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They should be a well funded public service that don't make a profit in the first place.
by jraph 3y ago
They should be a well funded public service that don't make a profit in the first place.
- Mountain_Skies 3y agoLike universities?
- Zigurd 3y agoThere should be more public university capacity to compete with private university tuition rates. Some things, like health care, may be so shot through with perverse incentives in both for-profit and nonprofit configurations it should just become a public good.
- sega_sai 3y agoAt least with universities there is a semblance of a free market/competition/choice. I.e. you can compare universities etc. While with healthcare, nobody goes checking for yelp reviews of ambulance companies when they break their leg.
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago[flagged]
- bugbuddy 3y agoBut the government broke the university pricing model by guaranteeing all student loans are practically non-dischargeable through bankruptcy and then double down on their stupidity with forgiving those student loans. The government when led by naive, busy body do-gooders almost always reach the lowest optimal point.
- FireBeyond 3y ago> While with healthcare, nobody goes checking for yelp reviews of ambulance companies when they break their leg. In most progressive states, ambulance rates have to be set and approved by the Department of Health, at least. While not free market, as you suggest, this is also done for consumer protection (though I'll grant that many will argue that more could be done).
- aaa_aaa 3y agoWhy? To give terrible service and managed by bureaucrats? Or being a leech of the state medical system?
- dartharva 3y agoHow are the current for-profit hospitals not the same in addition to being hilariously unaffordable?
- wesselbindt 3y agoVery poor unsubstantiated viewpoint. The epitome of socialized healthcare would be healthcare in a communist state. And Cuba, in spite of completely inhumane and unreasonable sanctions imposed by the united states, still beats the US on metrics such as life expectancy. This proves the falsehood of the idea that state-run healthcare is inherently less efficient.
- nradov 3y agoFalse. Cuba has shorter life expectancy than the USA. But beyond basic stuff like immunizations, antibiotics, and trauma care, healthcare has a very small impact on life expectancy anyway. Once you have a serious chronic medical condition, even the most advanced healthcare system can generally only give you a few extra years.
- wesselbindt 3y ago
- wormius 3y agoAs a kid I didn't know much about "government", but I thought surely it must be Police, Firefighters and Medical Professionals. If you have a siren on your truck, you are government was my thinking. These are all "public goods" and even as a kid with minimal "civics" education (and what I had was pretty much 100% Pro Usa America Is A Christian Nation for those formative years that I'm talking about). I understood that as a basic. Nobody told me that "no, actually. Despite having sirens, ambulances are not (usually) driven by workers for the government." It wasn't til I lived on my own that I really understood that.
- lupire 3y agoEven if you consider ambulance emergency service should be public service, that "sirens" argument doesn't apply to non-emergency care where you have time to make a selection among private competitors.
- tyre 3y agoIf it is non-emergency, why do they need sirens?
- Y_Y 3y agoTo lure sailors to their deaths
- dessimus 3y agoMeh, we got Congress to do that already.
- FireBeyond 3y agoParamedic here. Patients who are stable, we generally transport to the hospital "routine" (no lights/sirens). Similar for inter-facility transport (taking someone from a nursing facility to chemo or imaging). The only reasons we generally transport "priority" (lights/sirens) is for unstable patients or time critical: acute cardiac or respiratory issues, stroke, hemorrhagic or multi-system trauma, or shock. But even patients presenting stable can deteriote en route. As an aside, generally, in most areas, what makes the biggest difference to getting a patient to definitive care in a timely manner is not lights/sirens, nor speed, it's "Opticom" (also known as traffic light pre-empting). Visual (strobe), or occasionally radio that communicates with traffic lights to give us a steady flow of green lights. That coupled with people moving over is the big difference. Speed is just an increased liability (fun fact, most state laws grant emergency vehicle drivers the ability to 'disregard' any road law while operating in any emergency mode, but that comes with a "presumptively at-fault" for any incident that occurs in that mode, i.e. you will be considered at fault unless there's evidence to the contrary).
- echelon 3y agoRandom things like cancer and genetic diseases happen, but an awful lot of disease is caused by personal choice. Drinking, smoking, unhealthy lifestyle, etc. Personal behaviors are the cause of a huge portion of our healthcare costs. I feel the same way about the recent auto insurance increases being caused by the shopping behaviors of others. Expensive EVs get completely totaled in accidents, and now everyone has to share in these high costs brought on by the choices of others. The healthcare system is already one of the biggest line items for the US federal budget, yet you can see the largesse and inefficiency. Perhaps we should think very carefully about putting more money into it.
- aaomidi 3y agoIt’s really amusing when tech people who have a full understanding of singletons and basic statistics always refer to themselves when making a broader statement about society. I always wonder why people seemingly can’t apply their experiences beyond themselves when they already do that day to day at work. A lot of “personal decisions” are consequences of society. Depending on where you are in society, you’re going to sometimes be forced to live an “unhealthy” life. Beyond that, most medical care are for older folks, so you’re likely not going to notice anything until you are older. The thing that bothers me with this personal choice thing is, our society basically expects there to always be poverty. Heck the rate of poverty across America has a “healthy” value that we aim to actually keep. Of course that same percentage is going to be leading a more unhealthy life. Eh, rant over.
- echelon 3y ago> I always wonder why people seemingly can’t apply their experiences beyond themselves I grew up lower middle class, and I didn't have it easy. I have no idea who my birth parents were. I had an abusive father. I was bullied and beaten relentlessly by the other children that didn't like on-the-spectrum kids. I didn't party like those that abused me, I withdrew into myself and turned that into hard work. So when I see people [1] wanting me to pay for their choices, I feel used. When I see people demanding way more than I take for myself. It's as if the people that caused my problems are now trying to ride on my back. Does that help lend perspective for how some people feel about calls to increase taxes to pay for this? This doesn't mean that I'm unkind, uncaring, or unsympathetic. I just don't think US healthcare or how it is utilized is efficient, and I don't think armchair posturing or giving money to bureaucrats, administrators, or anyone without skin in the game will make it better. edit: I removed the analogy and replaced it with a personal anecdote. [1] The comments and downvotes here are probably from wealthy / well-off people on HN
- willcipriano 3y ago> well funded public service There is. The US spends more per capita on socialized medicine than any of the countries that actually have socialized medicine.[0] [0]https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm https://data.oecd.org/healthres/health-spending.htm A P.S. for the "but the wait times!" crowd, look at the first chart then check out hospital beds, again per capita[1] [1]https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm https://data.oecd.org/healtheqt/hospital-beds.htm
- zeroonetwothree 3y agoWhat does hospital beds have to do with wait times? Perhaps you have data on that?
- willcipriano 3y agoWe are middle of the pack or worse on doctors[0]. We are near the bottom when it comes to how many times we get to visit the doctors we do have[1]. I can't find a high score on anything besides "Potential years of life lost"[2], sad for us that isn't a good thing. [0]https://data.oecd.org/healthres/doctors.htm https://data.oecd.org/healthres/doctors.htm [1]https://data.oecd.org/healthcare/doctors-consultations.htm https://data.oecd.org/healthcare/doctors-consultations.htm [2]https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/potential-years-of-life-lost.htm https://data.oecd.org/healthstat/potential-years-of-life-los...
- FireBeyond 3y agoParamedic here. You don't -stay- in the ER. You're either treated and discharged, or stabilized and moved (to surgery, to ICU, admitted). The more beds available, the shorter the ER stay, the less wait time due to throughput.
- happytiger 3y agoGod forbid we don’t monetize the existence and care of life itself.
- iraqmtpizza 3y ago[flagged]
- jraph 3y agoWe should not. It should be provided unconditionally to anyone needing it. Homo sapiens can do better than letting its pairs who can't pay die (slowly). And care givers should be very well paid because they have hard jobs and critically important ones. Making illness profitable creates bad incentives.
- user_7832 3y ago> It should be provided unconditionally to anyone needing it. Correct me if I'm wrong but in many/most countries including the US, hospitals legally will treat emergency patients regardless of whether they can pay or are homeless-levels of broke.
- jraph 3y agoIt's not only emergencies. I've heard people in the US hesitate to get cured because they don't have the money.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- hossbeast 3y agoAny comment on the article though?