, isn’t worth it for most people. But they don’t even realize that until they’re almost gone.
Taking a holistic look at the health of the patient and running costa / benefit on quality of life vs treatment are two ways that the uk controls costa really well. As far as I’m aware it’s the same with obese people. There are limits on their reimbursement amounts for certain things and they need to buy extra insurance to cover that (someone from the uk correct me if I’m wrong?)
- kcplate 4y ago> I’m not sure why you’re being downvoted, this seems factual. I’ll make a guess at why. Because some folks in the US who want universal healthcare have a misunderstanding of what that actually means to make it affordable. Any comment criticizing or expressing what might be perceived as negative of any aspect of “European style healthcare” (as if that is a singular thing) will get downvoted by these folks. They have a belief that the level of end of life care most folks currently receive in the US will continue. Their 89 year old grandmothers with cancer are still going to get experimental and expensive chemotherapy all the way up to her dying breath. And don’t you dare suggest that she is not!
- sterlind 4y agowhy can't the 89-year old grandmother get supplemental insurance that covers the fancy therapies? I don't buy that there's no way to get people state-covered insulin and chemo without consigning everyone to bread lines. just make Medicare universal, and let people buy BCBS or Kaiser etc. on top, to skip the lines or cover more end of life stuff.
- kcplate 4y agoNot saying that she can’t, but I am saying that the expectation of universal healthcare from many of the folks supporting it is that she won’t have to buy supplemental coverage, but will get the same or better care.
- rayiner 4y ago> why can't the 89-year old grandmother get supplemental insurance that covers the fancy therapies? I think they can, but I also think that most people advocating for “Medicare for all” in the US don’t even realize supplemental private health insurance exists in many if not most European systems. Healthcare is a systems engineering problem to explore design trade offs within a solution space. Most people don’t think of it that way.