From a sheer utilitarian perspective, healthcare and safety nets are positive ROI. Imagine the job-producing startups that don't exist because "how do you pay for insurance?"
I think healthcare in the US is riddled with ways to "accidentally"* spend the entire accumulation of your wealth, leaving absolutely nothing to the next generation.
Long term care is needed by a lot of folks over the age of 65 (~70% of adults age 65 will require at least partial long term care).
Even "reasonably cheap" care (in my experience, roughly the same quality as living in a college dorm, with a roommate and a meal plan) can easily run 10k/month - or 120k a year.
Of those needing long term care (roughly half of all folks): Men will need that care for an average of ~2 years, women nearly 4 years. 20% will need that care for 5 years or longer.
I watched my parents spend all of their inheritance covering long term care costs for their parents (Alzheimers is a bitch). Once the inheritance was gone, they worked longer than they would have preferred to continue covering those costs (my mother only retired this year when my grandmother died of covid - as horrendous as it sounds, it was almost a blessing).
My personal take is that "single family homes" and "private healthcare" are a literal fucking disaster for long term wealth inequality. That policy combination takes a lot of middle class families and leaves them poor.
* - I personally don't think it's an accident at all, I think it's very, very intentional.
Families should take care of their own. If nobody is willing to do that for you, you probably aren't deserving.
Might be more fair to say ‘every tomahawk missle fired randomly at a target at the Middle East is an entire middle class families lifetime income down the tubes’.
That's not true, the money isn't just lost. The money is passed to the children of the person who extracts the money from the sick people. It's by design.
I can only imagine the hardships your family endured for this sentence to come out. I'm glad things are working out for you guys and I'm sorry for your loss.
...
> * - I personally don't think it's an accident at all, I think it's very, very intentional.
Its extremely intentional wealth stealing, and it's even worse than just lost generational wealth transfer. Filial responsibility laws mean that your illness and long-term care are your children's financial burden: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filial_responsibility_laws .
In the worst cases, people estranged from their parents for decades end up bankrupted. Depending on what state your grandmother lived in - your mother may have been on the hook even if she hadn't chosen to keep working to care for her mom.[1]
The idea that paying for elderly parents' expensive (intentionally or accidentally) care is a choice only applies to people in less than half of the states. These laws make the only choice "pay the provider directly now" or "pay the provider costs and late fees, etc via the courts". So anyone who wants to claim that the people who care for their parents are chosing to do so is claiming wrong - if your parent spends their last days in one of 26 states, the parent is chosing what your wealth is used for.
[1] I hope that didn't come across as suggesting your mom was only making a financial choice, or that she didn't make her choice out of love. I'm sorry you lost your grandmother and I hope your mom enjoys her retirement.
I can't imagine there are too many people in this world with half a million dollars ready to go.
The only reason I see expenses really causing massive debt is if you choose to accept/request medical procedures you can't pay for.
While it's morbid to consider the idea of just letting yourself die because you don't want to go into debt, it still is a choice... isn't it?
Medical technology is quite advanced these days. Advanced != free. And there's a thing where the longer you try to prolong someone's life the more progressively expensive it becomes, not just from a "price of care" perspective but an "[externalized] cost of care" perspective. Is it worth X carbon dioxide emissions to keep a person on a "level-III dialysis machine"? Is it worth X acres of rainforest to extract an anticancer drug to keep someone's cancer at bay?
Anyways the political divide, in the US, between the left's clueless utopianism and the right's underhanded support of market-distorting profitmongers, has become so farcical that it's impossible to question if humans should have "a general right to have their life extended" even if there are actual, difficult questions to go around.
[0] capital We, as in "the state"
[1] if you ever have the experience of being by the bedside of someone who is dying (n=2 for me), you will see people who come to visit, and have so much pathos, I suspect largely due to their own hangups about death. To be at your best in your role, you will want to shoo them away as quickly as possible.
Have you ever been to a US hospital? They don’t have a menu where you browse treatments and prices. You get your treatment and then later on you get a massive bill
That’s all putting aside the fact that a society allowing people to suffer from treatable illnesses is completely unnecessary and cruel considering that providing free care to everyone is something many countries do successfully
At the extreme end of diminishing returns, I'd guess that most deaths of elderly people in hospital are preventable because machines to perform the function of failed heart, lungs, kidneys, GI tract, etc. exist. But it's expensive, and countries with socialized healthcare don't pay for it for everyone because they don't have infinite money. My dad died this way when his lungs filled with fluid while in hospital.
What part of my comment are you referring to? I can’t really tell from what you wrote
I'm saying no country provides free healthcare for all treatable illnesses. And not providing it is necessary because the cost would be too great.
I agree it's cruel though.
No. I'm glad I could clear up this very difficult topic for you.
I understand if you are unconscious, you can't decide, or in a coma. But what if you are lucid and asked by a doctor if you want a procedure or not?