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When the US was having actual discussions of single-payer health care (i.e. the “public option” during Obama’s first term), one major argument against it was “do you really want the government between you and your doctor?!”
Even though insurance companies are literally already between you and your doctor, and they exist purely to extract money from that interaction.
It’s never made sense.
The old arguments were “Look how long they (the socialists) wait to get appointments and get seen!” Yep, we’re there now. I have insurance, I still pay a bunch, and seeing specialists is a luxury at this point. If I have an issue, I don’t even consider calling specialists, because I know it’s weeks til I can get in.
Weeks lol, try months to years round these parts
And then the same party decided to get the government in there too anyways
Ahaha that’s a good point. Tbh despite the nickname “Obamacare” it had slipped my mind that the ACA was the bastardized, castrated version of that whole thing.
You are the product
You dead or without any money left, or both is the product.
… gatekeeping is what they get paid for.
This is unironically Nixon’s fault.
It’s also unironically Reagan’s fault, as well as both Clinton and FDR.
Prior to FDR doctors and healthcare were run completely not for profit, and part of The New Deal included privatizing hospitals. Nixon did insurance. Reagan and Clinton mostly just took the government further out of healthcare by removing regulations.
Private nonprofit hospitals aren’t even that bad. Its private insurance thats the real problem
Look at finance! They don’t make anything of actual value, they just bet what’s going to happen to the people that do
If they did that, then they’d be contributing useful information about which ideas are good. But they don’t even do that anymore; the finance game has been rigged since the bailouts started.
Health insurers don’t contribute information. You don’t need to know what your odds of getting sick are because you’re going to want treatment either way. A choice where the alternative is death isn’t a choice.
Isn’t that investing though? Or is that entirely different?
Companies can do things without investors, but investors can’t do anything without companies.
If I invest in stock on my toilet at home I’m technically helping the company financially, but I’m not actually developing or making things of real economic value. I’m just betting they will and that their numbers will go up.
Oh shit I have a toilet too how do I invest
Remember pryimid schemes are illegal. Because they dont sell a product.
They’re not illegal because they don’t sell a product, they’re illegal because they’re impossible to maintain mathematically.
It’s not far off from a Ponzi scheme, honestly. A few people are going to make a lot of money early on and everybody else is going to get rapidly diminishing returns to nothing.
You are the product. When your liability outpaces your premium is when they decide to stop covering you.
The US should adopt the Dutch healthcare system. You could have medical treatment as an average Joe and also not be bankrupt or up to your tits in debt.
I mean if they picked a random country it probably has a good chance to be twice as good as the US system
yeah, but, like the lines are long
/s
It’s wild how much this contrasts with Australia’s Medicare, like here you can literally just walk into the ER with any issue, show them your Medicare card and get your entire treatment covered for free unless you need any private healthcare, which even then there are rebates and private healthcare competes with public so it’s also moderately affordable.
There were 2 instances where my dad needed to be in hospital for multiple days at a time, once for a broken wrist after slipping at the boat ramp after a fishing trip, and the other was a stingray attack on his leg at that same boat ramp. Both instances didn’t require a single cent exchanged, we just walked in and described the issue, and boom, after a few days he was treated to the extent he could go home and not really worry at all anymore.
Here in Argentina that we have free healthcare, insurance is a signal of wealth so you get attended in the private hospital away from the common folk. And even in the private hospital everything is relatively cheap because they have to compete with the free option.
Yeah, I wish health insurance was just “you’ll never pay more than 20k a year on medical bills” or something like that. Let me find my own damn doctor
Crack open a history book or read a brief history. The product is risk pooling
a strategy where individuals, businesses, or governments combine their risks into a large group to share the financial burden of unexpected losses, making costs more predictable and manageable.
Post needs text alternative.
Images of text break much that text alternatives do not. Losses due to image of text lacking alternative such as link:
- usability
- we can’t quote the text without pointless bullshit like retyping it or OCR
- text search is unavailable
- the system can’t
- reflow text to varied screen sizes
- vary presentation (size, contrast)
- vary modality (audio, braille)
- accessibility
- lacks semantic structure (tags for titles, heading levels, sections, paragraphs, lists, emphasis, code, links, accessibility features, etc)
- some users can’t read the image due to lack of alt text (markdown image description)
- users can’t adapt the text for dyslexia or vision impairments
- systems can’t read the text to them or send it to braille devices
- web connectivity
- we have to do failure-prone bullshit to find the original source
- we can’t explore wider context of the original message
- authenticity: we don’t know the image hasn’t been tampered
- searchability: the “text” isn’t indexable by search engine in a meaningful way
- fault tolerance: no text fallback if
- image breaks
- image host is geoblocked due to insane regulations.
Contrary to age & humble appearance, text is an advanced technology that provides all these capabilities absent from images.
What if, instead of lots of little risk pools, we had one really big risk pool, with the whole country in it? That would reduce the risk even further.
Yes. And the best possible product for all is one pool. I.e. universal care.
- usability
Pocket linin’ gatekeepin’
It probably started with healthcare being expensive.
Insurance is why it got expensive
Let me state up front I agree with you. A less charitable reading of what I’m about to say would try to make it seem like I’m putting the blame on other things to deflect. I’m not. Insurance companies fucking suck and are among the reasons it’s expensive.
Like everything it’s more complicated than a single factor. Tying healthcare to jobs is part of it. Boosting the number of people signing up for the military is part of it for both VA insurance and college. The cost of college (with its financial middlemen as well) for doctors is part of it.
Insurance is a huge reason. There are a hundred other little reasons as well, many of them also dealing with financial middlemen, that contribute to the issue. It’s a Gordian Knot of idiocy and when it gets sliced it’s going to be painful and, once the initial pain is done, necessary in hindsight.
That’s not entirely true. I mean, they’re one of the biggest parts of the problem.
I mean look at a new MRI machine at around 3 million. There is a point where such tech didn’t even exist.
Special thanks to the people who made MRI exist! It’s a good thing they can each scan tens of thousands of people.
I hope she’s criticizing for profit companies and not the concept of health insurance per se.
You give me money in exchange for a promise, and I won’t honor that promise when you ask for assistance.
Health insurance is 90% of the problem
Privatised healthcare providers are also an issue.
Or, if you want private capital involved on either side - overall de-/non-regulation is a major problem too.
There are so many instruments the govs could use but just don’t bcs monies.
If a licensed physician prescribes a procedure, insurance shouldn’t evaluate whether it’s needed. That’s it.
What’s the point of health insurance anyway?
They just charge exorbitant prices for basic BS. Single bandage at the hospital? $20 please JUST for the bandage, nothing yet for the nurse, no no that’s separate.
Meanwhile you could get 10 bandages at the local pharmacy for $5 and if you’re nice the clerk wraps it around your wound.
The only system that makes sense is a controlled state system like we have in the EU where the prices are strictly regulated.
Hell, even here the prices are high, but not THAT high.
They just charge exorbitant prices for basic BS. Single bandage at the hospital? $20 please JUST for the bandage, nothing yet for the nurse, no no that’s separate.
Technically, that’s the hospital extorting the insurance company, but it’s connected for sure.
Both are horrible to ever exist!
And for the same reason - it can never be a free market if demand and supply aren’t both free.
Wanting healthcare when in need isn’t really that much of a free choice (demand).
That means on supply side where everyone is motivated by profit you don’t need any sort of collusion for everyone to consistently pump up healthcare costs & healthcare insurance premiums, there just isn’t any downside.
Direct market competition is financially pointless so all you ever see is mergers.Oh - and comprehensive national healthcare has insurance built in naturally & efficiently bcs countries have millions of people that pay for healthcare (and no profit is privatised, even better, participants aren’t driven by profit).
In recent decades in Europe we underfunded national healthcare providers & are now slowly privatising it - costs are soaring (nothing compared to USA, but we know what’s happening, yet we don’t vote for it/representatives don’t act on it).
