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Comment by uncoder0 | Hacker News Reader

We really need to address the absolute cost of healthcare in this country before we can make any progress on nationalizing any portion of it. The pure costs are outrageous. We spend ~$10,000 per capita in 2017 vs ~$6,000 in Norway which has a similar per capita GDP. (PPP adjusted https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/health-...)

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Absolutely, and that's one of the rationales for incentive changes enacted under ACA. Before ACA, health systems were incentivized fee-for-service, not outcomes based. Under ACA we shifted to try to offer Americans options for preventative care, to avoid the extreme costs of emergency services. According to the same site[1] cost growth has come down as more people take advantage of their coverage.

1. https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe...

Things like cost controls and universal coverage are synergistic. People with coverage will seek earlier, cheaper remedies over waiting to the last minute expensive emergency care.

Republicans and conservative Democrats have allied to sabotage the ability for universal service to control cost. From the abandonment of the Public Option in the ACA marketplace, to disallowing Medicare Part D from negotiating with drug manufacturers for lower prices. We've been effectively hamstrung, but that means there's plenty of low-hanging fruit.

Yeah I was definitely hoping for a more aggressive overhaul in the cost side than what we saw with ACA but, it seemed to play out in typical DC fashion once the lobbyists got their teeth into it.

Nationalizing it is the single biggest possible step towards getting costs under control.

Actually that's not that bad for the United States since the obesity rate in the US is 4x that of Norway.

If the US got its obesity rate under control, we could save a lot of money (less hypertension, less diabetes).

The US health care system is a very well run billing machine with average (compared to other developed nations) health outcomes as a lucky side-effect.

I pay $6000+/year in health insurance in the US + deductibles + co-pays + + + and I don't even know if they'll cover me when shit really hits the fan - but hey, I'll get a flu shot "for free".

Check profit margins for companies in the health care space, they're pretty good.

Do you have any studies that you can point to that support this view? It’s OK if you can’t or don’t. I’ve heard this point of view often but it doesn’t jive with my anecdotal experience.

Diabetes and hypertension both increase the risks of coronary artery disease, cerebrovascular disease, renal disease, peripheral vascular disease, blindness, heart chamber enlargement and failure, localized infections, decreased wound healing requiring increased post-op surveillance and complications, obstructive sleep apnea (obesity) and its associated problems including pulmonary hypertension and heart failure.

As you can see, obesity is a leading risk for all these problems.

We need to fix obesity.

Yes we’d save a lot of money but do you have studies to show that fixing obesity would mean that we’d spend much less per capita on healthcare than we currently do? And by much less I mean get to Norway levels of per capita spending on healthcare.

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