America: A healthy or healthcare economy? The sickness at the heart of US GDP | Hacker News Reader

America: A healthy or healthcare economy? The sickness at the heart of US GDP

ft.com

25 pointsPaulHoule7 comments

I decided, circa 2012, that healthcare was a make-work program for us taxi drivers. Sometimes transportation providers would make vastly more taking people to their appointments than the provider would receive for the checkup or the group counseling session. A good voucher fare for us was $50+ ($100+ round trip). I couldn't imagine AHCCCS (Arizona Medicaid) paying more than $40 for a group counseling session. Medicaid probably paid $40-50 for a medical followup appointment.

My theory behind this observation was that as the U.S. gradually de-industrialized post-NAFTA and post-WTO, our politicians leaders used healthcare as a source of jobs that couldn't be outsourced to Mexico or Asia.

From my on-the-ground perspective, an important consideration in the US' poor health outcomes is addiction. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39071316

'Make work' because in a country without a well developed transportation system healthcare decides you shouldn't just 'not get treatment' when you can't drive? Kind of a heartless take. Especially considering those in treatment are the most likely people to not be able to drive outside of minors.

If anythings sounds like you should direct condemnation at our lack of functional community transportation systems not the limited tools the medical system has to account for it.

I am so grateful that there are programs in the USA that can get people to treatments. When my mother was dying of cancer and could no longer drive it wasn't always possible to get her to appointments. Luckily she was able to utilize community transportation. I think without it she might have given up on going to the support group she loved so much just because she wouldn't have wanted to burden others to drive her that often.

My quip is supposed to be lighthearted, as the medical industry is obviously not a wealth-transfer scheme to transportation providers. The medical system gets paid regardless of whether their treatments actually help their patients. I don't think doctors are in charge anymore.

The disconnection between health outcomes and price will be viewed in an incredibly negative light by historians of this era

Perhaps a fake economy ?

Its cannibalistic gdp and value. Johnny doe has diabetes, he cant afford to keep his legs, so he looses them and becomes johnny dont. Johnny dont walk, work, wed and win. He has become part of the wellfarestate, who then transfers taxes collected from others so johnny don't becomes a johnny walker off the cliff and continous to feed the Healthcare industry with tax dollars. The initial price hike produces the closed tax dairy farm, that is basically socialized medicine for companies.

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