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The problem is not availability of cheap airline tickets, it's availability of healthcare.

The point (the transportation/energy use issue cannot be tackled without also working on the social problems) is an important one though.

> The problem is not availability of cheap airline tickets, it's availability of healthcare.

If we're talking about a rare disease, there is no solution other than moving to one of the few specialist centers in the world if air travel goes away.

That's reasonable though - my step-son has a serious kidney issue and being close to the reneal specialists in my area has always been a consideration for where to live.

Living with a rough disease is tough and my heart goes out to everyone that has to struggle in their daily lives but, it'll always be easier to relocate closer to the facility unless the trips are extremely infrequent and other factors are more important (like family, work etc...)

In Canada this is less bad since being forced to move away from work for medical care doesn't prevent you from affording that care - in the US this can result in an impossible choice but :shrug: the US is broken and unable to afford a good standard of living for their citizens.

Unfortunately, the best solution is for you to move to a more densely populated area. Not necessarily to a mega-expensive city—although we should make those more accessible too—but somewhere close enough that you don't need air travel to get treatment. And there should be social programs that can make this financially possible.

It would totally suck for you, I realize that. Unfortunately, our society simply cannot continue on as it has. We either change now, proactively, or we change after the climate catastrophe has forced our hand. Under the latter scenario, the change will be much worse.

(We should also make healthcare accessible in more places, but it sounds like your needs are highly specialized. There are some treatments we cannot realistically provide everywhere.)

There are many large cities in the Midwest. Flying to California/Massachusetts implies that the problem is a rare disease, not that it's a population density issue.

Yeah, and so that needs to be a consideration in where GP chooses to live. I realize I'm asking them to upend their entire life, but I don't know what else to do. The status quo simply isn't an option.

I don't get to choose where to live. Unless you want another homeless in the streets of SoCal who plagues Greyhound for their doctors appointments.

I was born in the 8th poorest community in the U.S., by parents who were born and lived their lives in the 8th poorest community in the U.S., and had to drop out of my full-ride scholarship college I somehow got from being at the top of my highschool (can't really remember how at this point, partial amnesia from untreated chronic pain) because of complications caused by lack of medical treatment. Couldn't afford it/the ability to get care as a minor without a guardian is near impossible.

If you think you can just choose where you want to live, no matter the desperate circumstances to do so, you must be gleefully unaware of the realities of life, which is something I wouldn't expect from a H.N. poster, for the most part at least...

Some people just had no real chance. It's unfortunate.

No, the ideal way for it to be solved is for the U.S. government as a collective to give a shit about science, which they don't, and I doubt will within my lifetime.

Care for one of my issues is only conducted as Stanford and Cedars-Sinai. There's a little more specifics/a split subgroup to it, and Stanford cares for the subgroup I'm in. The majority of the rest of healthcare in the U.S. claims that it does not exist, is impossible, and that symptoms are completely psychosomatic.

Care for my second large issue is an incredibly misunderstood surgery that is led world-wide at Massachusetts General Hospital. 10 years ago, the condition wasn't really accepted as being real across the majority medical community. 5 years later, things are a bit better but many doctors believe some hoo doo it's only X because Y and definitely not Z.

8 years later, vascular surgeons are still basically at war with each other on deciding the correct course of surgery... Despite 1 of 3 being successful in over 80% of cases and the other 2 of 3 leading to permanent disability and chronic pain in ~50% of cases. To be fair, there's about 5 truly good surgeons in the U.S. right now, but only MGH accepts out of state Medicaid, and coincidentally/luckily enough for me, that surgeon is widely regarded as the best.

Anyways, now I'm just rambling off topic in this thread. Yes, I agree that society cannot continue this way. I'm actually in the realm of wishing we said fuck medical ethics for as long as it takes to figure out how to cure most of disease/conditions that can be seen before birth. Would probably happen fairly quickly in the grand scheme of things if the medical community had the funding and ability. But, that's something that will also never happen. Science is the only way forward to have a civil society (which the U.S. claims to be, but is clearly not), but the bulk of the U.S. populace, especially those who vote, seem to be quite anti-science and willfully ignorant in a time where we have near all of thousands of years of knowledge condensed in the palm of our hands. And then there's the sociopathic portion of the government masquerading as "civil servants" who exploit that for money...

I'm honestly happily awaiting the downfall of what the U.S. believes itself to be. I expect it within my lifetime.

I'm truly sorry to hear about your health issues and the lack of resources available to you.

Of course I would like to see better healthcare available to everyone as well. Can't we focus our attention on making healthcare (even specialized treatments like yours) more accessible and affordable, instead of artificially propping up a massively wasteful industry in perpetuity?

How would we make specialized healthcare more locally accessible? By flying specialist doctors and equipment in from the coasts when needed?

I think you pretty much don't - but what you can do is shift the burden of healthcare off of an employment expense so that when someone is in this terrible situation they can move to a location where they can receive better care without being concerned that they will be unable to continue receiving insurance from their employer.

The poster above is between a rock and a hard place, it's a really terrible situation to be in no matter what safety nets are in place. But the US tends to go out of its way to make things just that little extra bit terrible.

Many solutions here:

1. Accept that a tiny portion of our population has extremely rare diseases (true by definition of rare disease lol), and that some portion of our socialized healthcare system involves flying the doctors to this population, or vice versa

2. Dump funding into telehealth solutions, including robotics.

"My healthcare is so expensive, I cannot allow my air travel to get more expensive."

Why not lobby to have your healthcare become cheaper instead?

I am sorry you have a condition that causes you this much stress. I know these must be especially terrifying times for you (even more than people that are for the most part healthy). I would just suggest you aim your frustrations at the industries that are actually causing you problems.

Travel could easily be subsidized for those with a special need such as yourself. The GP is still correct.

I'd love to see cheap slower travel available. Bring back the blimps! :-)

Right, but:

>I receive no government assistance financially, because our medical system is shit on recognition of many musculoskeletal illnesses. My insurance is also shit in general, because medical care availability is shit in the U.S.

This is your problem, and the ultimate solution to that problem is not "cheap flights" - that is no more than a workaround, with huge collateral damage.

This is broadly analogous to https://xkcd.com/1172/

I can't understand the line of thought some of you are having.

I can barely live and function in my daily life, as well as trying to not become homeless and die.

How do you expect me to successfully lobby anybody, especially when they can say "well X amount of doctors don't even believe this specific rare disease even exists? Obviously, he's just lying to in an attempt to financially cheat the system"

Get out of your bubble haha. While cheap airfare may be a plague upon the world, things like the U.S. government is as well, and for quite some time has been (see overthrowing other countries in S.A. and trying to deny it) - but cheap airfare is really the only option I've been given for an attempt at a normal life. The U.S. government... for the most part hasn't. The small handout of Medicaid I get tries to haggle me, probably in a hope that without the care I'll die sooner and no longer be a drain, every step of the way...

I'm sure we all know solutions to a lot of problems. However, we should know, that those solutions are simply unattainable. Which I guess, would in the end... make them not a solution?