Originally published at: You already know the U.S. healthcare system is broke, but this graph is still shocking | Boing Boing
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It’s “bad news Monday”.
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Yep. The numbers don’t lie. As hard as I fought for the idea of reformed private care in the past, they have no incentive/desire to create a better product. If anything they have made it worse. So the logical reasoning is to use a system other countries have had good results with.
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But … but … won’t somebody think of the shareholders?
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Can anyone spot another reason?
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For what it’s worth, when traveling I had an encounter with the Japanese health care system (including an ambulance ride) and my wife had an encounter with the Swiss health care system. Both are excellent and the fees we paid were very reasonable even though we did not have insurance in those countries. But neither of those health care systems is really “nationalized” in quite the same sense of England’s NHS or Italy’s SSN. They provide universal coverage and health insurance is mandatory for their citizens, and their systems are heavily regulated, but the care is largely done through private clinics.
Of course, nationalized or not, there’s clearly a lot we can learn from how they deliver their health care and we should aspire to following their examples. The US system is obviously a huge failure.
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This. Like with our education system, intrinsic problems with the healthcare system itself exist but are only part of the problem. Poverty and generational poverty which are themselves inextricably linked to institutional racism are probably the biggest reasons for poor healthcare outcomes.
We could have the best, public, free healthcare system in the world and our outcomes would be better but still not great. We need to lower cost and increase equity in healthcare but if we want to really move the needle on life expectancy and quality of life we are going to need to address more fundamental problems.
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Exactly. Our average outcomes will always be bad if we don’t give a shit about a high percentage of our population and don’t care if they can’t lead decent healthy lives and get help when they are sick, or avoid other factors that cause them to be more likely to be sick.
Americans do not care about averages, they care about themselves.
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But we lead in overcompensated CEOs, over-priced and over-prescribed high tech testing services provided by private (for profit) businesses founded by over paid doctors and specialists investors. So our heath care system is working for who it was designed for, right?
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william barr can go fuck himself if he can’t get his head out of his ass long enough to see systemic racism. what a bastard he is!
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It could also be we’re a nation of snack food eating, tv watching, sedentary lard asses that no health care system could compensate for.
Right, right, blame the people and individuals, not the processes or systems. That’s how all big problems get solved.
/s
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Funny you should bring this up.
I’m about to pay off my should be dead heart attack, almost exactly to the day, from 10 years ago.
That was with 1,200 bucks a month insurance that we paid ourselves because self employed.
I’m now working on the bill from a five day stay from a stroke 6 years ago. That’s not as bad because of ACA.
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Problem is, folks who profit from this outcome see it as a success. They don’t care about the lives of those who don’t survive*, and they know there’s a never-ending supply of patients (due to other things promoted by their wealth-seeking brethren, like environmental toxins, poor food quality, relaxed safety regulations, violence, etc.). How do we cure folks addicted to ever-increasing profit, regardless of the cost to society?
*They want the bills paid anyway.
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What’s maddening is that they can’t understand that they could have better health care for much less than they are paying now. Too many seem motivated by outrage at the idea that their tax dollars might help someone else as well.
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Guillotines.
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This is why I’ve given up on ever seeing positive meaningful change in the USA during my lifetime and will be trying to live elsewhere as soon as I’m not a caretaker for a vulnerable relative. The universal health care debate and the anti-vaxxers/anti-maskers have shown very clearly that Americans won’t support positive change even to save their own lives. It doesn’t matter how much evidence there is, how many successful examples you can point to in other countries, they’ll never do it if it helps the “wrong” people, even if it benefits everybody. It’s not even being greedy and self-centered, which, while not admirable, is at least understandable. They’re just straight-up anti-human and will selflessly sacrifice themselves as long as it’s hurting someone else. These people simply cannot be reached. Better to move somewhere saner and work to prevent it from becoming like the USA, because we’re already a lost cause.
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Fortunately, the rest of us outnumber them. We’ve had a lot of significant, positive change during the new administration. It just doesn’t get the coverage it deserves. So my plan is to keep working and fighting to keep moving forward. There’s no way I’m going to just let the vocal minority take control.
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