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True. The central problem described in the article is that he has cancer and doesn't want to go bankrupt from the medical bills. I'm not a socialist and am bro
by meowface 1y ago
True. The central problem described in the article is that he has cancer and doesn't want to go bankrupt from the medical bills.
I'm not a socialist and am broadly pro-capitalism, but for decades I've held a firm belief that healthcare should have a public option and people should have the ability to get high-quality medical care for $0, no matter how realistic that would be.
- buckle8017 1y agoThe simple reality is that advanced medical care is expensive. Access to advanced medical care can either by gated by one person's wealth or by the average wealth of many people. At the end of the day though, someone is paying and the only way to actually cost reduce is too have worse treatment.
- vlovich123 1y agoOr more effective treatment and not paying for ineffective ones. And less regulation and gatekeeping of which there’s a lot in the US (like needing insane levels of doctor oversight for buying medications)
- hvb2 1y ago> the only way to actually cost reduce is too have worse treatment. So tell me, why is random blood work billed for over 400$? Just to analyze the sample? Part of the problem is definitely inflated pricing and no real transparency. Unless you need that rockstar surgeon for that super specialty treatment that only the US can offer, the US healthcare system is just overpriced, broken and a money grab
- sixothree 1y ago> the only way to actually cost reduce is too have worse treatment If you cut out profit motive, you can _definitely_ make it cheaper. Your statement is incorrect.
- fsckboy 1y ago>the only way to actually cost reduce is too have worse treatment but also the cost of treatments generally decreases with time, while the efficacy increases as techniques are refined, disseminated, etc.
- createaccount99 1y agoThe actual reason is that you'll have people going to see the doctor because their cheek's itchy (they're lonely, or clueless).
- baq 1y agoBasic blood test should be $5. 99% of the more advanced ones shouldn’t cost more than $50. Most medical care does not need to be advanced. It needs to be effective, but it doesn’t need to be expensive. It needs to be expensive to generate a hefty profit, though, especially when you have a serious condition - you then become a forced buyer and the market does what the market does with forced buyers without special regulations.
- vidarh 1y agoIn most of the world, private treatment is far cheaper than equivalent private treatments in the US. To the point where even to a high cost location like London, it can be cheaper to fly to London from the US to have things done at a high end private hospital. Medicare+Medicaid in the US costs about the same person taxpayer as NHS costs per UK taxpayer. The NHS could be better, but we get universal care for a similar price than what leaves most Americans still needing private care to have any cover at all. That strongly suggests that the US could at a minimum do far better at providing cost effective care - both public and private.
- KingMob 1y ago> the only way to actually cost reduce is too have worse treatment. This is absolutely incorrect in the American system. Insurance companies introduce massive amounts of overhead for little benefit. Every study comparing them to Medicare finds that Medicare is way more efficient.
- dingnuts 1y agothere wouldn't be any way to compete with tax pre-paid $0 point of sale health care, so there would be no option. the term "public option" is a weasel word. there would be no private option because nobody is going to choose to pay out of pocket in addition to their taxes that already pay for care. advocate for whatever but use honest terms. you're advocating for a single payer system and there's no evading that.
- hvb2 1y agoYou only rely on social security? No 401k for example? Because that's the public option in retirement and you can have private options like 401k on top
- riffraff 1y agoFwiw, a lot of European healthcare has both a public and private option. You may pick the private options because they are "better" in some ways (e.g. more modern clinics, shorter waiting times, or sometimes just better care) which still leaves some wealth gap, but usually means no one goes bankrupt to cure cancer.
- carlob 1y agoUsually the medical part of it all is strictly worse in the private sector (at least in my country) because the public system has a pretty strict competitive exam to get in, whereas profit driven private companies hire the cheapest doctor they can get. Not everybody realizes that and they often fall for the single room in the hospital. Shorter waiting times is definitely a thing though, especially for non life threatening conditions.
- koolba 1y ago> True. The central problem described in the article is that he has cancer and doesn't want to go bankrupt from the medical bills. What bills? He’s 79 so he’d have been on Medicare for the past 14 years. Sure there’s the Medicare premiums, but that’s peanuts.
- zie 1y agoMy mom's insurance with medicare generally covers 80%, she gets to pay the leftover 20%. So uh bills with medicare is totally a thing.
- typpilol 1y agoMy dad has medigap that covered all that He pays like 140 a month extra for it though. But he had all his cancer treatments covered
- dyauspitr 1y agoWhat about maximum out of pocket maximums? All expenses are capped at like $15k per year right?
- lostlogin 1y ago> capped at like $15k per year right? That’s a lot of money for most retirees.
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- vidarh 1y agoThe father of universal healthcare by way of a state supported insurance system was Bismarck, who was far right by modern standards, and argued for it based on Christian morality, not socialism, though he was "accused" of being a "state socialist" over it, and embraced that label because it fit well with his struggle to limit the growing appeal of the actual socialists. In European history, a lot of welfare reforms subsequently came down to Christian democrats (typically centre right to right by European standards) or cooperation between them and socialists and social democrats. This just makes the US situation weirder - by the time socialists and trade unions gained much real power in Europe, universal healthcare was mostly already uncontroversial and settled or close to it as a result of the support of Christian groups on the right, with a couple of exceptions such as the UK, where the right wing rhetoric leading up to the NHS got pretty extreme.
- znkr 1y agoBismarck was afraid of workers unionizing and transformed a working healthcare system owned by workers into a state owned one. That move significantly reduced the utility of worker unions, which was the goal behind it.
- vidarh 1y agoA working healthcare system is dramatically overstating it, and his system - like the current German one - had relatively speaking low state involvement. The German system remains one of the least state controlled universal healthcare systems to this day. I do agree with you that a lot of his motivation was to counter the socialists and unions though. Though I'll note that already before Bismarck, the socialists largely didn't oppose state involvement - Marx famously lambasted the Gotha program of what became the SPD in part for their willingness to trust the state.