Healthcare is the last industry that should be privatized. It should be for the public good rather than for the profit of few.
There are are arguments to be made about private or public but that logic makes no sense.
Some system that have many private aspects outperform other public systems and the other way around. And even in a public system many people will profit as many of the companies that are your suppliers are still for profit.
Sounds like good logic to me, at least for essentials!
Why would it be any different here?
Hospital bills causing bankruptcy.
Deciding between meds or food.
Donation jars at gas station checkouts begging for money to pay for a child's cancer treatment.
Putting off preventative care because of endless co-pays.
Out-of-network providers being a thing I have to worry.
Those problems I do know.
The US is #1 in developed countries for infant and maternal mortality.
Americans die from preventable and treatable causes at much higher rates than residents of peer countries, alongside a life expectancy of 79, or two to four years lower than the average for OECD countries.
We spend 18% of our GDP on healthcare, NEARLY DOUBLE the average of other peer countries.
The number one cause of bankruptcy is medical debt.
When will the American people wake up and realize their private healthcare model only benefits the rich that are able to afford the care.
This is only because the United States is unique in its huge amount of preterm babies, which some other developed countries do not even count within their infant mortality statistics. If we had the same average infant gestation length as Sweden, we would be tied for fourth best with France and Portugal, which considering how obese we are is pretty impressive. If we had that and adopted more restrictive reporting categories like Poland or the Netherlands, we could very well be reporting as the lowest.
Medical debt is not the number one cause of bankruptcy so you're simply wrong there. Most consumers who file for bankruptcy have some medical debt but the most common cause is a sudden loss of income (like losing their job). When consumers don't have enough cash to make ends meet they prioritize paying for food, housing, and transportation, and stop paying medical bills. Thus the medical debts tend to accumulate but this didn't really cause the bankruptcy.
I do support measures to reduce healthcare costs and improve access for patients but let's be clear about what's actually happening.
Lose your job from injury and you're well and truly screwed.
The US system is neither fully private nor are those other systems fully public. Its a false binary people use so they don't have to actually engage in the details of how different systems operate.
Nobody is arguing that the US has a good or 'the right' system. And nobody should argue that the British NHS (or systems like it) is some amazing magical place that gets everything right.
> When will the American people wake up and realize their private healthcare model only benefits the rich that are able to afford the care.
And yet one of the countries wit the lowest spending % of GDP on healthcare with very good outcomes has a system that has a lot of private aspects.
The US is #3 in the world for it spending on healthcare as a percentage of it's GDP, actually 16.69% in 2023, right behind Tuvalu and Nauru.
Maybe do some research before you state absurdly wrong things
Not vast. About 55% (workers and the family members) are covered by employer-sponsored health insurance. And that mostly self-selects for the younger and healthier so the coverage is less for random person.
Most retired people are not covered, and ironically very often the sick are not covered.
> absurdly wrong
I think you need to research the HN guidelines a bit more: https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
No. The issue is that there is an almost unlimited demand for healthcare.
That is true regardless of capitalism or marxism or whateverism you believe is the right answer.
Avoiding talking about money: it is easy to see the underlying issue of how should we balance a doctor's lifetime versus patients' needs versus the businesses that ultimately pay tax for it all.
We have public healthcare in New Zealand (a huge percentage of our economy is run by our government - almost socialist). Here we restrict healthcare by waitlists, beaurocracy, and other tricks. It mostly works, but the nurses that I know give too much, and are flaming out.
Meanwhile I've done the dirty boring capitalist work of bringing in overseas income to pay for our beautiful services, and I've reached my personal limit of balancing working harder versus gaining extra income (for myself and my government). I'm taxed at a demotivating rate. There's fuck all respect for being the guy bringing in the bacon to the country. I get to look forward to being treated like a boomer in a few years.
I love kumbayaa political beliefs, but not when I'm the donkey.
The vast majority of healthcare here is not profit oriented but instead is run by the NZ govt.
The purpose of most business is money, and few people would choose to be a boss without the financial winnings. I had the opportunity to roll the dice with everything: because fortunately I'm in a country that still has a backstop.
However the boss payout result is quite simply not worth the risk; because the median return for a startup is $0. Remaining an employee would have been a more sensible decision.
Other people like you complain, and I accept that is part of the deal I chose.
I am smart enough to have had the choice of alternative lifestyle paths like teaching or being an artist.
Meanwhile, I'm literally the guy paying for our social welfare and health system because I'm an export earner. Obviously the NZ economy deserves its return on its investment in me and our business environment.
But if you want to imply someone is greedy, then look at yourself or at your government.
I sometimes wonder whether capitalism is an emergent property? Or perhaps it is a dominant strategy. I visited Shenzhen and it was chokka full of entrepreneurs - I'm yet to structure my ideas around that.
Then I read about those weird papers that use basic trading strategies that result in power-law wealth distributions.
I always wonder when people complain about those that have more than them, because I seldom see them reflect upon themselves to see how much more they have than those below them. This especially applies to anyone living in the USA since everybody is relatively wealthy there, compared against most in the world. Too often I see the 1% complain about the 1%.
All healthcare systems I am aware of are horrors. Compare the US to the UK. We all struggle to understand the driving forces.
One underlying issue is that few people are proactive about the factors they control. Too many people are reckless with their health, and we all are great at excuses and casting blame elsewhere (and there can be evil that deserves some blame).
I'm fortunate enough that I know to chase intangibles.
Too many people let money dominate their worldview.
I'm also incredibly lucky to be born in New Zealand, where plenty of people also want good intangibles. And I see fewer in my circle here fight to get money/power/status.
I thought I disliked philosophy, but perhaps I like it ;)
Neither food, nor shelter, nor healthcare are natural monopolies. As evidence by the fact that non of them are remotely monopolistic in places where there are no restrictions. Monopolies in these sectors are created and enforced by the state. Unless you are using a completely different definition from all economists.
Ironically major shops sell stables such as rice below price or at basically 0 margin, just to get people into the store where they might buy something of higher margin.
There is a huge difference also between subsidizing demand with private supply and providing supply. Exactly the debate that is relevant in healthcare as well. A system can do both, or neither or a combination of the two.
Food is, in general, very accessible, cheap, and elastic (People's food decisions are easily changed depending on the price).
Healthcare in America is not accessible, extremely expensive, and inelastic.
We have not had a famine in the developed world in quite a long time, but the healthcare crises continues.
The fact remains clear: The number one cause of bankruptcy is medical debt.
Healthcare is the only service that is life and death, where the money paid by the patient is completely inelastic.
I'm not saying doctors shouldn't be paid well. But what is really clear is that while the rich pay for premium concierge VIP treatment, the poor are regularly turned away for treatment they can't afford. You health insurance here is tied to your job. Lose your job? Pay $2000/month for COBRA or you don't deserve to have healthcare.
Don't act like public healthcare, expanding access to primary care physicians, and reducing medical administrative bloat is some economic degeneration headed for the sickle and hammer. I'm tired of pretending Ayn Rand style libertarianism capitalism is the perfect solution that has worked for everything including healthcare.
Did I somehow make the argument that the US has a good health care system? I must have missed that.
> Healthcare is the only service that is life and death, where the money paid by the patient is completely inelastic.
Most healthcare spending isn't actually 'life and death' either. And even if it in the medium term is 'life and death' only a very small amount of health care is an emergency where you can not potentially consider different options.
Just as most time when you are going to the store its not 'life and death'. But still if don't do anything eventually you will starve.
> The fact remains clear: The number one cause of bankruptcy is medical debt.
My goal would be to achieve the best overall healthcare outcomes at reasonable cost. That's at least the first stab at a definition, I'm sure we could come up with a better criteria.
If you increase payroll taxes as much as a fully public system would required, you would just have more people default on their houses and cars instead. Because there is no world, no matter how many billionaires you disown, that you can implement a universal system without massive increases of income taxes.
Again I'm not even arguing that a universal system is bad or wrong thing to aim for. The argument that I actually made was that 'some people make profit' isn't actually a good argument against any system.
> Don't act like public healthcare, expanding access to primary care physicians, and reducing medical administrative bloat is some economic degeneration headed for the sickle and hammer. I'm tired of pretending Ayn Rand style libertarianism capitalism is the perfect solution that has worked for everything including healthcare.
You are literally just ranting about shit I have never argued. I guess I must have trigger something.
And it should be said that most 'small' farmers in the US are millionaire scions and shouldn't need subsidies to make a profit in most parts of the US (we have abundant natural resources).
More than half of all calories produced in the US are not even for human consumption. And globally enough calories to feed every human on earth are lost to inefficiency each year.
We can all benefit from a better system of distribution and production without getting lost in the magical thinking of a public/private false dichotomy.
Not sure why you are making an argument about food subsidizes to me, I have not argued in favor of them.
> More than half of all calories produced in the US are not even for human consumption.
Most of those go threw animals and are then consumed by humans. There is a lost factor there but saying its not for human consumption misses the point I would say. For Chicken, Pork and fish the lost factor is pretty small.