Sadly conservatives like Doug Ford are trying to move Canada towards the US model to enrich their buddies :(
There are many ways to solve our healthcare problems in the US. Universal healthcare is one but simple price controls like seen in Japan is another. It doesn’t really matter as long as it is good policy and actually works. I know, that is a tall order for the US.
I like the solution where you start shooting health insurance company CEOs.
If price were the only issue sure, but there are a many other problems - oh you went to the ER? Or you picked a specific hospital/surgeon for something? Too bad, this one doctor isn’t in network.
You can only have a specific version of a medication because another is ineffective or you have an allergy or adverse reaction? Well that sucks, your insurance only covers this one type.
Your doctor ordered a specific set of tests? Your insurer can decide that they’re not medically necessary and overrule your doctor.
And so on… when the required amount of regulation is so vast that it touches every part of the system because it is just that bad…. Surely universal healthcare is the better option at that point?
I like the idea of Universal Healthcare for sure and I think it could be effective if the right policies were put in place.
I also recognize systems like Germany and Japan have can work with strict price controls.
I think there are probably solutions that no one has even considered that could be game changing. The possibilities are out there.
I do agree with your pragmatism though. Universal Healthcare works, why try to invent a new wheel so to speak
I also agree there are probably ideas out there that would revolutionise things in a great way (possibly globally?)which would be amazing! Human ingenuity is both incredible and terrifying 😅
Universal healthcare is “free healthcare” funded by taxes that prop up big pharmaceutical companies
If I have cancer symptoms, I can just book an appointment with my GP. Appointment is free, tests are free, any cancer treatment would be free.
I don’t care if pharma is profiting, I pay less in taxes and still get most of my healthcare free (in the UK dental and non chronic prescriptions are subsidised but not free for adults). We don’t have to pay for insulin here!
It is a single payer system that allows bargaining to make meds reasonably prices. You want to talk about propping up “big pharma” that’s the American system
Here in Australia, public healthcare too.
But our local right wing nutters like to argue it isn’t a thing
Germany also does insurance companies. Turns out that can actually be fine if you sweat the details and not just do something random like how the US ended up with employer-sponsored health insurance.
Mind you, the German system is one of the most expensive in the world. It’s also only of middling quality in terms of outcomes compared with other wealthy nations.
But it’s still less than half as expensive as whatever it is the States are doing, still has effectively universal coverage, and is actually competitive with other wealthy nations.
All because we regulated the everliving shit out of the whole process. You can’t as much as fart incorrectly in the German healthcare system without having an army of bureaucrats breathing down your neck in one of three prescribed breathing rhythms, one of which only applies if you farted in a hospital. Reports will be written, filed, and sent to recipients who can only change their mailing address on one of four specific days a year and only if they announced the move four weeks in advance by sending special crafted EDIFACT files to the right people.
As much as it sucks, that bureaucracy also shuts down a lot of nonsense. Insurance networks, deductibles, most copays, and ruinous hospital bills straight up don’t exist because everyone in healthcare has zero leeway to do anything in a non-prescribed manner and the prescribed manner was designed to keep as many people as possible reasonably healthy.
It’s a very German approach: Massively bureaucratic, regulated to an almost comical degree, and reasonably effective.
Meanwhile in America we have similar levels of bureaucracy but it’s corporate bureaucracy that’s dead set on forcing you to file mountains of paperwork to get them to pay for anything.
Sorry, recently read a book that among other things lamented the fact that we as a society have stopped acknowledging corporate bureaucracy as bureaucracy
I live for book recommendations! Please share the title and what you thought of the book!
A Utopia of Rules by David Graeber
It’s a collection of 3 essays by him on the topic of bureaucracy and I enjoyed it a lot, but I enjoyed everything by him that I’ve read
It helps that much of this bureaucracy is invisible to the patient. You just go to the doctor and they scan your insurance card. That’s it for billing as far as you’re concerned.
What happens behind the scenes is a horrible mess that has been in the process of being digitalized for the last decade. But they did put up a nice facade that hides most of this.
By the way, that part about quarterly EDIFACT files to change addresses is actually how it works for health insurances. Of course they regularly screw this up and then everyone else has to deal with the mess… But that’s just everyone who tries to bill them. Patients didn’t even know it’s a thing.
The problem is Americans view UHC as single payer.
Jobs give health insurance. If you lose your job then you lose your health insurance. It’s how America keeps the work force more docile and willing to put up with working conditions.
Some jobs.
It’s not random, it is another way to make you dependent on corporations.
Or more specifically dependent on your job.
American insurance companies are working hard to get into other countries, including Canada and the UK.
Everyone likes to laugh at the US, but the same forces are at work in other countries. We’re just ahead of the curve getting enshitified.
From some perspectives, yes. From other perspectives, it’s an export from the US which is not inevitable.
They can get the fuck right out…
We must destroy them at both root and vine. Every country, every form.
It’s capitalism! Why would anyone want to be a doctor if they can’t be a multimillionaire? /s
Well, if you don’t consider your eyes, teeth, medications, and mental health part of healthcare, then we definitely have universal healthcare.
And an inceeasing number of procedures and services are handed over from hospitals to for-profit entities. Canadian healtchcare is undergoing gradual privatization and that’s the playbook.
(I’m sure you know that, posting for non-Canadian onlookers)
Why would I pay the government to collect a pool of money to pay for other people’s medical needs?
Much better to pay a private company to collect a pool of money, skim a bunch for profit, invest the rest for more profit, conspire to make healthcare prices unaffordable to users so they don’t have a choice anyway, and then use that money only to pay for some of the other people’s medical needs while denying healthcare for the rest, including myself? It’s a much better system. Here’s a link to an article funded by a US pharmaceutical company…
And those “other people” upset the racists. They view universal healthcare not as leveling the playing field, but riding mass transit. “Ew, <insert ‘lesser quality’> people.”
Nah bro, it totally makes sense that IBX pays the Phillies millions of dollars for a jersey advertisement instead of investing that money into patient care. IBX totally cares because they made an ad at a local coffee shop!
But as an upshot it shackles people to their job by tying Healthcare to employment, which means you get all these nice wage slaves that can’t afford to quit so you can suppress their wage, and they can’t break into their own businesses without the capital from those suppressed wages, which means even less competition for you.
I see no downsides to this /s
Why would I pay the government to collect a pool of money to pay for other people’s medical needs?
Is the same as saying
Why would I pay for roads I will never drive on?
And people believe it!
“Why should I pay for someone who cannot work to live?”
“Why should I pay for water to be clean that I may never drink, or air I may never breathe?”
The corporate brainwashing is staggering.
That too PRIVATE insurance companies only…
Yeah but recent governments in Canada along with the Canadian Medical Association have been actively sabotaging universal Healthcare to bring us closer to the American model.
Mostly Ontario with Doug Ford, and maybe Alberta too.
Oh Québec too. And many other provinces. It’s a Canada wide problem.
Universal healthcare with American characteristics
They want to keep the population desperate
Lmao our healthcare system in mexico is a fucking joke. Google [Insert city here] desabasto imss. For example, and you will see that even though official figures say 90+% supply, the reality is much, much different.
There was a public hospital in Fresnillo I went to were they used punch cards computers and nurses were sitting around entering mountains of patient data using mechanical typewriters. All the ER trauma doctors where either out sick or on vacation. This was around 2009.
But the difference is that Mexico is now moving forward, believes in a future where things are better. The USA has given up on health care and it’s future. Chapo Trap House was spot on calling the Obama library the cenotaph of American hope.
Canada should say “trying to privatize”
In Ontario for sure, Doug Ford’s buddies
Also Marlaina
I bet if we stopped cutting funding there would be a lot more people as php. And not surprised the wealthy, and lesser educated are more interested in limiting Healthcare access
