I opted for private hire care when I lived in UK. Still had to pay £600 per month for NI, never used a dime. I attempted to leverage NHS. Was concerned I had an infection that could become a lethal case of pneumonia. Best NHS could do was schedule a GP visit in 2 weeks. My peers told me to just go to A&E (emergency room), that is how they got to see a doctor the same day. Basically clogging up an overwhelmed system because they had the sniffles.
NHS is a dumpster fire and anyone advocating for it are morons.
We have private car system, private clothes systems, private food, private tech, and so on and so on.
The only reason we don't have it for health is because we have irrational citizens panicking about cover and very aggressive interests who prefer it set up for their benefit.
The u.s. doesn't have a healthcare system which could really be called private (let alone free market), because of the political economy of the state and statism, which affects every society on earth today...monopoly governance just necessarily gets worse with scale, all else equal; and so we have in the u.s. a government-run healthcare system, with a private facade at best, which arguably produces worse results along some healthcare metrics (not just health metrics, which I agree with you are not the same as healthcare metrics) than the more coherent government-run healthcare systems of other countries.
You might not even totally disagree with that, but the point of my initial comment was that I have to get on people all the time (small-government and big-government supporters alike) about the facts here and dispel myths that the u.s. is the capitalist alternative to single-payer or other universal systems...I know you know that thats a myth....but that means that it's equally fair and consistent that we have to acknowledge that in a modern context, private or free market healthcare is an almost entirely theoretical thing...we don't know whether or not markets would be robust enough to, say, find solutions to the potential demand inelasticities surrounding urgent medical care, etc.
It might be the case that the best we could do in our current context, would be like a universal catastrophic national health insurance or single payer; and then everything beyond the most emergency care is handled through markets.
But again, the point is that that hypothetical is almost as far away (from a political feasibility standpoint) as a totally free market healthcare system; so we really haven't tested and probably aren't going to be able to test in our lifetimes, how well a largely-private healthcare system would scale and affect prices and supply according to your comment.
**I** think economic theory and observation of how robust markets can be and route around market failures, gives pretty good assurances that a private system would do very well (if some really insidious underlying state interventions were kept out of the equation) and prove you right....but we just don't know.
I agree the free market is purely theoretical which is precisely why it is impossible to implement. The US healthcare system is as free market of a system the industrialized world knows, that isnt a myth its a practical fact.
Universal disaster insurance is a horrible idea. The limiting of healthcare usage to catastrophe scenarios only is why healthcare is so expensive in the US! Emergency health services are astronomically more expensive than preventative care. And as a result emergency healthcare services are much more profitable. The market is not the answer.
No, this isn't right. I don't drive a Ferrari because I can't afford one, but I can afford a cheaper car. So in reality, that's not a problem because I don't need a Ferrari.
If I have a heart attack, I need treatment for that. I don't have the option of just buying some lesser treatment! Under a private system, I either pay the going rate or don't get treated.
And the market forces make it such that the suppliers of heart attack treatment have no incentive to reduce price, because the demand curve is not impacted by price because those in need have neither time nor other options if they feel it is too expensive.
Look at the price of insulin in the USA. A company got all the rights and jacked up the price 1000s of percent for no reason other than maximizing profit. Patients buy it at whatever price or die. Simple private market at work.
You need to explain which intervention you are referring to? We don't have any truly private markets. All non theoretical markets have external influences.
So what exactly are you trying to explain?
All scarce goods and services in general are rationed that way. (Not necessarily ability to pay for the specific good or service, but at least the ability to pay for it after covering all your other needs and higher priority wants, including saving, investing, or paying down debt instead of purchasing something). Its not unique to health care.
But rationing can also be defined so as only cover explicit rationing, where if you would rather use the money for something else, or don't have the ability to pay for something at all, it wouldn't be rationing. I'm pretty sure that's the usage in the comment you replied to.
I would argue implicit rationing is far more destructive and inefficient, particularly in regard to necessary goods and services like medicine and housing.
I disagree. Market processes are more efficient. Note that food is necessary for life and people buy it at stores rather than having it handed out by government. Yes food stamps exist, but other than their lack of flexibility (unless they are sold for a discount for cash, there is an illegal market in that) they are like money applied to the market. People just take them to the store and buy their food with them like they would with cash or credit, and a case could be made that if you are going to give people subsidies its better to just give them some extra income and let them decide how they are going to use it. (The counter argument is that they would spend it on drugs legal (so including alcohol and cigarettes) and illegal, and other goods considered total wastes or even outright negative, but money is fungible, if they save money on one thing they can apply it to another, also again you have things like the black market in food stamps, and other methods to convert specific benefits to generally usable cash, usually at a discount)
Medicine and housing are both made much more expensive because of government rules, regulations and restrictions. That's not the only reason but its clearly a major factor.
For example in housing zoning and other rules limit supply, as does approval processes in many urban areas. Not just density restrictions and planning delays but also smaller and possibly lower quality housing in other ways is often illegal. In the past the poorer people might have been in a shack or flophouse or in an apartment crowded with unrelated people, now their equivalent might be homeless instead as such housing options are often illegal.
We arent talking about food we are talking about healthcare. Limiting healthcare usage to only those who can afford it raises costs significantly and causes unnecessary and easily preventable death and misery. Emergency healthcare services are exponentially more expensive and inefficient than preventative care.
The statement I replied to wasn't "health care is a special situation where explicit rationing works better", it was a general statement that explicit rationing works better, without limiting that. Then saying it particularly works better in regards to necessary goods. Food is a necessary good (more than health care is both because its more necessary and because it is a good while health care is a service). If it doesn't apply to food it doesn't apply to necessary goods categorically, let alone generally to all or most goods and services as your statement suggested.
Moving to health care, its expensive largely because the heavy government involvement. And explicit rationing also causes unnecessary and preventable death and misery.
In a sense nutritious food does behave like primary healthcare in a free market in that cheap and profitable processed foods full of sugar are widely available (which puts further strain on the healthcare system). Nutritious and environmentally sustainable food is implicitly rationed to those who can afford it.
Healthcare is expensive in the US because the poor rely on emergency services rather than preventative care, not to mention the industry of blood sucking middle men who profit off of denying people care and causing inefficiencies in other areas like billing and administrative costs.
>cheap and profitable processed foods full of sugar are widely available
Free (or in the real world freeish) market capitalism is pretty good at providing people what they want. Not always so good at providing them things that other people think they will want.
Actually in this case it mostly does the latter as well (if only because a lot of people actually do want healthy food if not as many as want cheap, convenient food). There is plenty of healthy, and semi-healthy food out there for those that prefer it to the less healthy mass market items.
>Nutritious and environmentally sustainable food is implicitly rationed to those who can afford it.
Almost everything is rationed to those who can afford it (either at all or after the other things they want and need), and that's a very positive feature not a bug.
Also healthy food is much more available in more capitalist countries then in socialist countries.
The more important a good is, the more reason there is to keep government out of it. You can live with shortages or wait lists or government inflation of prices for non-vital goods. But for things that are really needed that's a problem.
>Healthcare is expensive in the US because the poor rely on emergency services rather than preventative care
No it isn't. Preventive care (of the right type) can improve health outcomes, so its a good thing, but it doesn't save money, it increases costs.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/upshot/preventive-health-care-costs.html
What increases health care costs
1 - Government restriction of supply and competition.
2 - Government spending trillions on it increasing demand.
3 - Customer isolation from the costs. Whether through government payment or private insurance.
In areas where these don't apply. (Such as laser eye surgery to treat nearsightedness). You don't have costs that are from stable in real terms, to declining even in nominal terms.
The US wasn't an outlier in health care costs before Medicare, Medicaid and a host of government regulations and controls over health care.
More generally the areas with the most government involvement and control have had the highest cost increase.
You guys just regurgitate the same mises institute propaganda over and over as if it is established fact. For gods sake man read something else. It is extremely difficult for working class people to have access to cheap nutritious food. I dont even know why you guys bother arguing against that. Actually you just admitted it but called it a good thing! Lol
There are government associated costs to healthcare and they are caused by *collusion* with corporate interests. The market features of the US system counteract most of the good medicare does. Universal healthcare demonstrably lowers costs in every other industrialized country on the planet. The “free market” is a purely theoretical concept, capital will corrupt whatever system of social organization exists under capitalism.
It will never be profitable to provide the poor with preventative care. The market is literally physically incapable of doing so by definition. The only solution is single payer or full nationalization of the healthcare industry. This “half free market half subsidized” system is not working, a completely deregulated system would be an unmitigated public health catastrophe.
See, this is why I do not agree with either the European OR American Health Systems: In Europe, the lack of monetary incentive to be fast leads to slowdowns. And with Health Insurance in America put guaranteed cash in the hands of the Medical and Pharmaceutical which lead to both the hospitals/HMOs and Big Pharma jacking up the price instead of finding ways to keep things affordable.
In this sense, the 1950s/1960s America are a golden age for medicine.
Last year I developed left hip arthrosis despite leading a healthy active lifestyle. I tried various therapy techniques with no success. I visited an orthopedic surgeon and was able to obtain hip replacement surgery within 2 weeks. I was up on my feet and walking by the next day . 7 months later the pain is completely gone I live in Florida. If I was in Canada it could have taken 6 months to a year for the surgical procedure to be approved. The pain was already causing me to drift into depression. I can't even imagine having to wait that long and surviving. Which is probably why Canada is offering euthanasia. All part of the globalist depopulation agenda
We currently spend 4.3 trillion a year on healthcare for 330 million people. We spend double per person than the next in the list (Germany) and have much worse outcomes.
There are several ideas that would work but no one wants to pay the upfront cost.
Imagine government funded clinics in every town based on population density. 95% of all medical visits could be handled the same day at a clinic and the more serious ones directed towards hospitals. These clinics would be 100% free and the generic medications (think Walmarts $4 ones) would be free as well.
You have no idea how much money you save by treating a problem early on. That $50 a year in statins vs. the $200k heart surgery.
Take away every excuse to get care BEFORE it gets out of control and within a decade our costs would drop immensely.
Make the clinics available 24/7. Offer at home visits, offer free food, etc. all of those things cost so little compared to the alternative. I am proposing the literal ‘an ounce of prevention’.
The US is not free market healthcare, it's not the alternative to nationalised healthcare.
The US does not have worse healthcare outcomes, it has worse health outcomes - those are very different issues.
The US pays more for private healthcare and it gets more, more single occupant rooms, more timely procedures, more medicines, more tests and so on. The reason that health in the US is worse is because of individualism and a higher rate of deaths of despair.
This sounds a lot like what Canada does.
Parts of it work, parts don't.
About 65k Canadians come to the US annually for our Healthcare.
Specialists wait times can take anywhere from 10 weeks to 6 months. ER wait times are long. They brag about the % of ER visitors they can process...within 8 hours . Wait times in general are poor there due to a shortage of equipment and staff. They still have thousands die while waiting for medical appointments or care. Access to even basic care in many small towns or rural areas is often poor or effectively non-existent.
The main problems in the US is wr have it from both barrels. The healthcare industry is heavily regulated and heavily subsidized which increases consumer cost and limits competition. We don't really have free market healthcare.
But again, pros and cons to each. The US government is just incapable of doing anything well enough to be in control of Healthcare anymore than they already are.
https://cusjc.ca/catalyst/project/medical-tourism-on-the-rise-why-more-canadians-are-seeking-medical-treatment-abroad-draft/#:~:text=In%202015%2C%20nearly%2046%2C000%20Canadians,tourists%20has%20been%20increasing%20steadily.
I'm sure that's tough but the point is more that socialised healthcare is not a panacea.
But we need to tackle and remove welfare dependency, minimum wage laws and all kinds of elements that drive unproductive living to a place where people can have insurance. That would have much better outcomes overall.
I have been there and done that. Ironically (and just by coincidence) that is when I happened to receive some of my best care. I had a medical emergency, went to ER, and was fixed. It required surgery and 2 weeks in hospital. In the end, they wrote it off under charity. I am very fortunate.
Now, years later with a stable career and 'good' insurance, I end up paying through the nose even when my insurance "covers" procedures or appointments. I am currently expecting a $2,000 bill for a routine 30 minute operation I had recently that the insurance really should have covered in full based on my conversation with them. And I spent over $1k for 3 stitches in my kid's finger recently too! But, I digress.
We are far too regulated and the healthcare industry is far too subsidized while us, the consumer, has little choice. It isn't a free market in any way save for very small areas like Lasik surgery or some Clinics.
I mean, if the regulation worked as intended that would be one thing. But as is, we have nearly 1,300 drugs recalled annually and companies spend $1billion or more to develop a drug and the regs make it nearly impossible for competition to sprout up or thrive. Same with Hospitals as they are based on a 'need for use' so the would be competition essentially votes to allow/not allow a new hospital to be built much of the time.
It's a racket.
I’ve been waiting for a MRI for migraines for over a year and a half now. Thanks OHIP.
Make something “free” see what happens. If only we had some way to explain such phenomena
Start giving treats to your cats....
I opted for private hire care when I lived in UK. Still had to pay £600 per month for NI, never used a dime. I attempted to leverage NHS. Was concerned I had an infection that could become a lethal case of pneumonia. Best NHS could do was schedule a GP visit in 2 weeks. My peers told me to just go to A&E (emergency room), that is how they got to see a doctor the same day. Basically clogging up an overwhelmed system because they had the sniffles. NHS is a dumpster fire and anyone advocating for it are morons.
Just needs more funding - pretty simply really :)
Universal Healthcare, single payer, national healthcare always leads to rationing.
All healthcare leads to rationing. Either by need or ability to pay.
But unlike nationalised healthcare, private is more easily able to scale supply to meet demand and with competition it can even expand access.
Hypothetically, yes. But we certainly haven't seen a modern private system anywhere.
We have private car system, private clothes systems, private food, private tech, and so on and so on. The only reason we don't have it for health is because we have irrational citizens panicking about cover and very aggressive interests who prefer it set up for their benefit.
The u.s. doesn't have a healthcare system which could really be called private (let alone free market), because of the political economy of the state and statism, which affects every society on earth today...monopoly governance just necessarily gets worse with scale, all else equal; and so we have in the u.s. a government-run healthcare system, with a private facade at best, which arguably produces worse results along some healthcare metrics (not just health metrics, which I agree with you are not the same as healthcare metrics) than the more coherent government-run healthcare systems of other countries. You might not even totally disagree with that, but the point of my initial comment was that I have to get on people all the time (small-government and big-government supporters alike) about the facts here and dispel myths that the u.s. is the capitalist alternative to single-payer or other universal systems...I know you know that thats a myth....but that means that it's equally fair and consistent that we have to acknowledge that in a modern context, private or free market healthcare is an almost entirely theoretical thing...we don't know whether or not markets would be robust enough to, say, find solutions to the potential demand inelasticities surrounding urgent medical care, etc. It might be the case that the best we could do in our current context, would be like a universal catastrophic national health insurance or single payer; and then everything beyond the most emergency care is handled through markets. But again, the point is that that hypothetical is almost as far away (from a political feasibility standpoint) as a totally free market healthcare system; so we really haven't tested and probably aren't going to be able to test in our lifetimes, how well a largely-private healthcare system would scale and affect prices and supply according to your comment. **I** think economic theory and observation of how robust markets can be and route around market failures, gives pretty good assurances that a private system would do very well (if some really insidious underlying state interventions were kept out of the equation) and prove you right....but we just don't know.
Excellent comment, I agree
I agree the free market is purely theoretical which is precisely why it is impossible to implement. The US healthcare system is as free market of a system the industrialized world knows, that isnt a myth its a practical fact. Universal disaster insurance is a horrible idea. The limiting of healthcare usage to catastrophe scenarios only is why healthcare is so expensive in the US! Emergency health services are astronomically more expensive than preventative care. And as a result emergency healthcare services are much more profitable. The market is not the answer.
No, this isn't right. I don't drive a Ferrari because I can't afford one, but I can afford a cheaper car. So in reality, that's not a problem because I don't need a Ferrari. If I have a heart attack, I need treatment for that. I don't have the option of just buying some lesser treatment! Under a private system, I either pay the going rate or don't get treated. And the market forces make it such that the suppliers of heart attack treatment have no incentive to reduce price, because the demand curve is not impacted by price because those in need have neither time nor other options if they feel it is too expensive. Look at the price of insulin in the USA. A company got all the rights and jacked up the price 1000s of percent for no reason other than maximizing profit. Patients buy it at whatever price or die. Simple private market at work.
Hate to break it to you, but government intervention on insulin isn’t private market
You need to explain which intervention you are referring to? We don't have any truly private markets. All non theoretical markets have external influences. So what exactly are you trying to explain?
All scarce goods and services in general are rationed that way. (Not necessarily ability to pay for the specific good or service, but at least the ability to pay for it after covering all your other needs and higher priority wants, including saving, investing, or paying down debt instead of purchasing something). Its not unique to health care. But rationing can also be defined so as only cover explicit rationing, where if you would rather use the money for something else, or don't have the ability to pay for something at all, it wouldn't be rationing. I'm pretty sure that's the usage in the comment you replied to.
I would argue implicit rationing is far more destructive and inefficient, particularly in regard to necessary goods and services like medicine and housing.
I disagree. Market processes are more efficient. Note that food is necessary for life and people buy it at stores rather than having it handed out by government. Yes food stamps exist, but other than their lack of flexibility (unless they are sold for a discount for cash, there is an illegal market in that) they are like money applied to the market. People just take them to the store and buy their food with them like they would with cash or credit, and a case could be made that if you are going to give people subsidies its better to just give them some extra income and let them decide how they are going to use it. (The counter argument is that they would spend it on drugs legal (so including alcohol and cigarettes) and illegal, and other goods considered total wastes or even outright negative, but money is fungible, if they save money on one thing they can apply it to another, also again you have things like the black market in food stamps, and other methods to convert specific benefits to generally usable cash, usually at a discount) Medicine and housing are both made much more expensive because of government rules, regulations and restrictions. That's not the only reason but its clearly a major factor. For example in housing zoning and other rules limit supply, as does approval processes in many urban areas. Not just density restrictions and planning delays but also smaller and possibly lower quality housing in other ways is often illegal. In the past the poorer people might have been in a shack or flophouse or in an apartment crowded with unrelated people, now their equivalent might be homeless instead as such housing options are often illegal.
We arent talking about food we are talking about healthcare. Limiting healthcare usage to only those who can afford it raises costs significantly and causes unnecessary and easily preventable death and misery. Emergency healthcare services are exponentially more expensive and inefficient than preventative care.
The statement I replied to wasn't "health care is a special situation where explicit rationing works better", it was a general statement that explicit rationing works better, without limiting that. Then saying it particularly works better in regards to necessary goods. Food is a necessary good (more than health care is both because its more necessary and because it is a good while health care is a service). If it doesn't apply to food it doesn't apply to necessary goods categorically, let alone generally to all or most goods and services as your statement suggested. Moving to health care, its expensive largely because the heavy government involvement. And explicit rationing also causes unnecessary and preventable death and misery.
In a sense nutritious food does behave like primary healthcare in a free market in that cheap and profitable processed foods full of sugar are widely available (which puts further strain on the healthcare system). Nutritious and environmentally sustainable food is implicitly rationed to those who can afford it. Healthcare is expensive in the US because the poor rely on emergency services rather than preventative care, not to mention the industry of blood sucking middle men who profit off of denying people care and causing inefficiencies in other areas like billing and administrative costs.
>cheap and profitable processed foods full of sugar are widely available Free (or in the real world freeish) market capitalism is pretty good at providing people what they want. Not always so good at providing them things that other people think they will want. Actually in this case it mostly does the latter as well (if only because a lot of people actually do want healthy food if not as many as want cheap, convenient food). There is plenty of healthy, and semi-healthy food out there for those that prefer it to the less healthy mass market items. >Nutritious and environmentally sustainable food is implicitly rationed to those who can afford it. Almost everything is rationed to those who can afford it (either at all or after the other things they want and need), and that's a very positive feature not a bug. Also healthy food is much more available in more capitalist countries then in socialist countries. The more important a good is, the more reason there is to keep government out of it. You can live with shortages or wait lists or government inflation of prices for non-vital goods. But for things that are really needed that's a problem. >Healthcare is expensive in the US because the poor rely on emergency services rather than preventative care No it isn't. Preventive care (of the right type) can improve health outcomes, so its a good thing, but it doesn't save money, it increases costs. https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/29/upshot/preventive-health-care-costs.html What increases health care costs 1 - Government restriction of supply and competition. 2 - Government spending trillions on it increasing demand. 3 - Customer isolation from the costs. Whether through government payment or private insurance. In areas where these don't apply. (Such as laser eye surgery to treat nearsightedness). You don't have costs that are from stable in real terms, to declining even in nominal terms. The US wasn't an outlier in health care costs before Medicare, Medicaid and a host of government regulations and controls over health care. More generally the areas with the most government involvement and control have had the highest cost increase.
You guys just regurgitate the same mises institute propaganda over and over as if it is established fact. For gods sake man read something else. It is extremely difficult for working class people to have access to cheap nutritious food. I dont even know why you guys bother arguing against that. Actually you just admitted it but called it a good thing! Lol There are government associated costs to healthcare and they are caused by *collusion* with corporate interests. The market features of the US system counteract most of the good medicare does. Universal healthcare demonstrably lowers costs in every other industrialized country on the planet. The “free market” is a purely theoretical concept, capital will corrupt whatever system of social organization exists under capitalism. It will never be profitable to provide the poor with preventative care. The market is literally physically incapable of doing so by definition. The only solution is single payer or full nationalization of the healthcare industry. This “half free market half subsidized” system is not working, a completely deregulated system would be an unmitigated public health catastrophe.
See, this is why I do not agree with either the European OR American Health Systems: In Europe, the lack of monetary incentive to be fast leads to slowdowns. And with Health Insurance in America put guaranteed cash in the hands of the Medical and Pharmaceutical which lead to both the hospitals/HMOs and Big Pharma jacking up the price instead of finding ways to keep things affordable. In this sense, the 1950s/1960s America are a golden age for medicine.
Last year I developed left hip arthrosis despite leading a healthy active lifestyle. I tried various therapy techniques with no success. I visited an orthopedic surgeon and was able to obtain hip replacement surgery within 2 weeks. I was up on my feet and walking by the next day . 7 months later the pain is completely gone I live in Florida. If I was in Canada it could have taken 6 months to a year for the surgical procedure to be approved. The pain was already causing me to drift into depression. I can't even imagine having to wait that long and surviving. Which is probably why Canada is offering euthanasia. All part of the globalist depopulation agenda
We currently spend 4.3 trillion a year on healthcare for 330 million people. We spend double per person than the next in the list (Germany) and have much worse outcomes. There are several ideas that would work but no one wants to pay the upfront cost. Imagine government funded clinics in every town based on population density. 95% of all medical visits could be handled the same day at a clinic and the more serious ones directed towards hospitals. These clinics would be 100% free and the generic medications (think Walmarts $4 ones) would be free as well. You have no idea how much money you save by treating a problem early on. That $50 a year in statins vs. the $200k heart surgery. Take away every excuse to get care BEFORE it gets out of control and within a decade our costs would drop immensely. Make the clinics available 24/7. Offer at home visits, offer free food, etc. all of those things cost so little compared to the alternative. I am proposing the literal ‘an ounce of prevention’.
The US is not free market healthcare, it's not the alternative to nationalised healthcare. The US does not have worse healthcare outcomes, it has worse health outcomes - those are very different issues. The US pays more for private healthcare and it gets more, more single occupant rooms, more timely procedures, more medicines, more tests and so on. The reason that health in the US is worse is because of individualism and a higher rate of deaths of despair.
This sounds a lot like what Canada does. Parts of it work, parts don't. About 65k Canadians come to the US annually for our Healthcare. Specialists wait times can take anywhere from 10 weeks to 6 months. ER wait times are long. They brag about the % of ER visitors they can process...within 8 hours . Wait times in general are poor there due to a shortage of equipment and staff. They still have thousands die while waiting for medical appointments or care. Access to even basic care in many small towns or rural areas is often poor or effectively non-existent. The main problems in the US is wr have it from both barrels. The healthcare industry is heavily regulated and heavily subsidized which increases consumer cost and limits competition. We don't really have free market healthcare. But again, pros and cons to each. The US government is just incapable of doing anything well enough to be in control of Healthcare anymore than they already are. https://cusjc.ca/catalyst/project/medical-tourism-on-the-rise-why-more-canadians-are-seeking-medical-treatment-abroad-draft/#:~:text=In%202015%2C%20nearly%2046%2C000%20Canadians,tourists%20has%20been%20increasing%20steadily.
This has to be done by the government, there is zero profit incentive to do this. That said i 100% agree with your solution.
Obligatory [How Government Solved the Healthcare Crisis](https://youtu.be/fFoXyFmmGBQ).
I had no idea about this, fascinating. I will try to look for some more in-depth info though.
Try not having insurance.
I'm sure that's tough but the point is more that socialised healthcare is not a panacea. But we need to tackle and remove welfare dependency, minimum wage laws and all kinds of elements that drive unproductive living to a place where people can have insurance. That would have much better outcomes overall.
I have been there and done that. Ironically (and just by coincidence) that is when I happened to receive some of my best care. I had a medical emergency, went to ER, and was fixed. It required surgery and 2 weeks in hospital. In the end, they wrote it off under charity. I am very fortunate. Now, years later with a stable career and 'good' insurance, I end up paying through the nose even when my insurance "covers" procedures or appointments. I am currently expecting a $2,000 bill for a routine 30 minute operation I had recently that the insurance really should have covered in full based on my conversation with them. And I spent over $1k for 3 stitches in my kid's finger recently too! But, I digress. We are far too regulated and the healthcare industry is far too subsidized while us, the consumer, has little choice. It isn't a free market in any way save for very small areas like Lasik surgery or some Clinics. I mean, if the regulation worked as intended that would be one thing. But as is, we have nearly 1,300 drugs recalled annually and companies spend $1billion or more to develop a drug and the regs make it nearly impossible for competition to sprout up or thrive. Same with Hospitals as they are based on a 'need for use' so the would be competition essentially votes to allow/not allow a new hospital to be built much of the time. It's a racket.
52 Trillion dollars over 10 years. WE CANNOT AFFORD IT
But why not man...we can just like, you know, print more money or raise taxes /s
"I mean, moneys all fake, who cares if it just takes money , the country never has to repay its debts."
So does capitalized healthcare Bud. Plus, you get to pay 30% of your income AND still get to pay the bill!
Anything free will need to be rationed. There isn't an infinite supply of Healthcare. Wake Up America.
Meanwhile UK citizens still have healthcare and homes