alt Hacker NewsThere are a lot of people making a lot of money on the inefficiencies of the US system. They won’t give up their revenue streams without a fight, and they are filthy rich on the backs of sick people. You better believe they will play dirty.
Replies
"Healthcare costs have been rising faster than inflation, and a staggering share of that spending is consumed by administrative middlemen, soaring drug prices, and emergency care for conditions that should have been treated earlier and for less"
-----
It's a n-tuple-whammy. Co-pays and deductibles discourage early diagnoses by preventing most people from visiting doctors for issues that aren't serious. The painful process of claiming the small amounts that would cover preventive care discourage people from getting it even if they've seen a doctor and been told to. Preventable conditions balloon into things that are very expensive and unpleasant. This process takes years though, and there are many, many insurance companies, plus people change jobs and coverage frequently. Odds are, the company denying preventive care won't be on the hook for the heavy costs down the road. If they are, they have ways to wriggle out of it. Also, with more people waiting until conditions get bad before seeking treatment, the whole system consumes more resources to keep people less healthy, on average, than if the system pushed preventive care effectively.
When governments assume responsibility for medical coverage, incentives start to be much less perverse. You pay taxes while you work. You work while you're healthy. So, the government wants you healthy. The government wants to do that as cheaply as possible, so they're incentivized, not just to provide preventive care, but to make sure you take advantage of it. I live in Canada. I have a genetic condition that could cause me problems if I don't get preventive care. One of my relations had those problems, so they tested her and found the problem gene. The government then tasked a genetic counsellor to seek out everyone related to her. I had the gene, so they now book me for the care I need to manage it. I don't have to pay for this. I don't have to fight insurance companies to prove I need preventive care. I just do what they ask me to do and I get to live longer. This is the kind of stuff that happens when the incentives are right.
Insurance companies need to be cut out of the loop entirely. They know they're what's wrong, so they employ expensive lobbyists. Americans need to realize this and start making it an election issue.
_______
EDIT: TIL that preventative and preventive are used interchangeably in the context of medicine, so I changed my very inconsistent use of them to just one.
Aside from war, there is likely no other place where one class "winning" means so certainly that countless others are dying.
Not just the wealthy people on top. All the administrators and suppliers, and all the machinery of pharmaceuticals and insurance brokerage, even HR benefits specialists in corporations are all tied to the current system. That’s a massive block of voters to be overcome.
Agreed
And, there’s also a lot of people who actually believe we have a superior system because M’urica and Europe is communist or something
this is a great example. What a horrible human...
https://www.miamiherald.com/news/politics-government/article...
Are those still "inefficiencies" or is it just the usual market-greed?
We're also at the point that if there existed validated evidence that 'Universal Healthcare' made everyone rich and happy and beautiful and able to freely stroke kittens at will then we would still vote against it as a socialist conspiracy benefiting weak, lily livered failures.
Right.... but it is also an industry that provides an insane amount of (often well paying) jobs to a large amount of people to do "make work", admin tasks.
Reliable details are hard to come by, but some estimations are that more people in the industry are doing admin tasks than instead of providing care, admin tasks that will be reduced drastically once the industry is streamlined.
Once we get affordable care there will be less people who can... afford.
I saw Jim Clark (of SGI and Netscape fame) talk one time about his new healthcare startup (Healtheon). He said something insightful that captures a lot of why it's hard to get things done in general: one person's inefficiency is someone else's bottom line.