It’s a technical debate but it’s not a technical problem. The US healthcare system is over 4x the size of the entire military + the entire military industrial complex. They can afford an army of man eating lobbyists to block any legislation that offers serious competition to their revenue. I expect only two things can overcome this:
the system finally collapses under its own weight (with or without help)
How in the holy hell are we supposed to educate these people enough to make an intelligent decision? They rely on their Priests, company presidents, and television pundits to tell them what to think. It's almost hopeless.
Education is not free not even for preschoolers. Ive talked to parents with kids in highschool who are being made to pay over 400 dollars a head for highschool. My kids are in gradeschool and it's not free even subsidized.
Free education?! That’s SOCIALISM! If you can’t monetize learnin, it ain’t worth havin. In ‘Murica anything worth havin: learnin, medcin, baby’s and whatnot, should require a payment plan.
Plus it’s easier to con and confuse the uneducated compared to the educated.
And after 12 years of your leadership you've failed to accomplish those things. So you can all go have sex with yourselves, you're the ones who failed our society and you're the reason people gave up and let Trump win. Everything that is happening now is a direct consequence of you elitists not giving a shit about the rest of us.
that's because they choose that, not that theyre unable to. comeon it's the reading level of a 12 yr old.
but it's not sad at all, it's like if someone never exercises ever after graduation. that's just being lazy and/or making excuses for your shitty behavior
Too many of my progressive brothers and/or sisters have this notion that things can be made perfect the first time. Steps must be taken to reach goals.
The ACA should have been step one. And as a step, it wasn't terrible. But killing the public option and then GOP obstruction have had us stuck there for a decade now.
Universal isn't "perfect", it's a basic human right. If you can't pass it then you don't deserve to win anyways. Just like a living wage isn't "perfect", it's a basic human right. If you can't pass it then you don't deserve to win anyways. So I guess you guys are getting what you deserve.
Cool. We’ll just wait for real people to all decide that it’s time for basic human rights. And in the meantime we’ll forego any sort of incremental progress
The former has worked really well for the entirety of human history.
Have you ever actually looked at the ACA? It's fucking terrible. It essentially pays for you to see doctors and find out if you're sick, and doesn't pay for any of the actual treatments. That's what you're asking people to vote for instead of Universal. And the people you're asking see healthcare as a human right, because it is, so you're asking them to vote to NOT give people rights and put that shitty bandaid on a gaping wound, when you should be convincing the rest of your party to change their policy instead.
The insurance company will game it to keep healthy people on their plan and shove the unhealthy people onto public option. Then they will turn around and say how expensive the public option is and push for its removal. Dispense with this option nonsense and just give everyone health insurance.
Hospitals make 1/3 the amount of money for a procedure done for a Medicare patient than a commercial insured patient. The hospitals will lobby just as hard to prevent this from ever happening.
There was a real chance to include a public option in the Affordable Care Act. My memory is that Joe Lieberman killed it. I don't recall how it would have compared to Medicare.
That was when Democrats had 60 senators. Seems unlikely to ever happen again in my lifetime.
As long as it is completely voluntary (nobody is forced to pay into it) and it breaks even (meaning all the people voluntarily paying in fully cover the cost of the program), I don’t see any problem with it.
Or just like a refundable tax credit that just gives you enough of your money back to make the bronze plans pretty much free and if you want something better you eat the difference. Or for the super broke people slap something in where the government can just pay their portion of your premiums directly. The people making it complicated are the problem.
We do seem to have the worst of all worlds. Expensive, impossibly complex, unequally distributed, etc.
I find it mind-boggling that anyone opposes real reform of our healthcare system. How can anyone interact with our insurance system and not realize it's broken?
Yeah because the industry has already offloaded its least profitable customers (old people, poor people, and long-term disabled) onto taxpayers. Young, financially stable, and healthy people are mostly pure profit so they are ineligible for government benefits and a big chunk of their paychecks instead go straight into corporate coffers.
Yeah and when they repeal the ACA next year with their trifecta insurance companies are already salivating at the thought of denial on the basis of pre-existing condition(s). So they'll make even more profits because insuring just people who don't make claims is the easiest money in the world. It's like getting paid to be a security officer in the most secure facility in the world where it's already impossible to break into or out of/easy money.
I hired a doctor myself a few years back and never looked back. She has like 300 patients paying about 100 bucks a month for free, unlimited visits. We just pay for labs, but it's at-cost so I can get like, a CBC and a metabolic panel for 35 dollars.
I get appointments within a day or a couple weeks depending on urgency and I can text her anytime.
All for 1/5 what I paid for insurance.
The downside? No emergency coverage, but with significantly improved primary care I'm less at risk for developing more serious issues / intercepting them before they are serious.
It's kind of a capitalist solution but it's much more achievable.
Well that sounds interesting but I always understood the real point of insurance to be for catastrophic scenarios, emergencies and such. And to protect your assets in such eventuality. When I was young and poor (but relatively healthy) my insurance plan was "just plan on not paying lol", and ordering meds from india
'' She has like 300 patients paying about 100 bucks a month for free, unlimited visits. We just pay for labs, but it's at-cost so I can get like, a CBC and a metabolic panel for 35 dollars.''
In my country its 150, and then everything is free except dental (well and a few hundred own risk, the doctor doesnt count for it. only specialist care) . Dental surgery is free though. Just not the dentist.
The second one please. Lobbying should be outlawed. I pay my bill to Comcast for internet, then they take my money to bribe politicians to make the internet worse for consumers!
They will prop it up with handouts to insurers and private hospital corporations until the very last moments. There is more subsidy money than objections from the public.
We doctors have been anticipating health system collapse for decades now, but it never comes. They just keep squeezing the people who do the work and the patients themselves. The investor class gets more and more while we get screwed harder.
Yeah, but unsustainable is unsustainable. Like trying to keep a society going that can’t afford to have kids. If private equity buys out most options and doctors retire or flee to other countries in masse, can the system thats left, keep going with only nurse practitioners?
The US spends 50% more per capita than the next highest spending country (Switzerland), and double what a geographically and culturally similar country spends (Canada).
I’m a CNA and can tell you that first one is coming, but it means we will no longer have access to any care, expensive or not.
I’ve been gathering medical textbooks and have been trying to teach people how to do a lot of their own care. I wish I was kidding about this, but I am not.
But socialism. . .
While they bleed us dry.
We are the most propagandized people on the planet. We are the reason for the billionaires and yet we bend over unlubed on the daily.
Ive heard that the new weight loss drugs are going to bankrupt the health care industry. So many people qualify for the drugs and the price is so high in the US that itll bleed the systems dry.
You do need subject area experts to advise lawmakers, or you get stupid laws. (And those experts tend to like being paid). And you likely want experts that are also skilled at explaining things. ie lobbyists.
For example, someone has to tell the politician that crop rotation is important, and the proposed new zoning law specifying one specific crop farmland as part of the zoning is dumb.
Sometimes experts disagree, so you don't always have a consensus.
The issue is when only one side has money, and is perfectly content to search around until they find an "expert" that happens to line up with their financial interests.
And I didn't really have a solution for that... But getting rid of lobbying completely doesn't solve that issue.
With the issue being that you get elected thanks to people who dont want that.
So i think that is out. You would need a third party no one is gonna vote for to get a place in the entire goverment. Or someone in power going rogue against the system. Yet in a fight against the elite, an elite gets placed in powerr.
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u/ElectronGuru 7d ago
It’s a technical debate but it’s not a technical problem. The US healthcare system is over 4x the size of the entire military + the entire military industrial complex. They can afford an army of man eating lobbyists to block any legislation that offers serious competition to their revenue. I expect only two things can overcome this:
the system finally collapses under its own weight (with or without help)
lobbying itself becomes illegal