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0 pointsprotomyth13y ago0 comments

Probably because it violates both their parties beliefs.

The problem for some of us in the USA is that we have seen government health care run the USA way. I lived under IHS (Indian Health Service) for a big chunk of my life. They came about 6 hours from killing my Dad and my brothers records "disappeared" and he has a mis-diagnosed back. Google "don't get sick after june" for the typical problems. I myself had a botched root canal (3 surgeries afterwords) and lesser back problems.

Given this, I don't see how they can be more competent with more people under the system. If you cannot get it right for 1.2% of the population, you are not going to get it right for the rest.

That said, there are some things government could do that would help everyone. A "cataclysmic" insurance modeled on flood insurance to take care of costs over a certain dollar figure payed out of the taxes we already pay. Cut the cost of drug approval and work out longer term cheaper payments beyond the patent life. Tort reform for drug approved for the FDA. Scholarships for every nurse and doctor keeping a decent average. Reduce the cost of filling out government paperwork. Loans to needy individuals to pay their healthcare bill, payed back to the IRS.

I'm not very optimistic because I haven't heard any politician looking at what the actual input costs are for health care and trying to reduce those. They seem to accept health care costs will stay high.

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einhverfr13y ago

IHS is bad, but it's not just that though. As a way of controlling costs, Medicare is a dismal failure. This may be similar wrt IHS, but basically government health care means, in the US, underfunded doctors, and money channelled to large corporate interests, like big pharma.

If we just look at taxpayer dollars spent in the US on health care, we still outspend the rest of the world. If our government could control costs, they would have. States are powerless because a very large minority of expenditures are regulated primarily by the feds, and they actively avoid cost control outside IHS.

We have a system which is so structurally broken I just don't know what you can do without starting with huge structural changes, which would be scary to those on things like Medicare.

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einhverfr13y ago

We have a system which is so structurally broken I just don't know what you can do without starting with huge structural changes, which would be scary to those on things like Medicare.

j / k navigate · click thread line to collapse