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Privatized health care as a person's sole option for care is an absolute dystopian nightmare. Any system that requires balancing human suffering against profit

Privatized health care as a person's sole option for care is an absolute dystopian nightmare. Any system that requires balancing human suffering against profitability is inevitably going to optimize for profitability. The fact that this is even a thing is mind boggling.

xwdv 4y ago
Public health care can be similarly dystopian in other ways: Very long wait times due to limited resources, subpar medical care, limited prescription options and drugs, beauracracy. No matter what society you live, the advice is the same: try not to get sick.
- PicassoCTs 4y ago
  Ah, yes, have a privatized public sector, use the gained funds to lobby in other countries, pushing a ideology that destroys public sector/services, use the result of ones own actions to push the conversion to more privatized public sector. The ultimate glider gun ideology.
- weaksauce 4y ago
  > Very long wait times due to limited resources, subpar medical care, limited prescription options and drugs, beauracracy. those are all there because the people that created the system did not think paying for it was good enough. it doesn't have to be that way. and even with wait times being long you still eventually get it. in the privatized system if you are poor and have bad health care you don't get it at all.
- harshalizee 4y ago
  I moved from a third world country with both socialized and private healthcare, to the United States. I pay vastly more for worse healthcare than anywhere I've lived. The fact that you, your doctor can agree that a certain procedure is required, only to be denied by a third party with no medical qualification is absolutely dystopian.
  - ipaddr 4y ago
    Now you are talking about insurance which is the heart of the problem
  - Mizoguchi 4y ago
    I also came to the US from a country with a good hybrid public/private system and my experience in the US had been different. So I guess it depends on where (city/state) you live and also what type of insurance you have. Where I live I have access to a SOTA network of hospitals with great technology and some practices amount the best in the world (people come here from other states and even countries for treatment) and I use their own insurance, so it's been great so far, never dealt with any issues having medical care rejected. I pay $350/month (self employed) and I have a very reasonable deductible, $60 copay to see specialists and many preventive procedures such as cancer and heart disease screenings (which I use), blood work and some PT sessions completely free. I even get discounts on fitness centers and health tracking apps which helps offset part of the premium. My shoulder was actually spared from a very invasive surgery thanks to a doctor top of his field (he sees olympic teams) who was able to treat me with only PT. I don't think I paid more than $1000 out of pocket for everything including several MRIs and multiple visits to his practice, plus several sessions of PT and medications. It could have been free back in my country, I guess, but I could have also been screwed for life due to an unnecessary surgery.
  - wahnfrieden 4y ago
    Sounds like death panels made up of unqualified bureaucrats
    - Scoundreller 4y ago
      Both public and private systems have "death panels". Though cited article suggests even death panels run by doctors are no guarantee of effectiveness.
      - wahnfrieden 4y ago
        The article is not about death panels run by doctors, they are run by insurance companies. The doctors in this scenario are workers given bounded instructions on how to operate by the ones running it, without autonomy on how to organize the death panel decisionmaking. It's in the title - the "having" shows who is in control. These are not worker owned cooperatives. Nor are most state owned death panels.
- illiarian 4y ago
  > Very long wait times due to limited resources, subpar medical care, limited prescription options and drugs, You realize we're discussing the US which has all this? > beauracracy. It's funny you mention this, because the US spends vastly more on bureaucracy in its health systems than other developed nations.
  - pithon 4y ago
    [flagged]
- nathan_compton 4y ago
  This might be true, but as someone who has lived in the U.S. and Europe I can say utterly unequivocally that I preferred Health Care in Europe. I wasn't even in one of the European countries with a great reputation for Health Care. Health Care in the U.S. isn't just bad, its outright fucking brutal. An elderly friend of mine recently fell and went to an urgent care where they couldn't get him into the x-ray machine. They told him to go to an emergency room where he waited for _13_ fucking hours with a broken pelvis. I'm basically 100% sure that such emergency room bullshit literally kills people from stress or exposing them to other sick people. You can't even wait in your damn car and just have them text you - they just force you to sit in this horrible room with a ton of sick people for hours on end. The U.S. Health Care system absolutely fucking blows.
  - xwdv 4y ago
    I’m fully insured and have always been well taken care of in the United States health care system. Never wait more than 30 minutes if I were in an emergency room, and usually I’m attended to within 10-15. Doctors appointments are easy to get, never paid much for prescriptions. If I was in a public system, I’d fear I’d be fighting for attention alongside the general public, so I’m not convinced it would be better.
    - stemlord 4y ago
      I'm fully insured and healthy but still just paid almost $3000 in deductubles for a single upper endoscopy (common procedure for 40+ folks). Cigna. In Italy last summer I received a dental xray and diagnosis as a walk-in, for FREE.
      - eecc 4y ago
        Just adding that in Lombardy, the region around Milan who have a bad case of parochial wanna-be NYC, local (right wing) government is pushing towards private health care with lavish subsidies for privates and a grossly underfunded public health system. To get an MRI via public you can wait 1k days, invia private is a next-day appointment although you must be ready to pay thousands EUR. frankly it’s obviously deliberate
- xenospn 4y ago
  As someone who grew up in israel, I can confirm your statement is factually incorrect.
- cmurf 4y ago
  Sounds exactly like my private for profit health care provider.
firstlink 4y ago
All claims being reviewed by big health insurance conglomerates is the antithesis of privatized healthcare. It incorporates the worst part of public healthcare and destroys the best potential benefit of privatized healthcare.
- emodendroket 4y ago
  How is that so? The health insurance conglomerates are in private hands.
  - dboreham 4y ago
    Parent probably means that those companies are part of a government sponsored cleptocracy.
    - emodendroket 4y ago
      I would say that there can't be any market without the government creating it (what does a contract or deed mean if there's no authority that recognizes it?), so there's a bit of "no true Scotsman" in trying to call it anything else besides a private market.
- specialist 4y ago
  What are some real world examples of beneficial privatized healthcare?
  - pantulis 4y ago
    IMHO in privatized healthcare you are not the patient, you are the customer. As such, you should be having a better "customer journey" than in public healthcare: more immediate test/diagnostics, better experience in the hospital (like a room for yourself). And that's it. As a counterpart, it's not clear you are receiving the best medical attention. And of course you (through your employer) are paying for something that can be denied. Note: I happen to have private healthcare with Cigna in a country with a reasonably good public health system (Spain, though it varies between different autonomous communities), happy to pay the taxes and will defend that public health systems are a staple of any modern country.
winrid 4y ago
I have literally spent years trying to get an MRI for my knee after an accident. Both Kaiser and Anthem won't cover it.
- t344344 4y ago
  I had MRI in EU, it was 160 euro for scan, and another 50 euro for specialist consultation. Public insurance would not cover it, so I paid it myself. Not sure what is holding you back, but health should be a priority!
  - winrid 4y ago
    Yeah, that's an idea. It's like 10k here. The trip to the EU, a vacation, and the MRI itself would be cheaper... I was actually planning on getting it done on my next trip to China, which is about the same cost wise, and the doctors are good as they see so many people lol
    - hirsin 4y ago
      I get a screening in India when I visit some family there. Full blood work, you call in the morning, they come by the house and draw it, results in the next morning. It's faster and cheaper to do that, including the flights, than to try and get this done through my doctor in the US. So, yeah, go for it.
      - mdorazio 4y ago
        Not sure what you mean here. Services like Personalabs or just scheduling straight through Quest Diagnostics cost a couple hundred bucks for blood & urine tests on most things, there's probably a facility near you, and you get your results in a few days. I do it every few years with zero issues.
  - avgDev 4y ago
    Because in US MRI is $1000 to $8000. It is a joke.
rr808 4y ago
> Privatized health care as a person's sole option for care is an absolute dystopian nightmare. Dont exaggerate. I've lived in 3 European countries and Australia. My American healthcare is easily better than those. Sure I'm lucky to have a good job that pays for it, but you can't say its terrible without looking at how those public systems are really struggling right now.
- walls 4y ago
  Oh, well as long as you personally have not yet had a problem. Everything is fine everyone, no need to worry.
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- jfengel 4y ago
  The article suggests that your health care isn't as good as you think it is. You never know if you'll be one of those cases where they make you fight for every bit of care you get. Some Americans do get excellent care with a minimum of grief. Others think their insurance is fine while they're healthy and only discover later that it doesn't really cover what they imagine it does. And the difference is entirely arbitrary. The fundamental problem of health insurance is that you cannot know what you will need, and there is no way to make an informed consumer choice, but your need when you have it is absolute. It's pathologically pessimal as a free market. And you usually don't know until it's too late.
  - b59831 4y ago
    > The article suggests... Maybe because it's a politicized topic? How can you smugly dismiss their point like that?
    - stonogo 4y ago
      > How can you smugly dismiss their point like that? Because "it's fine if you're rich" is a shitty place to terminate the matter. It's not a useful counterargument in any sense. Of course it's fine if you're rich, that's why people want to be rich. What about, you know, the rest of the planet?
casenmgreen 4y ago
I may be completely wrong, but I understand in the US normally people have health care through their employer? so they are not themselves paying the insurer, and cannot change insurer. If this is the case, then it is no wonder the insurer has no particular care for them. It is the power of the consumer to change provider which gives them influence over the provider.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Even if not employer provided, there's usually little choice in carriers due to anticompetitive practices and regulatory capture.
- lumb63 4y ago
  This is the case, and is, IMO, the central problem with American healthcare. Folks in both political parties argue for or against socialized healthcare, and ignore that a huge amount of the problems could be solved by having an actual free market. My opinion is that providing healthcare as a benefit should be banned. Employees who have healthcare today should be provided the amount the employer would have spent on health care in wages/salary. The fine details are hard to work out, but I think it is a good starting point.
  - Someone1234 4y ago
    I agree, an important component though is that insurance premiums are pretax, so you’d need to expand HSAs to be large enough to pay insurance premiums.
    - resoluteteeth 4y ago
      > so you’d need to expand HSAs to be large enough to pay insurance premiums I don't think that's the problem so much as 1) IIRC you simply can't use them for premiums in the first place and 2) you need a high deductible plan to be eligible for an HSA in the first place
cscurmudgeon 4y ago
[flagged]
- resoluteteeth 4y ago
  That just shows that the us has good medical treatment for people with essentially infinite money who don't have to worry about cost or insurance coverage so they can bypass the kind of issue the article is talking about entirely. For normal Americans who actually have to worry about these things, healthcare in the us is a nightmare. You can't just ignore insurance and judge the us healthcare system based on the best hospitals and doctors when most Americans aren't going to have access to that.
  - cscurmudgeon 4y ago
    > That just shows that the us has good medical treatment for people with essentially infinite money who don't have to worry about cost or insurance coverage so they can bypass the kind of issue the article is talking about entirely. No, that shows that even in places with public healthcare, there are issues. Universal public health care is not the utopia that its proponents religiously advocate for. > You can't just ignore insurance and judge the us healthcare system based on the best hospitals and doctors when most Americans aren't going to have access to that. Most Americans have insurance. You can't ignore real data. Are you from the US? https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10830.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10830.pdf Only roughly 8% are uninsured. > , healthcare in the us is a nightmare Compared to the rest of the world? It is not. US is not the top, but within the top 20. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/best-healthcare-in-the-world https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/best-heal...
    - resoluteteeth 4y ago
      > Most Americans have insurance. You can't ignore real data. Are you from the US? If you're judging the quality of healthcare based on whether people from the US have insurance or do not have insurance it shows that you're fundamentally failing to understand the type of problem the article is discussing, which in this case is specifically that insurance is broken and insurance companies will refuse to pay for treatment even when people have insurance. The people having Cigna refuse to pay for medical treatments as in the article obviously have insurance or they wouldn't be dealing with Cigna in the first place, so I'm not sure how "real data" on the percentage of americans who are insured could possibly refute that. > Compared to the rest of the world? It is not. Yes, US healthcare providers are capable of providing very good care. However, it doesn't matter if the US healthcare providers theoretically provide the best treatment in the world if that treatment is now so expensive and the insurance system is now so broken that a huge percentage of the people can't afford medical treatment even with health insurance (e.g. most americans on bronze/silver health insurance plans). I think this is something that gets missed in a lot of statistics. The reality is that once you factor in the insurance system, and not just healthcare providers, the US healthcare system does not look so great anymore for average americans.
ClumsyPilot 4y ago
Can anyone name any usefull innovation that has come from private health INSURANCE in the past 100 years? Not private hospitals/drug manufacturers - those are arguable - just insurance. What do they contribute? They got bailed out in Covid, they take money out of the system in good times, they deny you care in the bad times. Best I can tell they serve no usefull function
- kevviiinn 4y ago
  Capitalism is all about rent seeking and having middle men that contribute nothing where they only exist to suck money and resources out of the system
  - iancmceachern 4y ago
    My dad used to tell me there are 2 types of jobs, jobs where you use your hands or intellect to make something more valuable from less expensive constituent parts, and jobs where you skim off the top of people doing #1
paulddraper 4y ago
I knew I was going to see this comment. As if Medicare didn't reject millions of claims too. A number of physicians just don't accept Medicare because it's subpar.
slackfan 4y ago
I see you've never had to do a major procedure in a "public" system. Heh.
thallium205 4y ago
So then what are your thoughts on those who get denied on a Medicaid plan?

xwdv 4y ago

Public health care can be similarly dystopian in other ways: Very long wait times due to limited resources, subpar medical care, limited prescription options and drugs, beauracracy. No matter what society you live, the advice is the same: try not to get sick.

PicassoCTs 4y ago
Ah, yes, have a privatized public sector, use the gained funds to lobby in other countries, pushing a ideology that destroys public sector/services, use the result of ones own actions to push the conversion to more privatized public sector. The ultimate glider gun ideology.
weaksauce 4y ago
> Very long wait times due to limited resources, subpar medical care, limited prescription options and drugs, beauracracy. those are all there because the people that created the system did not think paying for it was good enough. it doesn't have to be that way. and even with wait times being long you still eventually get it. in the privatized system if you are poor and have bad health care you don't get it at all.
harshalizee 4y ago
I moved from a third world country with both socialized and private healthcare, to the United States. I pay vastly more for worse healthcare than anywhere I've lived. The fact that you, your doctor can agree that a certain procedure is required, only to be denied by a third party with no medical qualification is absolutely dystopian.
- ipaddr 4y ago
  Now you are talking about insurance which is the heart of the problem
- Mizoguchi 4y ago
  I also came to the US from a country with a good hybrid public/private system and my experience in the US had been different. So I guess it depends on where (city/state) you live and also what type of insurance you have. Where I live I have access to a SOTA network of hospitals with great technology and some practices amount the best in the world (people come here from other states and even countries for treatment) and I use their own insurance, so it's been great so far, never dealt with any issues having medical care rejected. I pay $350/month (self employed) and I have a very reasonable deductible, $60 copay to see specialists and many preventive procedures such as cancer and heart disease screenings (which I use), blood work and some PT sessions completely free. I even get discounts on fitness centers and health tracking apps which helps offset part of the premium. My shoulder was actually spared from a very invasive surgery thanks to a doctor top of his field (he sees olympic teams) who was able to treat me with only PT. I don't think I paid more than $1000 out of pocket for everything including several MRIs and multiple visits to his practice, plus several sessions of PT and medications. It could have been free back in my country, I guess, but I could have also been screwed for life due to an unnecessary surgery.
- wahnfrieden 4y ago
  Sounds like death panels made up of unqualified bureaucrats
  - Scoundreller 4y ago
    Both public and private systems have "death panels". Though cited article suggests even death panels run by doctors are no guarantee of effectiveness.
    - wahnfrieden 4y ago
      The article is not about death panels run by doctors, they are run by insurance companies. The doctors in this scenario are workers given bounded instructions on how to operate by the ones running it, without autonomy on how to organize the death panel decisionmaking. It's in the title - the "having" shows who is in control. These are not worker owned cooperatives. Nor are most state owned death panels.
illiarian 4y ago
> Very long wait times due to limited resources, subpar medical care, limited prescription options and drugs, You realize we're discussing the US which has all this? > beauracracy. It's funny you mention this, because the US spends vastly more on bureaucracy in its health systems than other developed nations.
- pithon 4y ago
  [flagged]
nathan_compton 4y ago
This might be true, but as someone who has lived in the U.S. and Europe I can say utterly unequivocally that I preferred Health Care in Europe. I wasn't even in one of the European countries with a great reputation for Health Care. Health Care in the U.S. isn't just bad, its outright fucking brutal. An elderly friend of mine recently fell and went to an urgent care where they couldn't get him into the x-ray machine. They told him to go to an emergency room where he waited for _13_ fucking hours with a broken pelvis. I'm basically 100% sure that such emergency room bullshit literally kills people from stress or exposing them to other sick people. You can't even wait in your damn car and just have them text you - they just force you to sit in this horrible room with a ton of sick people for hours on end. The U.S. Health Care system absolutely fucking blows.
- xwdv 4y ago
  I’m fully insured and have always been well taken care of in the United States health care system. Never wait more than 30 minutes if I were in an emergency room, and usually I’m attended to within 10-15. Doctors appointments are easy to get, never paid much for prescriptions. If I was in a public system, I’d fear I’d be fighting for attention alongside the general public, so I’m not convinced it would be better.
  - stemlord 4y ago
    I'm fully insured and healthy but still just paid almost $3000 in deductubles for a single upper endoscopy (common procedure for 40+ folks). Cigna. In Italy last summer I received a dental xray and diagnosis as a walk-in, for FREE.
    - eecc 4y ago
      Just adding that in Lombardy, the region around Milan who have a bad case of parochial wanna-be NYC, local (right wing) government is pushing towards private health care with lavish subsidies for privates and a grossly underfunded public health system. To get an MRI via public you can wait 1k days, invia private is a next-day appointment although you must be ready to pay thousands EUR. frankly it’s obviously deliberate
xenospn 4y ago
As someone who grew up in israel, I can confirm your statement is factually incorrect.
cmurf 4y ago
Sounds exactly like my private for profit health care provider.

firstlink 4y ago

All claims being reviewed by big health insurance conglomerates is the antithesis of privatized healthcare. It incorporates the worst part of public healthcare and destroys the best potential benefit of privatized healthcare.

emodendroket 4y ago
How is that so? The health insurance conglomerates are in private hands.
- dboreham 4y ago
  Parent probably means that those companies are part of a government sponsored cleptocracy.
  - emodendroket 4y ago
    I would say that there can't be any market without the government creating it (what does a contract or deed mean if there's no authority that recognizes it?), so there's a bit of "no true Scotsman" in trying to call it anything else besides a private market.
specialist 4y ago
What are some real world examples of beneficial privatized healthcare?
- pantulis 4y ago
  IMHO in privatized healthcare you are not the patient, you are the customer. As such, you should be having a better "customer journey" than in public healthcare: more immediate test/diagnostics, better experience in the hospital (like a room for yourself). And that's it. As a counterpart, it's not clear you are receiving the best medical attention. And of course you (through your employer) are paying for something that can be denied. Note: I happen to have private healthcare with Cigna in a country with a reasonably good public health system (Spain, though it varies between different autonomous communities), happy to pay the taxes and will defend that public health systems are a staple of any modern country.

winrid 4y ago

I have literally spent years trying to get an MRI for my knee after an accident. Both Kaiser and Anthem won't cover it.

t344344 4y ago
I had MRI in EU, it was 160 euro for scan, and another 50 euro for specialist consultation. Public insurance would not cover it, so I paid it myself. Not sure what is holding you back, but health should be a priority!
- winrid 4y ago
  Yeah, that's an idea. It's like 10k here. The trip to the EU, a vacation, and the MRI itself would be cheaper... I was actually planning on getting it done on my next trip to China, which is about the same cost wise, and the doctors are good as they see so many people lol
  - hirsin 4y ago
    I get a screening in India when I visit some family there. Full blood work, you call in the morning, they come by the house and draw it, results in the next morning. It's faster and cheaper to do that, including the flights, than to try and get this done through my doctor in the US. So, yeah, go for it.
    - mdorazio 4y ago
      Not sure what you mean here. Services like Personalabs or just scheduling straight through Quest Diagnostics cost a couple hundred bucks for blood & urine tests on most things, there's probably a facility near you, and you get your results in a few days. I do it every few years with zero issues.
- avgDev 4y ago
  Because in US MRI is $1000 to $8000. It is a joke.

rr808 4y ago

> Privatized health care as a person's sole option for care is an absolute dystopian nightmare. Dont exaggerate. I've lived in 3 European countries and Australia. My American healthcare is easily better than those. Sure I'm lucky to have a good job that pays for it, but you can't say its terrible without looking at how those public systems are really struggling right now.

walls 4y ago
Oh, well as long as you personally have not yet had a problem. Everything is fine everyone, no need to worry.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
jfengel 4y ago
The article suggests that your health care isn't as good as you think it is. You never know if you'll be one of those cases where they make you fight for every bit of care you get. Some Americans do get excellent care with a minimum of grief. Others think their insurance is fine while they're healthy and only discover later that it doesn't really cover what they imagine it does. And the difference is entirely arbitrary. The fundamental problem of health insurance is that you cannot know what you will need, and there is no way to make an informed consumer choice, but your need when you have it is absolute. It's pathologically pessimal as a free market. And you usually don't know until it's too late.
- b59831 4y ago
  > The article suggests... Maybe because it's a politicized topic? How can you smugly dismiss their point like that?
  - stonogo 4y ago
    > How can you smugly dismiss their point like that? Because "it's fine if you're rich" is a shitty place to terminate the matter. It's not a useful counterargument in any sense. Of course it's fine if you're rich, that's why people want to be rich. What about, you know, the rest of the planet?

casenmgreen 4y ago

I may be completely wrong, but I understand in the US normally people have health care through their employer? so they are not themselves paying the insurer, and cannot change insurer. If this is the case, then it is no wonder the insurer has no particular care for them. It is the power of the consumer to change provider which gives them influence over the provider.

dboreham 4y ago
Even if not employer provided, there's usually little choice in carriers due to anticompetitive practices and regulatory capture.
lumb63 4y ago
This is the case, and is, IMO, the central problem with American healthcare. Folks in both political parties argue for or against socialized healthcare, and ignore that a huge amount of the problems could be solved by having an actual free market. My opinion is that providing healthcare as a benefit should be banned. Employees who have healthcare today should be provided the amount the employer would have spent on health care in wages/salary. The fine details are hard to work out, but I think it is a good starting point.
- Someone1234 4y ago
  I agree, an important component though is that insurance premiums are pretax, so you’d need to expand HSAs to be large enough to pay insurance premiums.
  - resoluteteeth 4y ago
    > so you’d need to expand HSAs to be large enough to pay insurance premiums I don't think that's the problem so much as 1) IIRC you simply can't use them for premiums in the first place and 2) you need a high deductible plan to be eligible for an HSA in the first place

cscurmudgeon 4y ago

[flagged]

resoluteteeth 4y ago
That just shows that the us has good medical treatment for people with essentially infinite money who don't have to worry about cost or insurance coverage so they can bypass the kind of issue the article is talking about entirely. For normal Americans who actually have to worry about these things, healthcare in the us is a nightmare. You can't just ignore insurance and judge the us healthcare system based on the best hospitals and doctors when most Americans aren't going to have access to that.
- cscurmudgeon 4y ago
  > That just shows that the us has good medical treatment for people with essentially infinite money who don't have to worry about cost or insurance coverage so they can bypass the kind of issue the article is talking about entirely. No, that shows that even in places with public healthcare, there are issues. Universal public health care is not the utopia that its proponents religiously advocate for. > You can't just ignore insurance and judge the us healthcare system based on the best hospitals and doctors when most Americans aren't going to have access to that. Most Americans have insurance. You can't ignore real data. Are you from the US? https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10830.pdf https://sgp.fas.org/crs/misc/IF10830.pdf Only roughly 8% are uninsured. > , healthcare in the us is a nightmare Compared to the rest of the world? It is not. US is not the top, but within the top 20. https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/best-healthcare-in-the-world https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/best-heal...
  - resoluteteeth 4y ago
    > Most Americans have insurance. You can't ignore real data. Are you from the US? If you're judging the quality of healthcare based on whether people from the US have insurance or do not have insurance it shows that you're fundamentally failing to understand the type of problem the article is discussing, which in this case is specifically that insurance is broken and insurance companies will refuse to pay for treatment even when people have insurance. The people having Cigna refuse to pay for medical treatments as in the article obviously have insurance or they wouldn't be dealing with Cigna in the first place, so I'm not sure how "real data" on the percentage of americans who are insured could possibly refute that. > Compared to the rest of the world? It is not. Yes, US healthcare providers are capable of providing very good care. However, it doesn't matter if the US healthcare providers theoretically provide the best treatment in the world if that treatment is now so expensive and the insurance system is now so broken that a huge percentage of the people can't afford medical treatment even with health insurance (e.g. most americans on bronze/silver health insurance plans). I think this is something that gets missed in a lot of statistics. The reality is that once you factor in the insurance system, and not just healthcare providers, the US healthcare system does not look so great anymore for average americans.

ClumsyPilot 4y ago

Can anyone name any usefull innovation that has come from private health INSURANCE in the past 100 years? Not private hospitals/drug manufacturers - those are arguable - just insurance. What do they contribute? They got bailed out in Covid, they take money out of the system in good times, they deny you care in the bad times. Best I can tell they serve no usefull function

kevviiinn 4y ago
Capitalism is all about rent seeking and having middle men that contribute nothing where they only exist to suck money and resources out of the system
- iancmceachern 4y ago
  My dad used to tell me there are 2 types of jobs, jobs where you use your hands or intellect to make something more valuable from less expensive constituent parts, and jobs where you skim off the top of people doing #1

paulddraper 4y ago

I knew I was going to see this comment. As if Medicare didn't reject millions of claims too. A number of physicians just don't accept Medicare because it's subpar.

slackfan 4y ago

I see you've never had to do a major procedure in a "public" system. Heh.

thallium205 4y ago

So then what are your thoughts on those who get denied on a Medicaid plan?