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Comment by pastor_elm | Hacker News Reader

And let the layoffs of event staff begin

I do some convention work. Most labor is hired specifically for the event itself. We won't be "laid off". We'll never be offered work in the first place.

Side note: apparently this makes getting unemployment benefits a little trickier (but not impossible), since I don't have "an employer" and I wasn't let go from a job. I have "those 4 or 5 companies that do all the conventions and who hired me in the past but aren't hiring anyone this year".

It has. About a third of the full-time SXSW staff has been laid off. (And of course, countless local servers, security, caterers, registration desk people, event hall setup, etc. etc. are simply not going to get much in the way of hours over the next number of months.)

It's at times like this that a well funded employment-insurance fund would be pretty useful.

Throw in some nationalized healthcare to keep these same now-uninsured people healthy.

If only, sadly it looks like that won't be happening in the near future due to primary developments.

It wasn't going to be happening anyways. Those types of programs need to come from Congress, and there was zero coalition built to make them actually happen.

Yes, let's give Trump monopoly power over the healthcare system. I've been nothing but inspired by the government response so far.

Look at how nationalized healthcare works in other countries (and how the ACA rolled out here) - initially sure, lots of fearmongering about how there will be death panels and super long lines... then everything gets into the hands of semi-competent people that actually build and maintain the system and the public cries foul whenever major cutbacks to the system are proposed.

Once we've overcome the knee-jerk reactionary "Don't change anything" response, then the system becomes popular and untouchable, much like Social Security and Medicare.

I noticed you didn't address either of the two concerns I raised.

1) Whether or not it would be a good idea for Trump to have monopoly power over healthcare.

2) How good of a job the relevant government authorities are doing in response to this issue.

Suggesting that people will accept a new norm after some time is irrelevant.

1. Under a single payor system (as I outlined in reasons above) Trump would not have a monopolist style of control over healthcare - systems like that become resistant to the impulses of specific administration through their popularity.

2. Oh, the whitehouse is running around like a bunch of chickens with their heads cut off - state and local officials are doing pretty well and I am pretty convinced the CDC is doing a lot of work to make sure we accelerate the vaccine development.

I really really dislike the Trump administration, but it hasn't caused my to lose faith in the idea of governance. Also, to clarify, I'm not suggesting that I'd love to see Trump establish a single payor system - I assume such a system would be immeasurably damaged by intent and exist solely to damage the concept of single payor healthcare.

We just watched Trump completely change our immigration situation in a series of moves that were far from popular. We saw him change leadership in the DOJ until he got the outcomes he wanted regarding investigations. Those Supreme Court appointments are going to be with us for decades. By what criteria do you suggest that the healthcare system would be immune to this?

Once the CDC "allowed" private clinics to develop COVID tests it took a private Cleveland clinic 9 days to create a test that takes 8 hours, as opposed to the previously used test which took 2-3 days. The Cleveland hospitals are developing drive-thru testing. The best thing the CDC did was get out of the way and stop prohibiting the private clinics from developing tests. The private systems are more agile and more capable of adjusting to demand.

One thing I see often is people are unwilling or unable to freely state the trade-offs. Things like immigration or socialized medicine are discussed as either wholly good or wholly bad. The truth is that there are costs and benefits. I freely admit by advocating for a free market, a much more free market than we have currently in medicine, I'm making a trade. I'm trading short term universality for two benefits: short term agility and long term technological progress. I recognize that in the short term some treatments might be unavailable to the poor, but in the long term more and better treatments will be available at commodity pricing. I'm sacrificing some today for a better tomorrow. What do you believe are the real costs vs benefit analysis for single payer?

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