I wonder if these types of things would happen if healthcare was required to be a non-profit industry. It bothers me that we have publicly traded companies providing much of healthcare in the US;...
I wonder if these types of things would happen if healthcare was required to be a non-profit industry. It bothers me that we have publicly traded companies providing much of healthcare in the US; to me, profiting on people's poor health is immoral. It baffles me that this could possibly be a norm.
The entire industry of healthcare in the US seems bloated. However, attempting to reduce that bloat means our GDP diminishes and people lose jobs, and I think many politicians will find this makes their job significantly more difficult. I'm (generally) not one for conspiracies, but I get this weird feeling that those profiting from the healthcare industry (largely corporate execs and especially insurance companies) are intentionally making this more bloated for two reasons: 1) They can make a shitload of money right now and 2) making healthcare a significant part of the economy makes it much harder to prune and thus, gives them some security. Don't even get me started on pharma companies. I have some cognitive dissonance on this as well because I have a pharmacist in the family, and even though they aren't responsible for what those companies do, they experience impacts to the industry (largely in terms of job security).
The biggest complaint I hear about single-payer healthcare is that we don't have a way to pay for it; I wish I had some good response to this. I think ACA was a step in the right direction, and I'm not sure that people understand the idea that a single-payer system should be introduced incrementally so that we don't potentially experience an economic collapse. I think one step that would help us is to change the way patents to pharmaceuticals work. Pharma seems to badly need better regulation.
Sorry, this wasn't particularly relevant to the exact subject of the article. It's really just my opinion on US healthcare, but I'd be interested to see how other people in the US feel about it (or non-Americans' perceptions)!
Edit: Something I wanted to add is my confusion as to how prices change based on insurance (not only the cost to you). I had an MRI very recently that went from $2090 to $3400 ($950 cost to me) once I provided my health insurance.
I wonder if these types of things would happen if healthcare was required to be a non-profit industry. It bothers me that we have publicly traded companies providing much of healthcare in the US; to me, profiting on people's poor health is immoral. It baffles me that this could possibly be a norm.
The entire industry of healthcare in the US seems bloated. However, attempting to reduce that bloat means our GDP diminishes and people lose jobs, and I think many politicians will find this makes their job significantly more difficult. I'm (generally) not one for conspiracies, but I get this weird feeling that those profiting from the healthcare industry (largely corporate execs and especially insurance companies) are intentionally making this more bloated for two reasons: 1) They can make a shitload of money right now and 2) making healthcare a significant part of the economy makes it much harder to prune and thus, gives them some security. Don't even get me started on pharma companies. I have some cognitive dissonance on this as well because I have a pharmacist in the family, and even though they aren't responsible for what those companies do, they experience impacts to the industry (largely in terms of job security).
The biggest complaint I hear about single-payer healthcare is that we don't have a way to pay for it; I wish I had some good response to this. I think ACA was a step in the right direction, and I'm not sure that people understand the idea that a single-payer system should be introduced incrementally so that we don't potentially experience an economic collapse. I think one step that would help us is to change the way patents to pharmaceuticals work. Pharma seems to badly need better regulation.
Sorry, this wasn't particularly relevant to the exact subject of the article. It's really just my opinion on US healthcare, but I'd be interested to see how other people in the US feel about it (or non-Americans' perceptions)!
Edit: Something I wanted to add is my confusion as to how prices change based on insurance (not only the cost to you). I had an MRI very recently that went from $2090 to $3400 ($950 cost to me) once I provided my health insurance.