> if were really as bad as it seems, why don’t we do something about it?
This sounds like a person in a burning building saying “if it was that bad, wouldn’t I have left the building already? Maybe there’s a reason I’m in here?”
Like, yeah, our politics are tribal. But one side is debating back and forth about how to fix this situation (with some good points on both sides, I’d be cool with an NHS, a Canadian single payer system, or even a German public/private combo system honestly), while the other side seems dead set on acting like the burning building just needs more gasoline and it’ll turn out alright.
Despite the snark about the “other side” your proposed solutions are equally blind to the actual problem. Even if we had single payer(not to mention that places like Canada rely on the drug and treatment innovations from the US) that doesn’t fix the system. The problem is hospital billing and financial scams pulled by hospitals, a majority of health care spending goes to things that have nothing to do with health. I highly recommend reading The Price We Pay: What Broke American Health Care and How to Fix It to understand the real issues with healthcare in the US today.
There ought be a bot to keep replying to people saying that the high margins in the US fund healthcare innovations.
This is a popular narrative promoted by the US medical industry. However, it doesn’t stand up to scrutiny. Just the first debunking I find in a google search is https://www.mhaonline.com/blog/healthcare-debates-funding-me...
I think the big profits to be made on _treating_ diereses in the US is probably a perverse incentive preventing those companies from developing preventative measures.
The article you linked disproves your point: In 2016, the US was responsible for 57 percent of new chemical entities worldwide. From this perspective, ensuring increased investment in R&D seems logical.
All players in the US system are corrupt and take advantage. Insurance , hospitals, doctors, ambulances, drug companies, medical device companies, various middleman, construction companies and more. No need to point out a single player.
I think you would have to work hard if you tried to build a worse system if you decided to build a system that’s more opaque , unpredictable, bureaucratic, cruel and expensive.
This sounds like a person in a burning building saying “if it was that bad, wouldn’t I have left the building already? Maybe there’s a reason I’m in here?”
Like, yeah, our politics are tribal. But one side is debating back and forth about how to fix this situation (with some good points on both sides, I’d be cool with an NHS, a Canadian single payer system, or even a German public/private combo system honestly), while the other side seems dead set on acting like the burning building just needs more gasoline and it’ll turn out alright.