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Comment by f33d5173 | Hacker News Reader

I think the vast majority of people agree on the generalities and care enough about solving the issue to be able to come to an agreement on the particulars. The problem is that the people who get rich off the current system won't agree to any solution that reduces their profits, and have thus far managed to fillibuster attempts at such a solution through a combination of buying politicians and propagandizing certain segments of the population into rejecting solutions that would benefit them.

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Healthcare is ~17% GDP

Slavery was estimated at ~12% and "hey, you need to lose a few % of your margin and actually pay those people" started a war.

Now, there's an argument to be made about ideology, geographic concentration of industry, etc. doing a fair bit of lifting kicking that off (their own neighbors telling them to stop surely would have gone over better than a bunch of smarmy northerners in their ivory towers telling them the same thing). But the fact remains that you cannot make a large fraction of the country take a haircut without causing strife.

The only way to fix this "nicely" at this point is to boil the frog over decades.

I'll accept your first sentence for the sake of argument. You are still better off with a localist / federalist approach, because state governments are much less vulnerable to corruption and bribery. It is far more economically efficient for the bad guys (whoever they are in your view) to bribe a few DC legislators than dozens of state politicians in places like Montpelier and Hartford. Centralized, unaccountable power in DC means that when big rich corrupt companies bribe the right people, they can force the entire country to followed their preferred policies. A good example is how Purdue Pharma bribed the head of the FDA to approve OxyContin, leading directly to the opioid crisis.

> It is far more economically efficient for the bad guys (whoever they are in your view) to bribe a few DC legislators than dozens of state politicians in places like Montpelier and Hartford.

State politicians are much cheaper, and no one from the New York Times pokes around when you buy off the state representative of East Bumfuck, Montana.

so, your answer is OMG, they are making money!11! It's not a money probelm, it's a resources problem. We simply don't have enought hospital resources to serve everyone in the us. it's not making money, it's not having enough beds and skilled people to do the work.

Get an MD and help out, then you'll discover how you really DONT want the government to tell you which patients to serve.

> It's not a money probelm, it's a resources problem.

Most people would consider money a resource, and quite a few rural hospitals are closing because of a lack of that specific resource.

> you'll discover how you really DONT want the government to tell you which patients to serve

Yeah, wait until you hear about private for-profit insurers doing that instead.

Honestly, after stories like these, I don't want a corporation telling me which patients to serve even more. At least government is theoretically accountable for their decisions.

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