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That's fair enough, but that kind of feels like poor and middle class Americans are the sacrificial lambs for healthcare for the rest of the world. There are ce

That's fair enough, but that kind of feels like poor and middle class Americans are the sacrificial lambs for healthcare for the rest of the world. There are certain income brackets that make too much money to qualify for medicare, but still don't really make enough to pay for healthcare out of pocket and don't have jobs that provide it, so they can't milk the insurance companies for endless amounts of money to cover their treatment. This leads to situations where people know that they can't afford the healthcare, so they don't see a doctor until situations are dire, go to an emergency room (where they cannot be denied treatment), ending up with an even higher bill that then needs to be accounted for in the rest of the hospital pricing, and therefore insurance. I'm glad that we're able to subsidize drug prices to make it so Africans can get cheaper healthcare, and I am fine with charging the insurance companies lots of money and taking money from richer people in the process (since the high costs have to be rolled into the premium rates), but it's a little frustrating that it has to come at the direct expense of poorer Americans in the process.

blkhawk 2y ago
you don't have to be glad about that because its clearly not why prices are lower in africa. Looking in from the outside this whole reasoning seems to me like some kind of propaganda thats meant to me easily swallowed by americans. It seems like a deflection that sells the disparity by leveraging american exceptionalism (US medicine is the best) to be swallowed resulting in variying thoughts depending on the disposition of the recipient ranging between "i am glad we are helping those poor people" to "WAAAA why should I pay for them". But neither of it is really true. The truth as it looks from the outside is that the american people are simply taken for a ride by pretty much all the parts of the healthcare sector.
- tombert 2y ago
  Sure, and a counter to my claim is that we have a fully socialized system for the military (funded entirely by taxes), and that certainly hasn't stopped weapons from being developed here at all, and it hasn't stopped us from giving these weapons to other countries as a form of diplomacy. The military industrial complex of course has its own share of many problems, but clearly having the price be reasonable for the average Americans is not one of them.

blkhawk 2y ago

you don't have to be glad about that because its clearly not why prices are lower in africa. Looking in from the outside this whole reasoning seems to me like some kind of propaganda thats meant to me easily swallowed by americans. It seems like a deflection that sells the disparity by leveraging american exceptionalism (US medicine is the best) to be swallowed resulting in variying thoughts depending on the disposition of the recipient ranging between "i am glad we are helping those poor people" to "WAAAA why should I pay for them". But neither of it is really true. The truth as it looks from the outside is that the american people are simply taken for a ride by pretty much all the parts of the healthcare sector.

tombert 2y ago
Sure, and a counter to my claim is that we have a fully socialized system for the military (funded entirely by taxes), and that certainly hasn't stopped weapons from being developed here at all, and it hasn't stopped us from giving these weapons to other countries as a form of diplomacy. The military industrial complex of course has its own share of many problems, but clearly having the price be reasonable for the average Americans is not one of them.