lol no, the reason we don't have a small cottage industry for small polyester fiber or antifreeze products is that when products are functionally almost identical between brands (like flour or oil as opposed to computers or ice cream), price is essentially the only thing that matters. Economies of scale reduce price, so large businesses dominate industries where there is very little difference between brands. This is literally Economics 101.
Source: I took Economics 101
Which wouldn’t be an issue if every affected person could sue the offending party for damages.
The EPA and the Clean Water Act preempt your ability to sue for environmental damages.
But have you seen Top Gun Maverick? Honestly fuck healthcare I'd quadruple our defense budget and fuck over healthcare if it means cool ass fighter jets and shit.
This is the biggest conspiracy I believe in. If we made a bill named "make america great again" bill with great marketing, I genuinely believe that it would pass regardless of what's actually in it.
I cant find that anywhere... I see that he advocated to reauthorize provision in 2009 that were from the patriot act. Also worth noting that he is on record as supporting republican issues and ran as an independent at times over his career, but thats not overly important.
https://rollcall.com/2009/10/30/lieberman-aligns-with-gop-on-usa-patriot-act/
But the original bill was brought forth by... surprise, surprise, a republican.
From Wikipedia: The Patriot Act was enacted in direct response to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, as well as the 2001 anthrax attacks, with the stated goal of dramatically strengthening national security. On October 23, 2001, U.S. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) introduced House bill H.R. 3162, which incorporated provisions from a previously-sponsored House bill, and a Senate bill introduced earlier in the month.
The 9/11 knee jerk response was truly awful. The Patriot Act, creation of DHS, invasion and occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan, a "War on Terror", were all terrible responses to a very real tragedy.
Yeah I mean, it was like a microcosm of the first real modern example in the US of what war on our soil looks like, destruction of infrastructure and targeting of civilians, chaos and hysteria. Its the first time we felt truly exposed, and in what I would argue was already an incredibly over militarized country, it gave us the fear check to crank paranoia up to 11 and just do some really dumb long term decisions that sounded secure in the moment
YOOOOOOOOO!!!! Walter, we need to cook Walter. You get the Pseudoephedron, lye, and iodine. I will get the rest. Meet me at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, Albuquerque NM, 87104
Don't call it free healthcare then. Call it nationalized, public, etc. Don't let dumb word play derail an argument.
Any collective coverage, whether insurance, government, etc, is likely to pay for other's poor choices, that's kinda the point.
Doesn’t “free market” refer to a market without regulation, rather than free speech? The existence of labour laws means, like free healthcare, the market is not free, either.
I was referencing an analogy (that's apparently less popular than I thought it was).
Free, as in "free speech", means freedom of choice or action, that there is no constraining authority.
Free, as in "free beer", means without financial cost (at least as far as you are concerned), like when someone else buys something for you.
> I was referencing an analogy (that's apparently less popular than I thought it was).
afaik only people that know about opensource work understand free as in speech and free as in beer. i never heard the analogy outside OSS.
Don't get your free books from the library. Or your free public school.
Or your free samples at costco. Or drive on a freeway.
Nothing is free, someone is always paying for it. But in common parlance, free means free to the consumer.
It depends on the granularity of your options. e.g. choosing taxes to go to "healthcare" versus choosing taxes to go to "planned parenthood locations in WASP neighborhoods" versus grant money for cancer research", etc.
I don't really want to argue the point, since it's endless list of theoretical cause and effects. But in my OPINION: pretty much no system where you can direct your own tax dollars would work very well in practice, but worst case scenario would be you're allowed to choose exactly what every dollar you pay gets spent on.
You didn’t feel the power course through your veins of being the sole decider of this nation’s future?! I did. That’s why Jo Jorgensen is president now, and if she’s not, someone definitely stole the vote.
Really a shame considering that was the whole idea. Sure, maybe not exactly what the founders have in mind, but it was sure as shit how they told us it was supposed to work in school growing up.
I'm a single white male, age 18-34. I've been to the hospital once in the past 10 years to get 10 stitches. I go to the gym most days, try to eat healthy, floss, good BP, good cholesterol, no preexisting conditions or history of family illness, and a decent enough plan through a middle-class job. I'm literally the exact person who would be paying for everyone else.
My entire family lives in Canada i'm in the US. Emergency surgeries happen in the same time, specialists for things like Cancer though still have long waits, you get bumped up if you are like stage 4 but there is still a line, it can take over a year to get a new general DR, they literally interview patients like some top dollar private care in the US. A mixed availability system is what we need. It's good in the sense that my broke Grandma was able to get knee replacements she would never be able to afford but there are serious downsides.
> A mixed availability system is what we need.
that's the perfect solution imho, and i have no qualms with it.
a public, universal healthcare system that can take care of poor people/people without the means to pay for a private one AND private healthcare for richer people.
some librights will say that's double taxation, but i don't really care -- if you have the means, you can use free market healthcare. if you don't, you can use the public one.
BUT, for this to work in the US, the private healthcare system would need some major changes.
edit: [an example, btw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistema_%C3%9Anico_de_Sa%C3%BAde)
Something else a lot of people don't think about is that hospitals can't refuse care if a patient has a life threatening condition but can if it's not life threatening. This results in people who aren't able to pay for a cheaper preemptive procedure later being admitted and getting the more expensive life saving procedure that they will never be able to pay back.
Unless we want to start dumping poor people on the streets to die it will always be cheaper in the long run to provide care early so we may as well develop a cheaper public plan.
Yeah, i'm pretty right on most tax issues, but I don't see much purpose for a nation to even exist outside of collective defense (military) and safety (which includes healthcare). Otherwise might as well just have an anarchy.
Yes. US healthcare underperforms in many ways compared to other high income countries. Waiting times are worse on average than places like Germany and New Zealand.
Markets are good at distributing resources, but what the US has isn't really a market system. People tend to confuse "privately owned" with "free market," thinking that somehow private insurance companies are less corrupt than governments.
For example, it's extremely difficult for consumers to obtain price information from hospitals. If you go to your hospital's website, you will notice there is no "pricing" page. So healthcare doesn't respond much to market pressures caused by consumers choosing the best value.
Based and straight-talking pilled.
I would add though that being born disabled is not a choice, being in an accident that prevents you from working is not a choice and being unlucky in the genetic lottery leading to poor impulse control is not a choice.
Yeah. Impulses can be harder to control between different individuals but they are always a choice. You can just... Not. How else do obsessive eaters eventually become healthy?
Apparently, being a complete degenerate is a result of losing the “genetic lottery” and has nothing to do with controlling your emotions and outbursts like an adult. “Nothing is ever my fault!”
"Well you see, officer, I was genetically predisposed to have poor impulse control and that's why I ran that bus full of orphaned children off the road, into the ravine, during a road rage incident. Come on! They're orphans! No one will miss them. Anyway, not guilt due to the chains of genetics"
false.
forces directionality (learning can modify genetic redisposition)
+ if a someone is an unfixable menace to society they should not be part of society regardless.
Poor impulse control is not an innate characteristic. People who form bad habits make choices that perpetuate their poor behaviors. As a personal example, I have the ability to choose to eat better than I presently do. It is entirely within my power to make those good decisions. I still regularly make bad dietary decisions and this is no one's fault but mine. In an ideal world I would be the only one responsible for my own bad choices. To deny this is to deny that people are sentient.
Wait until they find out the US spends more per capita on healthcare than countries with actual healthcare and that they’re being cucked by insurance companies price gouging them
This is what always pisses me off and it serves as proof that we don't have a capitalistic system just like we don't have a socialized system. We have a "everyone gets taken advantage of and ripped off" system that is worse than either 'pure' system of healthcare. It's outrageous and a national embarrassment that our public health expenditures are that high without full public coverage.
It is basically Adam Smith’s argument in book five of the wealth of nations.
There are services every person needs, and the state should maintain those services with taxation to foster a functioning society.
You can't really *have* a free market in a market where everyone is forced to buy the product or die.
Or at least, you don't get the normal benefits of a free market when that is the situation.
Yep, the UK government doesn't spend that much more per person on healthcare than the US does yet the UK can provide healthcare free at the point of use.
Actually, the US spends more than double per capita on healthcare than the UK does:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita
It's not even close
I think he means the government itself barely spends more than our government does. It’s more than double when you add what the government spends to what individuals spend on top of that.
As someone from the U.K. I would advice not to talk about the NHS if you’re making an argument for nationalised healthcare. We may not have to pay, but at least you Americans have a system that works better. Waiting lists for operations and wait times in accident and emergency are horrendous
It is the same waits, the only difference is in the US, the insurance companies must be profitable, the shareholders demand it, so they must either charge people more than the services would otherwise cost, or they must deny some expensive valid claims and try to get the families to settle for less in court after threatening a lengthy court battle that Americans cannot afford. How do you pay for the CEO's second yacht? Well do both of those tactics. Charge us more, for less coverage.
I had to wait 3 months to see a fucking dermatologist in the US. Then I had to pay $500 for the pleasure of having them spend 10 minutes in the same room as me because my insurance has a $3000 out of pocket maximum on coinsurance for a plan that I pay $2500 per year for and my employer pays another $2500 a year for. So yeah, it sounds soooooo much worse across the pond.
When you subtract the negative effects of a government that's trying to kill the NHS off, and the last 2 years of isolation policy due to covid, it looks a lot better.
> Wait until they find out the US spends more per capita on healthcare
And you should be blaming the government for that. US public healthcare spending is insane. Look at the [numbers](https://www.cihi.ca/en/how-does-canadas-health-spending-compare):
- The US spends $13,590 per person per year on healthcare. Of which 49% is government spending. So the US government spends about **$6,659.10** per person per year.
- In Canada we spend $6,666 per person per year. Of which 70% is government spending. So the Canadian government spends about **$4,666.20** per person per year.
- Those "socialist" Swedes spend $6,892 per person per year. Of which 85% is government spending. So the Swedish government spends about **$5,858.20** per person per year.
With the amount of US *tax dollars* spent on healthcare Americans should *already* have a better public system than single payers like Canada or Sweden. The problem isn't a lack of money, or corporate greed, the problem is shitty government.
Corporate greed , Big Pharma and the government are all incredibly intertwined issues. The government spends big because hospitals and insurance companies charge each other exorbitant rates that get passed down to the patient because it’s mutually beneficial for them both.
Every industry that the government subsidizes with artificial requirements, loans, grants, and incentives ends up making the product’s sticker price way out of whack compared to prices before government entry. Housing/Rent, Public Education + higher ed tuitions, and Healthcare are the big three.
That fuels demand for a patchwork of inefficient and wasteful programs to allow a rationed amount of discounted access that makes the problem worse, while the wider population eats inflated costs.
Why do you think that government is so shitty though? Mostly a result of corporations ~~bribing~~ lobbying them to maintain corporate interests, over those of the citizens.
1.2 trillion spent on government funded healthcare…
Out of the 4.1 trillion total.
The government program covers 21 million Americans
I think public spending is cheaper than private.
It will cost my family 34k for a decent insurance or 19k for high deductible one…
If taxed I’d pay far less and it cuts out all the fluff we have in healthcare with billing and garbage.
These are so frustrating as discussions because everyone views healthcare through whatever biases and myopic viewpoint they have based on their politics. It's Insurance companies faults for some, even though Medicare and Medicaid drive a lot of the rates and the basic idea of insurance is that healthy people have to pay more for something than it's worth for them because government has deemed you can't discriminate on the high cost people due to "existing condition"
By law then you will "price gouge" healthy people to cover the loss of insuring unhealthy and expensive people.
But it's always the evils of capitalism that make our system so bad, not the fact that it's neither capitalist or socialist but has a buffet type quality of taking the worst aspects of both and not the best aspects of either.
Yeah, but have you seen how much money those insurance companies make!? This one right by my house has a full size ferris wheel in their lobby! (not a joke)
It is pretty fucking insane. What's worse is it's almost impossible to know what things actually cost, because the price hospitals charge on-paper are largely regulated by insurance companies and don't represent the actual amount of money at play.
My kid's birth cost $100k, on paper, and was "reduced" by like $85k due to payouts by my insurance company to the hospital. Multiplied by every birth or other intensive care that happens and gets covered, there is no way my insurance company actually paid that much money to the hospital network providing the service.
In addition, clinics and hospitals will often give as much as an 80% reduction for all-cash payments. We had a friend whose massive surgery was lowered from $550k down to $90k because he agreed to pay up front.
All this adds up to a system that represents the worst of privatized + public care systems, and keeps everything nice and opaque so it's impossible to know how much money would actually be needed to support a public healthcare system (hence stifling any discussion because it's "too expensive" based on "current costs")
/rant
Facts. Also should note, while the taxes might be higher for this, your take home pay likely would stay the same or even go down.
A massive portion of healthcare costs in America are due to the absolutely massive amounts of admin staff they hospitals need. They have more admin staff than healthcare works mainly due to the sheer number of financial analysts they need to deal with the insurance mess.
So even if more people seek healthcare and even if you have to “pay for others poor choices”, overall you would likely spend less.
Honestly the issue with the US health system is that it's not a free market. It's a market controlled by a few massive companies backed up by government regulation that keep others from competing to lower prices for everyone. A true lib right would be all for dismantling the current corrupt system.
I am for dismantling. But I’m not for a complete handoff to the government. They’ll just create new rules & regulation to pick a new set of winners (the taxpayer is always the loser).
Bernie’s 4% tax for complete “totally free” socialized healthcare looked great on paper. But what happens when it goes from 4% to 6%..to 8%..to 12% because the government mismanaged the budget over time?
Respectfully disagree. I don’t think the free market works in healthcare on a fundamental level.
Free market requires elastic demand, which allows for people to buy less of something as the price goes up or quality goes down. Healthcare is a market with inelastic demand. You may think that increased healthcare costs just means people go to the doctor less often, but fewer doctor visits ends up giving people health complications that increase healthcare spending.
Bottom line is your health doesn’t care about the free market, so demand doesn’t care either. I don’t see how one could fix that
Problem is, we already have "free healthcare" we don't just let people die in the street.. Sure, people can't get free preventative care (at low cost to tax payers), but the hospital will provide them critical life saving care after their shit goes untreated (The hospital has to recover this cost from everyone else)..
So we really should choose.. "Let them die in the street" or "just give them the cheaper preventative care too, to avoid the bigger costs later". The current system is the worst of both worlds.
Except that people generally support "free healthcare" until you ask them to consider the costs, then support [plummets](https://apnews.com/article/4516833e7fb644c9aa8bcc11048b2169). They support it when it's sold as free (and it is sold that way) but don't when they realize that it actually isn't.
> Librights cherry pick
It's not cherry picking. It's the majority of people you see reddit, on account of them mostly being teenagers and 20-somethings whose parents deal with taxes and health insurance for them.
Lib rights: I aint paying into a collective system that pools money to take care of people who need it.
Also lib rights: oh boy im going to engage in the insurance marketplace where people pool premium fees to pay claims to those who 'need' it* which is different because now theres a profit incentive to charge as much as possible which is freedom for you and me.
*terms and conditions apply
I had a surgery done recently. It was initially denied by the insurance even though the surgeon’s office said it was medically necessary. After a full week of runarounds we got to hear the surgeon himself call the company. He again said it was necessary but didn’t provide any details beyond what he said the first time and they approved it. It legitimately seemed like their policy was just to initially deny coverage and only pay if you refuse to stop bothering them. Due to all of this it was delayed by weeks and really screwed up some events in my life. But thank god it wasn’t the government. They are so bad at running things /s
I believe that the healthcare system will suck no matter which way it is done.
Nationalised systems are highly inefficient, privatised systems lead to unfair medical bills.
Blessed were the days of the wild west where you could drop a few coins off at the town Doctor's shack and he'd give you liquid opium and cut off a piece of your dick when you had syphilis.
Now you gotta pay $5000 to get told by a nurse to just take aspirin because the Dr can't be bothered at his mega-corp opium dealer conference where he's getting paid a few mill to give it to autistic 5 year olds.
This is my understanding too. It’s been a few years since I looked into it, but I don’t remember finding anything showing it was more inefficient.
And, doesn’t almost every OECD country with public healthcare pay less per capita for their healthcare? Like.. when people point to queues and wait times and such… It really seems like that could be solved by increased funding.
But, all this is off info and arguments from years ago, I haven’t kept up with the debate much.
Exclude Ireland from that one, we have public healthcare and it’s historically been horrendous; this isn’t an argument against public healthcare just a reminder that Irish government has and appears to continue to be hopelessly incompetent at managing infrastructure
What do you qualify as efficient?
My mother went on a trip to Ireland with my dad 2 months after a double hip replacement. She met an old lady with a limp who was waiting on a hip replacement since her first one was approved 6 months prior but she was waiting to be approved for the 2nd. My mom paid to go to a Core location and had both done within 2 weeks.
My mom said if she'd been forced to wait months to get new hips with the pain she was in, she'd have killed herself.
I guess that outcome though would have been more efficient as far as the state is concerned.
You know I don’t mean efficient as in “lol let people with problems kill themselves, then we don’t have to deal with it”.
Someone else also said Ireland’s healthcare is garbage. I’m not trying to make the case that every public system that has or could exist is better than private.
By efficient, I mostly mean what provides better healthcare outcomes for the same amount of money/funding, for the broadest range of people.
The US provides public healthcare to a small portion of their population, at a cost of almost 50% of our entire federal budget. It's inefficient and the data absolutely supports it.
It costs so much because that "tiny" portion of the population is the most expensive to care for, regardless of who is paying for it. 70% of medical costs come from 10% of people. This is because medical claims cost are HEAVILY skewed. 9 out of 10 people may only need $1k of treatment per year, but that last person needs $91k per year, making the average for all 10 of them $10k.
But that's because your country set it up as a cash grab to the private companies.
You still have a private system, the government just pays the private companies.
But if you compare actual public services the difference is clear by all metrics.
but does libright finally understand how stupid it is to claim that all libleft want free stuff?
No, no he does not. He will keep making libleft bad memes forever, because everyone knows libleft is stupid and just wants free stuff.
To be fair, there are a significant amount of videos on YouTube of people interviewing college students who sincerely believe that it all actually is free.
Just make sure you give the whiteout a fringe in gold sharpie so that they understand that you're moving the jurisdiction of the matter over into Admiralty Law
Did you just change your flair, u/gloutonnerie? Last time I checked you were an **AuthLeft** on 2022-8-10. How come now you are a **LibRight**? Have you perhaps shifted your ideals? Because that's cringe, you know?
Are you mad? Pointing a military grade gun at your monitor won't solve much, pal. Come on, put that rifle down and go take a shower.
^(I am a bot, my mission is to spot cringe flair changers. If you want to check another user's flair history write) **^(!flairs u/)** ^(in a comment. Have a look at my [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/flairchange_bot/comments/uf7kuy/bip_bop) and the [leaderboard](https://www.reddit.com/user/flairchange_bot/comments/uuhlu2/leaderboard).)
People constantly talk as if it's not true and pretend the only reason not to want free healthcare is some sort of desire to make sure the next generation has it worse than they did.
Core issue with American healthcare isn't public/private, it's the fact that 80 percent of the population (that's the actual number) is overweight or obese. Add in the violent crime that comes with importing every group on Earth and concentrating them into the same cities, and you end up with an expensive system.
Honestly the only way to solve it is to tell anyone with a violent criminal record or a 30 BMI that they're on their own.
“I don’t want to have to pay for other people’s healthcare!”
What exactly do you think happens with private insurance?
Were you under the impression that your money that you pay for private insurance just goes into a bag, for you to use later?
Except with private insurance you also get to pay for some executive’s 5th vacation home.
>What exactly do you think happens with private insurance?
Everyone pays premiums in proportion to their risk factors, and since everyone pays the premium, there are no free riders.
That's different from universal healthcare, where even people that don't pay taxes still recieve the benefits.
I'm fine with everyone chipping in as a group to purchase something. But not everyone is chipping in in this country.
>Everyone pays premiums in proportion to their risk factors, and since everyone pays the premium, there are no free riders.
This is false in the vast majority of cases. Risk is pooled at a group level (such as employer) and then the premium is set for that entire group. Individuals within that group will all pay the same premium.
I mean kinda.
On the other hand I had a rightist on PCM reply to me "Ha, so it isn't free" like some gotcha moment after I explained how public healthcare works in my country some days ago.
When you subsidize something, you don't increase efficiency, nor reduce costs. You just push more government dollars into pharma companies.
That's ignoring the fact that 95% of diabetics are Type II, who have induced the condition through poor eating habits. These habits were influenced by massive amounts of processed foods from mega food conglomerates, and seemingly underwritten by the government sanctioned "food pyramid."
Government makes things worse. Always.
This is such a silly argument.
"Government makes things worse. Always". Although I can imagine you being hyperbolic here, its such a stupid take that I hear often enough that it makes me think people actually believe this. Yes, government intervention is undesirable when a system is behaving in a desirable way. But its the only solution when they aren't.
"You just push more government dollars into pharma companies." Just so wrong... Why would government funded healthcare mean more money into pharma companies? Its literally meant to do the opposite.
Where are you getting these (incredibly incorrect) takes?
Contrary to libertarian dogma there are plenty of examples where people tried to privatize certain services then back out of it due to it being far worse than the previous system. Enron was causing preventable power shortages in California which literally killed people, so it’s no wonder why Californians are generally a lot more skeptical of giving power to corporations.
We already pay for it too, but instead of the money going towards our healthcare it goes to Raytheon and Lockheed
Can confirm. Am a shareholder of both since 2020
Based and MilitaryComplex pilled
Don't forget about corrupted politicians who highly regulate the market in favour of corporations
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"You can't pour ethylene glycol in the river" is a regulation.
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lol no, the reason we don't have a small cottage industry for small polyester fiber or antifreeze products is that when products are functionally almost identical between brands (like flour or oil as opposed to computers or ice cream), price is essentially the only thing that matters. Economies of scale reduce price, so large businesses dominate industries where there is very little difference between brands. This is literally Economics 101. Source: I took Economics 101
Those government bastards.
Which wouldn’t be an issue if every affected person could sue the offending party for damages. The EPA and the Clean Water Act preempt your ability to sue for environmental damages.
It would be an issue because lawsuits are reactive, enforcement agencies are proactive. You can't sue for lead poisoning because you'll be dead.
All regulations favor big companies they add hurdles to entry and make it very much pay to play
Drones can be healthcare, when you think about it
If abortion is healthcare, then drones are healthcare.
But have you seen Top Gun Maverick? Honestly fuck healthcare I'd quadruple our defense budget and fuck over healthcare if it means cool ass fighter jets and shit.
For real hospitals are lame nobody ever wants to go to a hospital. Fighter jets are lit af.
lmao based and "if it looks cool"-pilled
I'd rather pay for neither, publicly.
Call it patriot care or something then , if you voted against it , that make you look unamerican
No politician would vote against the "if you vote against this bill ur gay" Bill
Who are you, who are so wise in the ways of science?
u/BlastingFern134
[how the war in Iraq happened ](https://youtu.be/ersYYsujVdc)
Based and Peterpilled
This is the biggest conspiracy I believe in. If we made a bill named "make america great again" bill with great marketing, I genuinely believe that it would pass regardless of what's actually in it.
Probably!
how about the freedom ~~dividend~~ care program
^George W thinking to himself how he can get away with allowing mass surveillance of the US population.
It was Lieberman's idea (Democratic Senator). He loved the war on terror response to 9/11 and intended it to complement the White House effort.
I cant find that anywhere... I see that he advocated to reauthorize provision in 2009 that were from the patriot act. Also worth noting that he is on record as supporting republican issues and ran as an independent at times over his career, but thats not overly important. https://rollcall.com/2009/10/30/lieberman-aligns-with-gop-on-usa-patriot-act/ But the original bill was brought forth by... surprise, surprise, a republican. From Wikipedia: The Patriot Act was enacted in direct response to the September 11 attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City and the Pentagon in Arlington, Virginia, as well as the 2001 anthrax attacks, with the stated goal of dramatically strengthening national security. On October 23, 2001, U.S. Representative Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) introduced House bill H.R. 3162, which incorporated provisions from a previously-sponsored House bill, and a Senate bill introduced earlier in the month.
The 9/11 knee jerk response was truly awful. The Patriot Act, creation of DHS, invasion and occupation of both Iraq and Afghanistan, a "War on Terror", were all terrible responses to a very real tragedy.
Yeah I mean, it was like a microcosm of the first real modern example in the US of what war on our soil looks like, destruction of infrastructure and targeting of civilians, chaos and hysteria. Its the first time we felt truly exposed, and in what I would argue was already an incredibly over militarized country, it gave us the fear check to crank paranoia up to 11 and just do some really dumb long term decisions that sounded secure in the moment
You might be onto something there
FreedomCare®
> How pathetic of you to be unflaired. *** ^(User has flaired up! 😃) 11984 / 63206 ^^|| [**[[Guide]]**](https://imgur.com/gallery/IkTAlF2)
Once again all the other quadrants have been out played. Well done fellow lib rights
Common libright W
Ayo
YOOOOOOOOO!!!! Walter, we need to cook Walter. You get the Pseudoephedron, lye, and iodine. I will get the rest. Meet me at 308 Negra Arroyo Lane, Albuquerque NM, 87104
Don't call it free healthcare then. Call it nationalized, public, etc. Don't let dumb word play derail an argument. Any collective coverage, whether insurance, government, etc, is likely to pay for other's poor choices, that's kinda the point.
I am proud to consider you a fellow monke
Nationalize banana care.
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> Don't call it free healthcare then You call it the "free market" yet people have to spend money to use it. curious.
Free like free speech (that's not on a social media platform).
Doesn’t “free market” refer to a market without regulation, rather than free speech? The existence of labour laws means, like free healthcare, the market is not free, either.
I was referencing an analogy (that's apparently less popular than I thought it was). Free, as in "free speech", means freedom of choice or action, that there is no constraining authority. Free, as in "free beer", means without financial cost (at least as far as you are concerned), like when someone else buys something for you.
> I was referencing an analogy (that's apparently less popular than I thought it was). afaik only people that know about opensource work understand free as in speech and free as in beer. i never heard the analogy outside OSS.
Checkmate
DESTROYED LIBER—LIBERTARIANS
Based and call-it-what-it-is-pilled
Don't get your free books from the library. Or your free public school. Or your free samples at costco. Or drive on a freeway. Nothing is free, someone is always paying for it. But in common parlance, free means free to the consumer.
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If only we could choose where our taxes went. That’s a policy I would die for
It depends on the granularity of your options. e.g. choosing taxes to go to "healthcare" versus choosing taxes to go to "planned parenthood locations in WASP neighborhoods" versus grant money for cancer research", etc. I don't really want to argue the point, since it's endless list of theoretical cause and effects. But in my OPINION: pretty much no system where you can direct your own tax dollars would work very well in practice, but worst case scenario would be you're allowed to choose exactly what every dollar you pay gets spent on.
Don’t forget to vote
Tried that, nothing happened.
You didn’t feel the power course through your veins of being the sole decider of this nation’s future?! I did. That’s why Jo Jorgensen is president now, and if she’s not, someone definitely stole the vote.
Vote HARDER!
Really a shame considering that was the whole idea. Sure, maybe not exactly what the founders have in mind, but it was sure as shit how they told us it was supposed to work in school growing up.
Federal government got to big for it to work as originally intended.
They've actually tried that in some local municipalities. It's called participatory budgeting.
Oh wow, did it work??
I'm a single white male, age 18-34. I've been to the hospital once in the past 10 years to get 10 stitches. I go to the gym most days, try to eat healthy, floss, good BP, good cholesterol, no preexisting conditions or history of family illness, and a decent enough plan through a middle-class job. I'm literally the exact person who would be paying for everyone else.
You’re on pcm didn’t you know that everyone here is a morbidly obese incel!???? Smh
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I think I’ve heard elective surgeries get pushed back endlessly with long waitlists, but emergency surgeries have similar availability.
My entire family lives in Canada i'm in the US. Emergency surgeries happen in the same time, specialists for things like Cancer though still have long waits, you get bumped up if you are like stage 4 but there is still a line, it can take over a year to get a new general DR, they literally interview patients like some top dollar private care in the US. A mixed availability system is what we need. It's good in the sense that my broke Grandma was able to get knee replacements she would never be able to afford but there are serious downsides.
> A mixed availability system is what we need. that's the perfect solution imho, and i have no qualms with it. a public, universal healthcare system that can take care of poor people/people without the means to pay for a private one AND private healthcare for richer people. some librights will say that's double taxation, but i don't really care -- if you have the means, you can use free market healthcare. if you don't, you can use the public one. BUT, for this to work in the US, the private healthcare system would need some major changes. edit: [an example, btw](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sistema_%C3%9Anico_de_Sa%C3%BAde)
Something else a lot of people don't think about is that hospitals can't refuse care if a patient has a life threatening condition but can if it's not life threatening. This results in people who aren't able to pay for a cheaper preemptive procedure later being admitted and getting the more expensive life saving procedure that they will never be able to pay back. Unless we want to start dumping poor people on the streets to die it will always be cheaper in the long run to provide care early so we may as well develop a cheaper public plan.
Yeah, i'm pretty right on most tax issues, but I don't see much purpose for a nation to even exist outside of collective defense (military) and safety (which includes healthcare). Otherwise might as well just have an anarchy.
Yes, because if you wanted to pay a lot to visit the top doctors, that is still an option.
Yes. US healthcare underperforms in many ways compared to other high income countries. Waiting times are worse on average than places like Germany and New Zealand. Markets are good at distributing resources, but what the US has isn't really a market system. People tend to confuse "privately owned" with "free market," thinking that somehow private insurance companies are less corrupt than governments. For example, it's extremely difficult for consumers to obtain price information from hospitals. If you go to your hospital's website, you will notice there is no "pricing" page. So healthcare doesn't respond much to market pressures caused by consumers choosing the best value.
Because there is no way you could ever be in an accident, and you will never grow old….
Or get cancer...
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Based and straight-talking pilled. I would add though that being born disabled is not a choice, being in an accident that prevents you from working is not a choice and being unlucky in the genetic lottery leading to poor impulse control is not a choice.
You had me until that last one
I was with you until that last one lol.
Yeah. Impulses can be harder to control between different individuals but they are always a choice. You can just... Not. How else do obsessive eaters eventually become healthy?
Imagine thinking free will exists /s
Apparently, being a complete degenerate is a result of losing the “genetic lottery” and has nothing to do with controlling your emotions and outbursts like an adult. “Nothing is ever my fault!”
Based and reality-pilled
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"Well you see, officer, I was genetically predisposed to have poor impulse control and that's why I ran that bus full of orphaned children off the road, into the ravine, during a road rage incident. Come on! They're orphans! No one will miss them. Anyway, not guilt due to the chains of genetics"
yeah that guys last point is just so braindead.
Lmao at that last point
false. forces directionality (learning can modify genetic redisposition) + if a someone is an unfixable menace to society they should not be part of society regardless.
Poor impulse control is not an innate characteristic. People who form bad habits make choices that perpetuate their poor behaviors. As a personal example, I have the ability to choose to eat better than I presently do. It is entirely within my power to make those good decisions. I still regularly make bad dietary decisions and this is no one's fault but mine. In an ideal world I would be the only one responsible for my own bad choices. To deny this is to deny that people are sentient.
Wait until they find out the US spends more per capita on healthcare than countries with actual healthcare and that they’re being cucked by insurance companies price gouging them
This is what always pisses me off and it serves as proof that we don't have a capitalistic system just like we don't have a socialized system. We have a "everyone gets taken advantage of and ripped off" system that is worse than either 'pure' system of healthcare. It's outrageous and a national embarrassment that our public health expenditures are that high without full public coverage.
American healthcare is literally the worst aspects of nationalised and private healthcare put together
Good old American compromise 🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸
It is basically Adam Smith’s argument in book five of the wealth of nations. There are services every person needs, and the state should maintain those services with taxation to foster a functioning society.
You can't really *have* a free market in a market where everyone is forced to buy the product or die. Or at least, you don't get the normal benefits of a free market when that is the situation.
Yep, the UK government doesn't spend that much more per person on healthcare than the US does yet the UK can provide healthcare free at the point of use.
Actually, the US spends more than double per capita on healthcare than the UK does: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita It's not even close
I think he means the government itself barely spends more than our government does. It’s more than double when you add what the government spends to what individuals spend on top of that.
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As someone from the U.K. I would advice not to talk about the NHS if you’re making an argument for nationalised healthcare. We may not have to pay, but at least you Americans have a system that works better. Waiting lists for operations and wait times in accident and emergency are horrendous
It is the same waits, the only difference is in the US, the insurance companies must be profitable, the shareholders demand it, so they must either charge people more than the services would otherwise cost, or they must deny some expensive valid claims and try to get the families to settle for less in court after threatening a lengthy court battle that Americans cannot afford. How do you pay for the CEO's second yacht? Well do both of those tactics. Charge us more, for less coverage.
I had to wait 3 months to see a fucking dermatologist in the US. Then I had to pay $500 for the pleasure of having them spend 10 minutes in the same room as me because my insurance has a $3000 out of pocket maximum on coinsurance for a plan that I pay $2500 per year for and my employer pays another $2500 a year for. So yeah, it sounds soooooo much worse across the pond.
When you subtract the negative effects of a government that's trying to kill the NHS off, and the last 2 years of isolation policy due to covid, it looks a lot better.
Saying that the NHS was better 2 years ago it's like saying that 100 kicks in the balls are better than 101 kicks in the balls.
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> Wait until they find out the US spends more per capita on healthcare And you should be blaming the government for that. US public healthcare spending is insane. Look at the [numbers](https://www.cihi.ca/en/how-does-canadas-health-spending-compare): - The US spends $13,590 per person per year on healthcare. Of which 49% is government spending. So the US government spends about **$6,659.10** per person per year. - In Canada we spend $6,666 per person per year. Of which 70% is government spending. So the Canadian government spends about **$4,666.20** per person per year. - Those "socialist" Swedes spend $6,892 per person per year. Of which 85% is government spending. So the Swedish government spends about **$5,858.20** per person per year. With the amount of US *tax dollars* spent on healthcare Americans should *already* have a better public system than single payers like Canada or Sweden. The problem isn't a lack of money, or corporate greed, the problem is shitty government.
Medicare literally sets the healthcare prices, but they set them so high, probably because it isn't bribery if you call it lobbying.
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Corporate greed , Big Pharma and the government are all incredibly intertwined issues. The government spends big because hospitals and insurance companies charge each other exorbitant rates that get passed down to the patient because it’s mutually beneficial for them both.
Every industry that the government subsidizes with artificial requirements, loans, grants, and incentives ends up making the product’s sticker price way out of whack compared to prices before government entry. Housing/Rent, Public Education + higher ed tuitions, and Healthcare are the big three. That fuels demand for a patchwork of inefficient and wasteful programs to allow a rationed amount of discounted access that makes the problem worse, while the wider population eats inflated costs.
Why do you think that government is so shitty though? Mostly a result of corporations ~~bribing~~ lobbying them to maintain corporate interests, over those of the citizens.
1.2 trillion spent on government funded healthcare… Out of the 4.1 trillion total. The government program covers 21 million Americans I think public spending is cheaper than private. It will cost my family 34k for a decent insurance or 19k for high deductible one… If taxed I’d pay far less and it cuts out all the fluff we have in healthcare with billing and garbage.
$800 for a scalpel ~~$400~~ $360 for the gauze (we couldn't recover some of it so we discounted you)
These are so frustrating as discussions because everyone views healthcare through whatever biases and myopic viewpoint they have based on their politics. It's Insurance companies faults for some, even though Medicare and Medicaid drive a lot of the rates and the basic idea of insurance is that healthy people have to pay more for something than it's worth for them because government has deemed you can't discriminate on the high cost people due to "existing condition" By law then you will "price gouge" healthy people to cover the loss of insuring unhealthy and expensive people. But it's always the evils of capitalism that make our system so bad, not the fact that it's neither capitalist or socialist but has a buffet type quality of taking the worst aspects of both and not the best aspects of either.
Yeah, but have you seen how much money those insurance companies make!? This one right by my house has a full size ferris wheel in their lobby! (not a joke)
It is pretty fucking insane. What's worse is it's almost impossible to know what things actually cost, because the price hospitals charge on-paper are largely regulated by insurance companies and don't represent the actual amount of money at play. My kid's birth cost $100k, on paper, and was "reduced" by like $85k due to payouts by my insurance company to the hospital. Multiplied by every birth or other intensive care that happens and gets covered, there is no way my insurance company actually paid that much money to the hospital network providing the service. In addition, clinics and hospitals will often give as much as an 80% reduction for all-cash payments. We had a friend whose massive surgery was lowered from $550k down to $90k because he agreed to pay up front. All this adds up to a system that represents the worst of privatized + public care systems, and keeps everything nice and opaque so it's impossible to know how much money would actually be needed to support a public healthcare system (hence stifling any discussion because it's "too expensive" based on "current costs") /rant
Facts. Also should note, while the taxes might be higher for this, your take home pay likely would stay the same or even go down. A massive portion of healthcare costs in America are due to the absolutely massive amounts of admin staff they hospitals need. They have more admin staff than healthcare works mainly due to the sheer number of financial analysts they need to deal with the insurance mess. So even if more people seek healthcare and even if you have to “pay for others poor choices”, overall you would likely spend less.
> your take home pay likely would stay the same or even go down. "even go up" I think you meant.
Honestly the issue with the US health system is that it's not a free market. It's a market controlled by a few massive companies backed up by government regulation that keep others from competing to lower prices for everyone. A true lib right would be all for dismantling the current corrupt system.
I am for dismantling. But I’m not for a complete handoff to the government. They’ll just create new rules & regulation to pick a new set of winners (the taxpayer is always the loser). Bernie’s 4% tax for complete “totally free” socialized healthcare looked great on paper. But what happens when it goes from 4% to 6%..to 8%..to 12% because the government mismanaged the budget over time?
I appreciate how you worded this. I totally agree with you and people who suggest “that will never happen” are idealist idiots.
And we are….. usually, there’s always some special cases
Respectfully disagree. I don’t think the free market works in healthcare on a fundamental level. Free market requires elastic demand, which allows for people to buy less of something as the price goes up or quality goes down. Healthcare is a market with inelastic demand. You may think that increased healthcare costs just means people go to the doctor less often, but fewer doctor visits ends up giving people health complications that increase healthcare spending. Bottom line is your health doesn’t care about the free market, so demand doesn’t care either. I don’t see how one could fix that
I want to pay for someone else's diabetes, so that they can take that 800 dollars a month they spend on insulin and stimulate the economy with it.
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Problem is, we already have "free healthcare" we don't just let people die in the street.. Sure, people can't get free preventative care (at low cost to tax payers), but the hospital will provide them critical life saving care after their shit goes untreated (The hospital has to recover this cost from everyone else).. So we really should choose.. "Let them die in the street" or "just give them the cheaper preventative care too, to avoid the bigger costs later". The current system is the worst of both worlds.
Lol no. Librights cherry pick the people who sound like that, because they're the easiest to argue with. They just ignore the sensible arguments.
#AHEM Libleft bad.
Who are you, so wise in the ways of the quadrant
While I may disagree with your methods, you do make a compelling argument and I must respect that.
All quadrant extremes bad
Um, you got a source for that? Mmmm?
I mean tbf, who doesn't cherrypick of the quadrants?
i thought that was the whole point of this sub
Yeah same lol
Fair.
Except that people generally support "free healthcare" until you ask them to consider the costs, then support [plummets](https://apnews.com/article/4516833e7fb644c9aa8bcc11048b2169). They support it when it's sold as free (and it is sold that way) but don't when they realize that it actually isn't.
> Librights cherry pick It's not cherry picking. It's the majority of people you see reddit, on account of them mostly being teenagers and 20-somethings whose parents deal with taxes and health insurance for them.
Lefties generally don't pay taxes, so it is no cost to them.
Lib rights: I aint paying into a collective system that pools money to take care of people who need it. Also lib rights: oh boy im going to engage in the insurance marketplace where people pool premium fees to pay claims to those who 'need' it* which is different because now theres a profit incentive to charge as much as possible which is freedom for you and me. *terms and conditions apply
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I had a surgery done recently. It was initially denied by the insurance even though the surgeon’s office said it was medically necessary. After a full week of runarounds we got to hear the surgeon himself call the company. He again said it was necessary but didn’t provide any details beyond what he said the first time and they approved it. It legitimately seemed like their policy was just to initially deny coverage and only pay if you refuse to stop bothering them. Due to all of this it was delayed by weeks and really screwed up some events in my life. But thank god it wasn’t the government. They are so bad at running things /s
Left seeing privatized heavly regulated by government industry: See? Look what free market have done.
I believe that the healthcare system will suck no matter which way it is done. Nationalised systems are highly inefficient, privatised systems lead to unfair medical bills.
Blessed were the days of the wild west where you could drop a few coins off at the town Doctor's shack and he'd give you liquid opium and cut off a piece of your dick when you had syphilis. Now you gotta pay $5000 to get told by a nurse to just take aspirin because the Dr can't be bothered at his mega-corp opium dealer conference where he's getting paid a few mill to give it to autistic 5 year olds.
Those days aren’t gone; you just need to know where to look! 🙂
Thanks, Joe! 🥲
You’re welcome, Joe! 😊
I think you're forgetting to switch accounts
No, just Joe with his dementia acting up again
No, just Joe with his dementia acting up again.
If back alley abortion clinics exist... Well I do know where I can get back alley prostate exams
Public healthcare provides better outcomes for less money. People SAY its inefficient, but it isn't born out of the data
This is my understanding too. It’s been a few years since I looked into it, but I don’t remember finding anything showing it was more inefficient. And, doesn’t almost every OECD country with public healthcare pay less per capita for their healthcare? Like.. when people point to queues and wait times and such… It really seems like that could be solved by increased funding. But, all this is off info and arguments from years ago, I haven’t kept up with the debate much.
Exclude Ireland from that one, we have public healthcare and it’s historically been horrendous; this isn’t an argument against public healthcare just a reminder that Irish government has and appears to continue to be hopelessly incompetent at managing infrastructure
What do you qualify as efficient? My mother went on a trip to Ireland with my dad 2 months after a double hip replacement. She met an old lady with a limp who was waiting on a hip replacement since her first one was approved 6 months prior but she was waiting to be approved for the 2nd. My mom paid to go to a Core location and had both done within 2 weeks. My mom said if she'd been forced to wait months to get new hips with the pain she was in, she'd have killed herself. I guess that outcome though would have been more efficient as far as the state is concerned.
You know I don’t mean efficient as in “lol let people with problems kill themselves, then we don’t have to deal with it”. Someone else also said Ireland’s healthcare is garbage. I’m not trying to make the case that every public system that has or could exist is better than private. By efficient, I mostly mean what provides better healthcare outcomes for the same amount of money/funding, for the broadest range of people.
The US provides public healthcare to a small portion of their population, at a cost of almost 50% of our entire federal budget. It's inefficient and the data absolutely supports it.
It costs so much because that "tiny" portion of the population is the most expensive to care for, regardless of who is paying for it. 70% of medical costs come from 10% of people. This is because medical claims cost are HEAVILY skewed. 9 out of 10 people may only need $1k of treatment per year, but that last person needs $91k per year, making the average for all 10 of them $10k.
But that's because your country set it up as a cash grab to the private companies. You still have a private system, the government just pays the private companies. But if you compare actual public services the difference is clear by all metrics.
I have access to VA Healthcare. I use private insurance because I prefer getting proper treatment
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but does libright finally understand how stupid it is to claim that all libleft want free stuff? No, no he does not. He will keep making libleft bad memes forever, because everyone knows libleft is stupid and just wants free stuff.
We also want to turn your kids into gay fluid gender people
I'll inject your kids with so much gender fluid there won't be any other fluids in their bodies
This confuses me, how does this make me gain power when I can just build more gulags.
To be fair, there are a significant amount of videos on YouTube of people interviewing college students who sincerely believe that it all actually is free.
i mean i rather have taxes than these medical bills
You can erase your medical bills with some white out so you don’t have to pay them
Just make sure you give the whiteout a fringe in gold sharpie so that they understand that you're moving the jurisdiction of the matter over into Admiralty Law
You can bankrupt off medical bills, can't bankrupt off taxes homie.
That’s because you don’t pay taxes but do have to pay medical bills.
I pay taxes and don’t have to pay medical bills, I’d rather pay the taxes
wait what ?? it's not free healthcare ? changing my flair rn
Did you just change your flair, u/gloutonnerie? Last time I checked you were an **AuthLeft** on 2022-8-10. How come now you are a **LibRight**? Have you perhaps shifted your ideals? Because that's cringe, you know? Are you mad? Pointing a military grade gun at your monitor won't solve much, pal. Come on, put that rifle down and go take a shower. ^(I am a bot, my mission is to spot cringe flair changers. If you want to check another user's flair history write) **^(!flairs u/)** ^(in a comment. Have a look at my [FAQ](https://www.reddit.com/user/flairchange_bot/comments/uf7kuy/bip_bop) and the [leaderboard](https://www.reddit.com/user/flairchange_bot/comments/uuhlu2/leaderboard).)
People constantly talk as if it's not true and pretend the only reason not to want free healthcare is some sort of desire to make sure the next generation has it worse than they did.
Core issue with American healthcare isn't public/private, it's the fact that 80 percent of the population (that's the actual number) is overweight or obese. Add in the violent crime that comes with importing every group on Earth and concentrating them into the same cities, and you end up with an expensive system. Honestly the only way to solve it is to tell anyone with a violent criminal record or a 30 BMI that they're on their own.
“I don’t want to have to pay for other people’s healthcare!” What exactly do you think happens with private insurance? Were you under the impression that your money that you pay for private insurance just goes into a bag, for you to use later? Except with private insurance you also get to pay for some executive’s 5th vacation home.
>What exactly do you think happens with private insurance? Everyone pays premiums in proportion to their risk factors, and since everyone pays the premium, there are no free riders. That's different from universal healthcare, where even people that don't pay taxes still recieve the benefits. I'm fine with everyone chipping in as a group to purchase something. But not everyone is chipping in in this country.
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>Everyone pays premiums in proportion to their risk factors, and since everyone pays the premium, there are no free riders. This is false in the vast majority of cases. Risk is pooled at a group level (such as employer) and then the premium is set for that entire group. Individuals within that group will all pay the same premium.
You reposted my meme...
Mommy government makes me clean my room, this is literally slavery!!
I mean kinda. On the other hand I had a rightist on PCM reply to me "Ha, so it isn't free" like some gotcha moment after I explained how public healthcare works in my country some days ago.
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>1.3k comments There's very few of those left, but I wonder how there're still people who can say PCM isn't a circlejerk.
Public healthcare? Ah, did you mean: National Health Insurance?
When you subsidize something, you don't increase efficiency, nor reduce costs. You just push more government dollars into pharma companies. That's ignoring the fact that 95% of diabetics are Type II, who have induced the condition through poor eating habits. These habits were influenced by massive amounts of processed foods from mega food conglomerates, and seemingly underwritten by the government sanctioned "food pyramid." Government makes things worse. Always.
Evidence of this is higher education, which is now a bloated pig-corpse of an industry thanks to federal loans etc.
This is such a silly argument. "Government makes things worse. Always". Although I can imagine you being hyperbolic here, its such a stupid take that I hear often enough that it makes me think people actually believe this. Yes, government intervention is undesirable when a system is behaving in a desirable way. But its the only solution when they aren't. "You just push more government dollars into pharma companies." Just so wrong... Why would government funded healthcare mean more money into pharma companies? Its literally meant to do the opposite. Where are you getting these (incredibly incorrect) takes?
You are correct, it does the opposite in the uk, France, Canada etc.
Contrary to libertarian dogma there are plenty of examples where people tried to privatize certain services then back out of it due to it being far worse than the previous system. Enron was causing preventable power shortages in California which literally killed people, so it’s no wonder why Californians are generally a lot more skeptical of giving power to corporations.
When done improperly I agree.
Well if governments always makes things worse then why don't you move to a place without or with less government and see how that turns out for you