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Capitalism + Healthcare = Death

Aside from nurses being subject to rampant physical, verbal and emotional abuse (especially from the right-wing) hospitals are not hiring nurses -- despite there being an excess of them -- because they cut into profits. The for-profit system of healthcare is an ABYSMAL failure, and people are dying because of it. The COVID pandemic would have hit America far less severely if hospitals were adequately staffed. However, there's no money in healthcare unless you overcharge for services and medicine, underperform for patients, and overwork the employees.

This is a global phenomenon. E.g.,

 
The best path to long term health is preventative care. If more people could access healthcare more regularly, it would actually cut costs down because there would be fewer serious complications down the road.

Yea, that's just not true. Read about the Oregon experiment. Is disproved all of these things.
 
The best path to long term health is preventative care. If more people could access healthcare more regularly, it would actually cut costs down because there would be fewer serious complications down the road.

The cost savings there come would from allowing the system to pare back on (unneeded) capacity since a healthier population would consume fewer health resources, shrinking the number of beds, staffing, etc. Which would be great, except during acute spikes in demand like a pandemic.
 
The cost savings there come would from allowing the system to pare back on (unneeded) capacity since a healthier population would consume fewer health resources, shrinking the number of beds, staffing, etc. Which would be great, except during acute spikes in demand like a pandemic.
Even during acute spikes, a healthier population overall will be less vulnerable. Early preventative care means less need for costly emergency treatment later on.
 
Not this shit again… for-profit healthcare systems were never the problem, the 3rd party in the room always was. Be it private insurance or the government or some terrible combination of the two people did not start going bankrupt over heart surgery until a 3rd party (or two) figured out a way to insert vulture capitalism into the mix.

If you outright socialize healthcare then there is every incentive for everyone to use it at the expense of everyone, meaning costs go up until the point that services goes down and/or restrictions are implemented.
Both are issues.
 
Yea, that's just not true. Read about the Oregon experiment. Is disproved all of these things.
I doubt that. But if you'd care to link some information, or paraphrase it, I'm all ears.
 
Even during acute spikes, a healthier population overall will be less vulnerable. Early preventative care means less need for costly emergency treatment later on.

I'm not saying a leaner health system wouldn't be great, I'm saying you're going to run into problems during a pandemic no matter what. The OP wants to pin a problem that every system around the globe is grappling with on some ideological gripe about the U.S.
 
Not this shit again… for-profit healthcare systems were never the problem, the 3rd party in the room always was. Be it private insurance or the government or some terrible combination of the two people did not start going bankrupt over heart surgery until a 3rd party (or two) figured out a way to insert vulture capitalism into the mix.

If you outright socialize healthcare then there is every incentive for everyone to use it at the expense of everyone, meaning costs go up until the point that services goes down and/or restrictions are implemented.
OK, You are seriously listing as a downside of socialized medicine that "everyone will use it"?
 
I doubt that. But if you'd care to link some information, or paraphrase it, I'm all ears.

Doubt what you want, it has had numerous papers published on it.

Effectively the state of Oregon did a random lottery for thousands of people to be given free healthcare, no strings attached, in exchange for monitoring and feedback over several years.

It ended up showing that ER usage increased, spending dramatically increased, there was no material improvement in the management of chronic disease or physical health overall, and a minor increase in mental health.
 
I'm not saying a leaner health system wouldn't be great, I'm saying you're going to run into problems during a pandemic no matter what. The OP wants to pin a problem that every system around the globe is grappling with on some ideological gripe about the U.S.
Of course, a pandemic is always going to apply serious strain to any healthcare system. But that doesn't mean there aren't serious problems with the US setup, or that these problems don't compoud the difficulties in dealing with the pandemic.
 
Doubt what you want, it has had numerous papers published on it.

Effectively the state of Oregon did a random lottery for thousands of people to be given free healthcare, no strings attached, in exchange for monitoring and feedback over several years.

It ended up showing that ER usage increased, spending dramatically increased, there was no material improvement in the management of chronic disease or physical health overall, and a minor increase in mental health.
I feel that a one to two year study is inadequate to observe the full impact of what universal health coverage could actually achieve if adopted nationwide on a permanent basis.
 
Wait a minute, don't you have OBAMACARE? Affordable healthcare for everyone, mandated by the government?
Republicans started sabotaging Obamacare five minutes after it was conceived. It's nothing like what was intended.
 
Not this shit again… for-profit healthcare systems were never the problem, the 3rd party in the room always was. Be it private insurance or the government or some terrible combination of the two people did not start going bankrupt over heart surgery until a 3rd party (or two) figured out a way to insert vulture capitalism into the mix.

No idea how that is supposed to function.

A for-profit healthcare system with only the provider and patient in the picture? I get hit by a car and I have to negotiate or shop around as I'm bleeding out? Or hospitals basically get to dictate prices in emergencies, since ..you know...bleeding out?

Shopping around only works for non-serious things. And even then, it cannot work without government setting a slew of rules for operation, pricing, etc., of health care providers for the same damn reasons we decided to have labor laws and the like in the first place: the "free market" typically produces an oligopoly of bigtime winners who cannot be dislodged, and everyone has to just deal with it.

If nobody cares about worker safety, then every sausage is going to have lots of human fingers and rat turds in it, and then the "free market" idea of people just taking their money elsewhere is defeated. Why would it be any different with hospitals? It's beyond me why you cast them as some kind of heroic presence that was only corrupted by health insurance. They're a business, because of course they are in America.

No, some kind of libertarian free for all market is not going to be better. It'll be infinitely worse for the customer, and infinitely better for the hospitals.






If you outright socialize healthcare then there is every incentive for everyone to use it at the expense of everyone, meaning costs go up until the point that services goes down and/or restrictions are implemented.

Europe has any number of different blended systems that by and large provide better care for less expense than we do. They also on average have a mix of built-in costs to the patient on top of what they pay in taxes, which necessarily discourages abuse of the system.

Worst I hear is the occasional RW article about "here are some Brits complaining about not being able to see a doctor for a cold"...well...you shouldn't be seeing a doctor for a cold unless you've got some serious complicating conditions.

It needn't be some all-or-nothing thing. It's the least worst solution, and that's what one should generally aim for. Healthcare should be a public good, not a business opportunity.
 
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Aside from nurses being subject to rampant physical, verbal and emotional abuse (especially from the right-wing) hospitals are not hiring nurses -- despite there being an excess of them -- because they cut into profits. The for-profit system of healthcare is an ABYSMAL failure, and people are dying because of it. The COVID pandemic would have hit America far less severely if hospitals were adequately staffed. However, there's no money in healthcare unless you overcharge for services and medicine, underperform for patients, and overwork the employees.




You can thank ronald reagan, conservatives and not properly regulated capitalism for this.

Before reagan and conservatives started the deregulation frenzy and demonization of properly regulating business, we didn't have this problem.

We had a large network of community hospitals and non profit hospitals.

Then reagan became president and brought with him the deregulating everything so that we were left with a health care mess that got way out of control in the 90s.

It shouldn't take a law for business owners to do what is right but it does so we need to pass proper regulation.

We won't get it with conservative politicians controlling our government.
 
Aside from nurses being subject to rampant physical, verbal and emotional abuse (especially from the right-wing) hospitals are not hiring nurses -- despite there being an excess of them -- because they cut into profits. The for-profit system of healthcare is an ABYSMAL failure, and people are dying because of it. The COVID pandemic would have hit America far less severely if hospitals were adequately staffed. However, there's no money in healthcare unless you overcharge for services and medicine, underperform for patients, and overwork the employees.


Solving simple poverty through equal protection of the laws for unemployment compensation in our at-will employment States could mean greater market participation by more persons. Since we subscribe to Capitalism we must pay persons to be Good and not Bad. Equal protection of our at-will employment laws is a simple modus operandi.
 
Too many Americans are just plain gullible and incapable of reasoning through cost-benefit-analysis to abandon the "increased cost, doctor shortage, endless wait, denial of service, freeloader, government overreach, death squad" rhetoric without any viable reasoning beyond 'it's a liberal power grab,' and constantly reiterating alternate arguments when faced with actual logic and data blowing up their barked-out disproven 'facts.'

Thanks buttheads; reasonable intelligent problem solving is not near so fun as plain old pointlessly arguing negatives.
 
Too many Americans are just plain gullible and incapable of reasoning through cost-benefit-analysis to abandon the "increased cost, doctor shortage, endless wait, denial of service, freeloader, government overreach, death squad" rhetoric without any viable reasoning beyond 'it's a liberal power grab,' and constantly reiterating alternate arguments when faced with actual logic and data blowing up their barked-out disproven 'facts.'

Thanks buttheads; reasonable intelligent problem solving is not near so fun as plain old pointlessly arguing negatives.
The dilemma is we need to increase market participation so healthcare firms can afford more nurses.
 
Not this shit again… for-profit healthcare systems were never the problem, the 3rd party in the room always was. Be it private insurance or the government or some terrible combination of the two people did not start going bankrupt over heart surgery until a 3rd party (or two) figured out a way to insert vulture capitalism into the mix.

If you outright socialize healthcare then there is every incentive for everyone to use it at the expense of everyone, meaning costs go up until the point that services goes down and/or restrictions are implemented.



Hawaii had socialized medicine. Everyone was covered. No one was without proper health care and no medical bill went unpaid.

I was in a near death accident with monster 15 ft waves in Hawaii in 2009.

I went into the coma in the aid car on the way to the hospital.

I went through ER then was admitted into ICU.

In that ICU every nurse was limited to TWO patients per nurse. So no patient went unattended. I had never gotten such excellent care. It's their excellent care that kept me alive when I was expected to die. It was their excellent care that helped me come out of a coma the doctors doubted I would wake from.

When we got back home to the mainland my ex and I expected to get a hospital bill of at least 50 thousand dollars. We were used to the bills here on the mainland. Where not everyone is covered. Where not everyone can get needed health care, where not every bill is paid so the unpaid bills are "cost shifted" to those who can pay resulting in medical bills many more times than they should cost.

The whole hospital bill for all the excellent gold Cadillac care I received in Hawaii was 26 thousand dollars. The union my ex was in made sure we had proper insurance so we didn't have to pay any of it, the insurance paid it all.

Your last sentence can't be more wrong.

Actual real world facts just aren't on your side.

You need to stop lying.
 
Hawaii had socialized medicine. Everyone was covered. No one was without proper health care and no medical bill went unpaid.

I was in a near death accident with monster 15 ft waves in Hawaii in 2009.

I went into the coma in the aid car on the way to the hospital.

I went through ER then was admitted into ICU.

In that ICU every nurse was limited to TWO patients per nurse. So no patient went unattended. I had never gotten such excellent care. It's their excellent care that kept me alive when I was expected to die. It was their excellent care that helped me come out of a coma the doctors doubted I would wake from.

When we got back home to the mainland my ex and I expected to get a hospital bill of at least 50 thousand dollars. We were used to the bills here on the mainland. Where not everyone is covered. Where not everyone can get needed health care, where not every bill is paid so the unpaid bills are "cost shifted" to those who can pay resulting in medical bills many more times than they should cost.

The whole hospital bill for all the excellent gold Cadillac care I received in Hawaii was 26 thousand dollars. The union my ex was in made sure we had proper insurance so we didn't have to pay any of it, the insurance paid it all.

Your last sentence can't be more wrong.

Actual real world facts just aren't on your side.

You need to stop lying.

Anecdotal evidence is just that, nothing more.
 
Hawaii had socialized medicine. Everyone was covered. No one was without proper health care and no medical bill went unpaid.

I was in a near death accident with monster 15 ft waves in Hawaii in 2009.

I went into the coma in the aid car on the way to the hospital.

I went through ER then was admitted into ICU.

In that ICU every nurse was limited to TWO patients per nurse. So no patient went unattended. I had never gotten such excellent care. It's their excellent care that kept me alive when I was expected to die. It was their excellent care that helped me come out of a coma the doctors doubted I would wake from.

When we got back home to the mainland my ex and I expected to get a hospital bill of at least 50 thousand dollars. We were used to the bills here on the mainland. Where not everyone is covered. Where not everyone can get needed health care, where not every bill is paid so the unpaid bills are "cost shifted" to those who can pay resulting in medical bills many more times than they should cost.

The whole hospital bill for all the excellent gold Cadillac care I received in Hawaii was 26 thousand dollars. The union my ex was in made sure we had proper insurance so we didn't have to pay any of it, the insurance paid it all.

No disrespect intended, but you don't know how healthcare works.

First off, go to nationalized healthcare models and look at the degrees of care/staffing provided. They are far worse than they are in the US.

Second off, look at the services and speed of those services available in the US and compare to the UK for instance.

Third, you said it was a $26k bill? Bills don't matter, payments do.

Lastly, the whole position you are taking is odd to me. You are ranting and railing against the US healthcare model but then heaping praise upon it with your experience in Hawaii. Hawaii does not have a universal care model, never has. You then break out the specific of your care in Hawaii without realizing that is not what you would have received in places like Canada or the UK.

It is just odd.
 
Anecdotal evidence is just that, nothing more.


How weak can you get?

Show me where I'm wrong.

Hawaii is my second home.

That wasn't the only time I have been in the medical system in Hawaii.

I had to take my child to the hospital for some stitches. There was absolutely no wait time. I went in with my child to see the doctor while my ex filled out the paperwork. We weren't forced to sit in a waiting room for a long period of time, we went right in.

When the bill came, paperwork came with it saying that if we didn't have insurance, just fill out the paperwork and the bill would be paid.

Our insurance paid every penny of it. My ex was in a union that made sure we had proper insurance.

Those two times weren't the only times I've had to use the Hawaiian medical system. I have never had any problems like we have here.

All the bills there are paid in full so no bill ever goes unpaid. So costs of health care are kept low. They are only paying for health care they receive, not health care someone else received but didn't pay the bill like we have to do here.

My experience with Hawaiian health care is the normal experience in Hawaii. Not the anecdotal experience.

Stop with the lies.
 
All the bills there are paid in full so no bill ever goes unpaid. So costs of health care are kept low. They are only paying for health care they receive, not health care someone else received but didn't pay the bill like we have to do here.


Stop with the lies.

Hawaii has above average healthcare costs in the US.
 
Not this shit again… for-profit healthcare systems were never the problem, the 3rd party in the room always was. Be it private insurance or the government or some terrible combination of the two people did not start going bankrupt over heart surgery until a 3rd party (or two) figured out a way to insert vulture capitalism into the mix.

If you outright socialize healthcare then there is every incentive for everyone to use it at the expense of everyone, meaning costs go up until the point that services goes down and/or restrictions are implemented.
Just a question, have you ever been involved in the health care system? Do you actually know anything about it, other than what you have read or watched a talking head show discussing our system? Again, just asking?
 
Just a question, have you ever been involved in the health care system? Do you actually know anything about it, other than what you have read or watched a talking head show discussing our system? Again, just asking?

Not in a medical sense, but a very long time ago (I am not young) one of my first jobs out of college was working for a company that designed patient billing management systems for hospitals. Medicare billing and private, all the encounters from eligibility to payments and correspondence. I was around for HIPAA privacy and security, namely the installation of those security standards that ended up with a slew of new policies we wrote for ourselves and for our clients. I ended up writing some of the first security policy standards based on NIST standards at the time, which got us accreditations for such work.

I was aware of the quagmire with 3rd parties between the patient and the provider back then, and am seeing the continued mess since.
 
Not this shit again… for-profit healthcare systems were never the problem, the 3rd party in the room always was. Be it private insurance or the government or some terrible combination of the two people did not start going bankrupt over heart surgery until a 3rd party (or two) figured out a way to insert vulture capitalism into the mix.

If you outright socialize healthcare then there is every incentive for everyone to use it at the expense of everyone, meaning costs go up until the point that services goes down and/or restrictions are implemented.
Just so you know, we do not have a health care system, what we have is a profit center for large corporations, both in the provision of service and the paying for that service. What it means is that both providers and insurers are there to make a profit. The providers want to over provide services, especially when it comes to tests and surgeries. Insurers on the other hand want to pay as little and approve as little services as they can get away with. Neither side cares about the actual needs of those requiring services, but only about profit.
 
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