Tweet is from around February 2022; I’m not visiting that cesspool to find the exact date.
Americans pay more for healthcare than any other country, for worse results than any country with universal single-payer healthcare. Moving to the same model as Canada or the UK would mean paying less for healthcare, and getting better healthcare.
Which is obvious once you understand how private health insurance works.
Hold on, not all my money goes to healthcare in my for-profit healthcare system??
My friend, you've been sold a story about Canadian healthcare that is a complete lie. It's a province-based system that is in complete shambles. Just look at what Doug Ford, the premier (equiv. to governor) of Ontario has done: https://www.ona.org/news-posts/20221124-healthcare-union-sos/
What would likely work the best in the US is a system akin to Australia's. It's federal-based, and is a combination of public and private. Private health insurance still exists to cover "gap" fees and similar, but, similar to medicaid, low/no-income earners don't pay. America is already doing most of this, but nationalising most hospitals would be required, as well as forcing private health insurers to divest ownership of other medical clinics. This would be to eliminate the inane "in-network" crap, which we don't have in Australia (for the most part).
Doctors here aren't employed by the government like with the NHS in the UK either. They're able to run private clinics, and can charge above the government "bulk-billing" rebate. That government rebate is set nation-wide for all services in a master price-list, and is always paid out for those services whether the patient has private health or not. Then the provider and insurance negotiate for what is paid above and beyond that only. This gap fee can be paid directly by the patient, or by private health insurance. Clinics generally waive these fees for both disability and aged pensioners.
It's far from perfect, but I think the US would need to follow a system like this. Otherwise doctors, used to a certain wage and lifestyle, would likely revolt in some fashion.
Its not the doctors who are reaping the benefits its the insurance companies and hospital administration that make most of the money
Alberta adopted this model and saw an increase in public health wait times and a sharp increase in the required government spending required to run the public system.
Creating a two tiered system means that it bleeds doctors, nurses and admin into the private sector which is fundamentally at odds with the philosophy that everyone deserves the right to life sustaining care. If the rich want to dodge the cue then they can quite frankly afford the plane ticket. If the system is being undermined by politicians - oust the politicians. Let them know that that system is of the highest priority and should be first to see reinvestment.
But we should all be aware that Canada is one of the most challenging landscapes for delivery of any kind of health care. We are diffuse over a large landmass and the commitment to the system means that if you live in a remote place 2 hours away from the nearest surgery then the government is on the hook to spend an outsized amount of budget to uphold the commitment of care for you. The temptation to cut corners is always there and each Provincial trust is its own battleground. That we have the level of service we do is a credit to the efficacy of public health systems... Which means upping the costs to create competitive private sector development hurts us all.
It may be a step up for Americans to have any system at all as a right to health safety net but it's a sharp step down for anywhere running a full public system.
I know nothing about Canada but the way this person described our Australian health care system is correct and it works well...those who can pay more (me!) but those who can't are still 100% covered. It's not perfect but it's 100 times better than the US.
Like yes taxes go up, but also you’re already paying for health insurance
This is the thing that drives me crazy. Especially with those "I don't want my money going to pay for the wrong kind of person's healthcare" idiots. It already does. You already pay for that. Private healthcare is socialized healthcare except with some rich dumbass acting as a middleman so he can scrape a ton of money out while denying grandma that new hip she needs in the name of profits.
Just because you call it an "insurance fee" and pay more than if it was called a "tax" doesn't somehow make it better.
Your taxes would go down, actually. The federal government pays more now than they would with a Single Payer healthcare system, because it turns out allocation and claim management for hundreds of millions of people, and allowing insurers and pharma to be price-makers, is more expensive than just giving the hospitals what they need on a regular basis.
Here's Life Expectancy vs. Healthcare Expenditure, and there you can see Americans on average living about as long as people in Turkey or Poland while spending dramatically more than people in Germany or Switzerland.
We're already paying more money for worse care. So dumb.
Funny how Reagan ran on fiscal responsibility, gutted social programs and then spent all that money on military crap and subsidies for industrialist pals. It's never been different. Even the tea-party was miserly about social programs but happy to give the military everything it wanted (but not to improve the DVA and things to improve the lives of soldiers were right out.)
And yet somehow who's going to pay for it is regarded as a valid argument even though these social programs would be a tiny fraction of what we spend on our toys for killing people.
Reagan didn't just spend the money from social programs: he changed the US from the biggest creditor nation to the biggest debtor nation to fund the military.
Libertarians be like "But with free healthcare, I would pay for liver treatment for alcoholics, and lung treatment for cig smokers! No one will incentivized to live healthy lives!"
They already do, though, that's what insurance is. They're just paying for the premium luxury version of liver treatment.
American Libertarians would be okay with many of the contracts we consider illegal, like ejecting people with pre-existing conditions.
Yeah, well the rest of us will have to pay for their bear mauling injuries
I think I found a way to convince them. we can say that with free healthcare kids under 18 will be able to go to a hospital and ask for treatment b without their parents because they won't need money anyway and doctors would want to keep their medical history confidential.
if kids can make healthcare decisions without their parents getting involved, that would be a first step towards lowering the age of consent!
I made it up but if we make it sound convincing they'll be advocating for free healthcare in no time.
Unfortunately i think “Medical privacy” is going to scream “abortion” to your target audience.
You can also take a fairly selfish view and come to the same conclusion. Like, I don't want to see homeless encampments, or really sick and untreated people, or panhandlers, or (...) while I'm walking around in my city. I can solve this problem by 1) moving to a nice suburb, or 2) having my tax dollars go to fix a problem that affects me. 1) is off the table because I want to live in the city, and 2)
while it helps the greater good
also helps me directly. (2 can also be addressed in a draconian fashion, which is not what I'm advocating at all.)
I think one problem is looking at things as zero sum. It's not. If you are healthy and housed and fed then you're not
to be very crass
an eyesore, you're adding to the fabric of the city. I want street musicians who are playing for fun, not because they're trying to make enough to afford dinner.
This is something I just don't get how so many folks don't seem to get it. Social safety nets make just a better overall environment to live in. Most people work jobs interacting with other people and have all sorts of things outside of work interacting with people. Ideally they are clean, healthy, educated, and are happy in the sense they are not worried about their prospects for basic necessities like food and shelter.
There is some percentage of people that simple can not think in any other way than zero sum games. Every transaction, interaction, etc needs to have winners and losers. They can’t see that some spending is good because it helps people which in turn helps them. It is a completely alien world view that I also don’t understand. They are the foot soldiers for fascism.
Man, why are Republicans so fucking stupid? Even the greediest toplofty would benefit more from universal healthcare than they'd lose.
The thing that really grinds my gears about neoliberal capitalism is that isn't even good at capitalism. It is just mathematical fact that healthy and happy workers make you more money, and are more than happy to work harder for luxuries (that, by the way, improve your consumerist economy) than stressing themselves into an early grave over necessities, all while breeding more workers for you to exploit.
That's not even getting into the kind of moronic system that rewards CEOs for selling off productive company assets and calling it record profits, bonus please!
I might not be a good lefty for saying it, but I've never been against capitalism at like a base level. I imagine it'd be perfectly fine in a species evolution didn't utterly fail, but example says we humans cannot have it and remain functional.
if I'm paying for the creation of skeletons, I expect to receive some in the mail.
The US has by far the most expensive healthcare in the world, and for all that expense, achieves outcomes comparable with the third world.
Negotiating with providers as a single payer massively shifts the dynamic by putting the negotiating power in the hands of the people representing patients, and allows a huge amount of bloat to be removed from the system - like the entire insurance industry.
Single payer will deliver huge savings, better healthcare, and better access. The people that lose are the grifters draining the system for profit.
If it is Feb '22 then that's an extremely prescient tweet, as the Palestinian Genocide didn't start until Oct '23.
this band is very based from what I have seen
Ok, so I completely support universal healthcare. However, it still is true that you are paying for "someone else's healthcare". How?
Let's assume that there's a flat tax percentage - 30% for all. (Actually most developed countries have progressive tax systems, but let's ignore that for now). The more your income, the more tax you pay. Therefore, some people pay more tax than others. This means, that some people contribute more to fund the healthcare system compared to others.
Some people have pre-existing conditions. Some people may just be unhealthy due to bad lifestyle choices. I might be incredibly fit. The probability of me falling sick would be very less. If there were a multi payer healthcare system, then perhaps I might not need to spend much money on healthcare. A universal single payer system might be forcing me to pay more for others' healthcare. Therefore, saying that I'm paying for someone else's healthcare isn't inaccurate.
That being said, healthcare is a human right. Every human, regardless of financial status deserves timely access to good healthcare. That's why I support it.
Right now we pay for other peoples healthcare and we also pay some shitty middlemen who tell us what treatments they think are necessary. If we cut out the middlemen its literally cheaper than our current system.
To reply to your devil’s advocate
Agreed. The ethical argument for universal healthcare triumphs everything else, assuming that we value human life equally.
Except the US clearly has a stratified society, even when it tries to lighten that with myths of fair pay, opportunity and get-rich-quick schemes (all the old American dreams before the post WWII townhouse family.)
Part of the rise of fascist rhetoric (targeting minorities like trans folk and immigrants) is to distract from the failure of these myths. Millennials and Zoomers know they're probably never going to own a home, or get to retire well, which not only discourages the Protestant work ethic (see quiet-quitting) but also elevates civil unrest (see the Great Depression).
So the Republican response is to kill elections and install one-party autocracy backed by a police state. That way they don't even have to listen to fellow Republicans, after they realize getting benes from being party loyalists are not actually soon to arrive. This is literally a return to monarchy, as Representative and constitutional historian Jamie Rasken has observed.
For some reason everyone thinks they are the healthy ones that don't and never will need healthcare, not like those unhealthy everyone else
it still is true that you are paying for "someone else's healthcare".
Yeah but that's ALREADY how it works. With private insurance some people pay their premium month after month after month and make no claims. Some people get paid out more than they'll ever pay in. That's how insurance works. Plus with private insurance toss in shareholder profits and millions of dollars in quirky commercials off the top of that.
You're already doing that with insurance premiums. Universal healthcare is that but cheaper because the government doesn't have a profit incentive to price gouge.
Be sure to follow the rule before you head out.
Rule: You must post before you leave.
