People talk about the US healthcare system as if it's a choice between capitalism and socialism.
It's a false dichotomy. The Americans already spend as much public money on healthcare per capita as single payer systems like Canada or the UK.
In a sense, the insurance industry exists in part because the state solution is a failed one.
Some people claim that the United States hasn't tried a state solution and that's why things are so bad. That's a lie. If they chose not to pursue a state solution then they wouldn't be spending as much public money as they are. They have a state based solution that's incompetent.
Then people find it ironic that in spite of their poor system now they don't trust the government to implement a healthcare system for everyone. The fact that the state based system is so broken doesn't seem to be at all ironic that people don't trust the state to do the thing they're currently failing to do.
People might argue that government involvement in healthcare isn't axiomatically inefficient and just is by how the US government has chosen to do it, which is self-evidently true based on the fact that I'm not comparing the United States to a perfect system I am comparing the United States to other countries in the anglosphere which have single-payer healthcare for comparable or even lower amounts of money than the United States gets virtually nothing for. However, the proof in the pudding is in the eating, the reason that the US government is incompetent at healthcare is immaterial next to the fact that they are in fact incompetent at healthcare.
Some people might say that it's because of political partisanship, but the last major piece of healthcare legislation occurred when the Democrats had a supermajority in Congress and thus could pass any piece of legislation they wanted. What they chose to pass was more spending and no improvement to healthcare accessibility.
The idea that partisanship might block reforms even during super majorities? The answer is that it doesn't. At that point, one party is fully in charge. Now it's true that poorly implemented or unpopular reforms could be easily moved back in the next political session where the other party was in charge, but that assumes that they will be poorly implemented or unpopular. As an example, in spite of the issues with healthcare in canada, it is considered a third rail that no political party, even the far right populist party The People's party of Canada, is remotely willing to discuss ending it. If a political party with a supermajority and majorities and the presidency and the supreme Court where to implement something that immediately had a tangible improvement on outcomes for people, it would just become the way things are done.
I think that if anything, the government really does a great job of avoiding all blame. They they act with extreme incompetence, and extreme corruption, and they are the ones who ultimately make the decision about what happens but they get to blame lobbyists as if congressman and senators don't have any agency of their own, they just do whatever they're told by lobbyists.
People want to pretend lobbyists only exist in the United States, and they want to act like fragmentation only exists in the United States. Neither of these are true of course, but they provide easy scapegoats to incompetent lawmakers. For people who claim that it isn't possible to have the federal government fund a program that is managed by the states, they once again only need look to Canada, whose public healthcare program is funded by the federal government and implemented by the provinces, and although imperfect provides universal health Care in every province and territory.
Medicare, Medicaid, and VA are limited in scope which is why not everyone gets access to them. However, if Medicare was so great then it could achieve its mission with a fraction of its budget and people would go "oh, we have all this money left over we could implement single-payer healthcare" but instead these extremely limited programs are constantly complaining that they're underfunded. Notably, the Swiss hybrid system actually results in record low public expenditure on healthcare across Europe.
All of these realities based on comparative analysis with other countries act as a tactical nuke, more or less destroying every argument that lets the US government avoid blame for the current situation in healthcare.
It's also a kill shot to arguments saying the problem with the US healthcare is but they aren't willing to pay for something that is socialism. The failures of private insurance are in fact a direct result of the failures of government to implement effective public health Care with the money that they already have.
So we are perfectly clear here, if the government legalizes something, and they make something tax deductible, and massively funds something, then it is responsible for that thing. If instead of healthcare we were talking about crack cocaine, we wouldn't be talking about the individual people selling crack cocaine we would be asking why the government has set up a system like that.
The US has a system that protects tens of millions at a cost that should protect hundreds of millions. What is the human cost of leaving hundreds of millions of people without healthcare so we can give tens of millions of people healthcare? Clearly the real issue is that the government needs to fix their shit.
It's a false dichotomy. The Americans already spend as much public money on healthcare per capita as single payer systems like Canada or the UK.
In a sense, the insurance industry exists in part because the state solution is a failed one.
Some people claim that the United States hasn't tried a state solution and that's why things are so bad. That's a lie. If they chose not to pursue a state solution then they wouldn't be spending as much public money as they are. They have a state based solution that's incompetent.
Then people find it ironic that in spite of their poor system now they don't trust the government to implement a healthcare system for everyone. The fact that the state based system is so broken doesn't seem to be at all ironic that people don't trust the state to do the thing they're currently failing to do.
People might argue that government involvement in healthcare isn't axiomatically inefficient and just is by how the US government has chosen to do it, which is self-evidently true based on the fact that I'm not comparing the United States to a perfect system I am comparing the United States to other countries in the anglosphere which have single-payer healthcare for comparable or even lower amounts of money than the United States gets virtually nothing for. However, the proof in the pudding is in the eating, the reason that the US government is incompetent at healthcare is immaterial next to the fact that they are in fact incompetent at healthcare.
Some people might say that it's because of political partisanship, but the last major piece of healthcare legislation occurred when the Democrats had a supermajority in Congress and thus could pass any piece of legislation they wanted. What they chose to pass was more spending and no improvement to healthcare accessibility.
The idea that partisanship might block reforms even during super majorities? The answer is that it doesn't. At that point, one party is fully in charge. Now it's true that poorly implemented or unpopular reforms could be easily moved back in the next political session where the other party was in charge, but that assumes that they will be poorly implemented or unpopular. As an example, in spite of the issues with healthcare in canada, it is considered a third rail that no political party, even the far right populist party The People's party of Canada, is remotely willing to discuss ending it. If a political party with a supermajority and majorities and the presidency and the supreme Court where to implement something that immediately had a tangible improvement on outcomes for people, it would just become the way things are done.
I think that if anything, the government really does a great job of avoiding all blame. They they act with extreme incompetence, and extreme corruption, and they are the ones who ultimately make the decision about what happens but they get to blame lobbyists as if congressman and senators don't have any agency of their own, they just do whatever they're told by lobbyists.
People want to pretend lobbyists only exist in the United States, and they want to act like fragmentation only exists in the United States. Neither of these are true of course, but they provide easy scapegoats to incompetent lawmakers. For people who claim that it isn't possible to have the federal government fund a program that is managed by the states, they once again only need look to Canada, whose public healthcare program is funded by the federal government and implemented by the provinces, and although imperfect provides universal health Care in every province and territory.
Medicare, Medicaid, and VA are limited in scope which is why not everyone gets access to them. However, if Medicare was so great then it could achieve its mission with a fraction of its budget and people would go "oh, we have all this money left over we could implement single-payer healthcare" but instead these extremely limited programs are constantly complaining that they're underfunded. Notably, the Swiss hybrid system actually results in record low public expenditure on healthcare across Europe.
All of these realities based on comparative analysis with other countries act as a tactical nuke, more or less destroying every argument that lets the US government avoid blame for the current situation in healthcare.
It's also a kill shot to arguments saying the problem with the US healthcare is but they aren't willing to pay for something that is socialism. The failures of private insurance are in fact a direct result of the failures of government to implement effective public health Care with the money that they already have.
So we are perfectly clear here, if the government legalizes something, and they make something tax deductible, and massively funds something, then it is responsible for that thing. If instead of healthcare we were talking about crack cocaine, we wouldn't be talking about the individual people selling crack cocaine we would be asking why the government has set up a system like that.
The US has a system that protects tens of millions at a cost that should protect hundreds of millions. What is the human cost of leaving hundreds of millions of people without healthcare so we can give tens of millions of people healthcare? Clearly the real issue is that the government needs to fix their shit.
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