Hacker News Reader

Comment by brodouevencode | Hacker News Reader

There's no such thing as a free lunch. Someone will have to bear a cost somewhere along the way.

I would prefer to live in a society that puts the well-being of its people over fretting whether someone is getting a "free lunch" or worrying "how will we make money off of this?" The US is so backwards, we spend so much money on healthcare for the worst impacts in the world, and we pump billions into our military blowing up people abroad. A healthy society would spend that money into taking care of its people, and that includes providing healthcare for everyone no matter the cost.

I meant to say "worst outcomes" here

Why bring the military into it at all? The US government already spends more ON HEALTHCARE than everyone else and still can't seem to figure it out.

I bring the military budget up just as an example of how the priorities of our society, or our government rather, are completely backwards imo. One reason why we haven't "figured it out" is because health insurance companies effectively lobby the US govt to secure their monopoly. They know that we just got rid of the middle man that is insurance companies, we'd spend less money and get better care.

Part of that military spending has been protecting Europe from Russia and South Korea, Taiwan and Japan from China and North Korea.

I am happy to bear the cost of providing care. I am NOT happy to bear the cost of the huge profits generated by the U.S. healthcare system. Insurance companies are increasing profits by denying care.

A separate issue is consolidation. In my area, what used to be locally owned clinics and hospitals are being bought up by national conglomerates. Their first move is often to reduce staffing and cut costs, driving up delays and driving down quality of care.

No one suggested there was a free lunch.

Actually, I take that back. If we think of a "free lunch" as something that isn't earned, the only free lunch here is the one that shareholders (which includes the c-suite given their share grants in the compensation packages) receive quarterly in the form of dividends and earnings-per-share. When you take someone's money (usually $200/month or more... much more actually), find every single excuse to not provide a service a doctor of medicine has declared to be necessary, and then pay yourself more money than most people would even know how to spend in a lifetime, you're pretending you're entitled to a free lunch.

The Health Insurance for my wife, two children, and myself is _$1500_/mo and that's _with_ a $20,000 deductible.

When I started working ~25 years ago, my health insurance was typically fully covered by my employer and I had no deductible that I was aware of. The cost of insurance has only gotten worse, and finding a plan without a outrageous deductible adds to that.

As a society, this is something we can totally solve. So many other countries have socialized healthcare. Its not an impossible goal.

> There's no such thing as a free lunch.

OK, but American "lunch" costs 2-3x what it does everywhere else, with similar/worse outcomes.

(And yes, that's counting taxes.)

We're ordering oatmeal and being charged wagyu filet prices.

I, at this moment, have a syringe with a mililiter of fluid on my desk that's worth more than both of my cars combined. https://imgur.com/a/HzqgLa2

It's about 1/10th that in the UK.

Really? My son hurt his knee on the job, workman's comp paid for him to get an MRI and a pretty detailed workup from the orthopedist, a brace that the orthopedist told him not to wear, etc. The advice in the end was "rest" and "return to activities gradually".

My insurance pays for a colonoscopy every 5-10 years, telehealth therapy appointments with no copay, free vaccinations, really a lot of stuff.

> My insurance pays for a colonoscopy every 5-10 years, telehealth therapy appointments with no copay, free vaccinations, really a lot of stuff.

No, you pay for those. Via your premiums.

(Which your employer may pay a significant part of. That's ultimately lost salary to you; it isn't out of charity on their part either.)

My family health insurance costs $3k/month. Going up ~10% next month, too.

I'm not going to disagree that its expensive but I'm not going to say that it is low quantity or low quality.

If the US does worse on population health statistics than other countries do it is not the fault of our healthcare system but rather the fault of social determinants of health such as social disconnection, inequality, etc.

> I'm not going to say that it is low quantity or low quality.

That's OK, we have stats for that. https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/fund-reports/2...

> If the US does worse on population health statistics than other countries do it is not the fault of our healthcare system but rather the fault of social determinants of health such as social disconnection, inequality, etc.

Other countries have these things, too.

I pay national insurance every month, its automatically taken from my salary. Most of the time it pays for other people's care - and that's absolutely fine with me. And if at some point I need care, I know it will be there for me and how much money I have won't come into it, the costs of my care won't be weighed against the value of my life, i'll just get the care I need. It doesn't need to be so expensive, the US has just built such an incredibly inefficient system ( or efficient if you accept it is designed to generate outrageous profit from the suffering of humans).

Everybody is born, everybody gets sick, everybody eventually dies.

It is sensible to have a universal health care system: everyone pays for it and everybody will use it.

For-profit health insurance is the ultimate rent-seeking industry. They provide a net-negative to their customers, scraping profit off the transaction between a patient and their care provider.

One of the rhetorical devices I despise the most is what I'll call "stranger in a strange land fallacy", the idea that we should re-litigate the most basic questions at the most basic level over and over and over because people think they're the main character on the debate channel on TV.

> There's no such thing as a free lunch

This is a take that lacks any nuance and it doesn't even pertain to what anyone said. Typical for conservatives.

No one is saying we need to provide healthcare for literally $0 and pretend it has no costs. No, most realize our current cobbled together system with middlemen everywhere isn't working and it's costing lives. Why we can't have a single payer system that gets rid of the paperwork and makes it easier to bargain against prices is beyond me.

Sure, let's keep this system where you have to worry about in/out network hospitals, jump through a bunch of hoops to get treatment, and middlemen causing prices to surge. Madness.

Ever done any work for a US health insurance company? You won't find many conservatives. You will find many "free lunch" advocates who spend half their day lobbying to protect their job and their industry. They are playing politics with your healthcare costs. How is that for nuance?

It's great and even more reason to get rid of these useless corporations. The conservative thing to me was the basic take "ummm actually it's not free" which lacks any actual thought. It doesn't further the discussion and perpetuates the suffering all to... own the libs? I'm not sure.

The "libs" who lobbied for so-called universal healthcare? They further empowered these corporations and now they want to get rid of them. The libs owned themselves on this topic, obviously.

The ACA was substantially watered down to get (conservative!) Lieberman's deciding vote in the Senate. "The libs", as always, were told they'd have to wait later for their stuff.

I can rephrase it then to they owned themselves in this case by being so damn gullible, thus further entrenched power given to the insurance industry.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com