The US population is so indoctrinated with baseless propaganda that it will take a century for it to move to a better model.
The overall point though is not to sit on the laurels and try to hammer in "one right way" of doing it, but to iterate until you find a legislative healthcare framework that works for your country and benefits most.
The lack of progress in US on health care front is an indictment of its political rigidity first and foremost.
I used to be one of those people. We immigrated to the USA when I was very young, so as I grew up I went extra Right/libertarian, thinking that would make me "more American" somehow. I now realize that this is very common in US immigrants.
It was the US health system that showed me the undeniable faults in pure libertarianism. It all seems so obvious now:
In a government run health system, dollars put into the system which do not end up going to patient care is called waste, it is seen as a negative and we work to minimize it.
In a privatized for-profit health system, dollars put into the system which do not end up going to patient care is called profit, it is seen as a positive and we work to increase it.
It's that simple. For-profit-all-the-things is not ideal. The main lesson I learned is that stubborn ideological purity is fraught with issues, no matter the ideology.
Even some of the insurance systems are non-profits. It doesn’t take shareholder profit motive to make money evaporate.
In this case... while my specific terminology may be lacking, if we zoom out and just compare the US healthcare system to other countries' systems, we demonstrably see lower per-capita spending and better patient outcomes. [0]
If we could agree on those facts, can you help me use the correct words to describe the issue?
[0] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...
For one thing, if you go through the exercise of examining the parts of the healthcare system and ask yourself "how much is the state involved in this", I think you may come to a different conclusion. I don't know what to call our trash heap of a system, but libertarian seems obviously not it.
On my part of the exchange, might I suggest that what you see as government involvement could also be called "regulatory capture"? [0]
What I mean is that the monied interests now have major influence on the government which regulates them, so they create "regulation," with the goal of perpetuating their own profit centers.
How can I do better from your point of view? If not libertarianism, what should we call the ideology or ideals that led to this healthcare system with an ever increasing chain of profit centers?
Libertarianism is about liberty, or individual freedoms. Are you free to purchase any drug or test or service or device that you want from whoever you want? Of course not, the state is heavily involved in making these decisions for you.
To help identify what the heck I am talking about here, here is ChatGPT Classic's take on "libertarianism vs capitalism vs crony capitalism vs anarcho capitalism" [0] I found it very good reading.
What I realize now is that I was only holding on to one aspect of "libertarianism."
> Free Markets: Supports the idea that a market free from government interference naturally leads to efficiency, innovation, and wealth creation.
If I may be introspective for a moment, I believe that the reason that I may have used libertarianism instead of capitalism, is because how polarizing "capitalism" has become in the US discourse. I feel like readers would assume that if I am making light of capitalism, then I must support communism or some equally obsolete ideology.
[0] https://chat.openai.com/share/c4f4cedf-a995-4cc5-8feb-268c7c...
Development and financing are the big killers. Play with some numbers on a spreadsheet—they get big.
The numbers are inflated because you get charged hundreds of dollars for an aspirin tablet in an emergency room and thousands for a 10 minute ride in an ambulance. What is particularly sad is that to the rest of the world this is absolutely insane but if you try to explain this to Americans they'll tell you they don't want no stinking communism. It's fascinating how deeply indoctrinated this nation is.