Healthcare - Let’s discuss social healthcare vs insurance healthcare

[Jizzrag]

I often see American say that social healthcare is worse healthcare. You never see your doctor, they don’t treat you right, you have to wait for weeks if not months.

I’m lucky to have been born in a Scandinavian country with great social healthcare. When ever I’ve called the doc, even if it’s not something urgent, I get seen on the same day.

A guy I know from the states was just refused for a hip surgery he needed, because he was a smoker. Wtf. His insurance wouldn’t cover it.

If he needed a transplant then sure, the organ won’t go the the pack a day smoker. This had nothing to do with it though. In my country he’d get it in no time. But in the US, they look for everything they can to not pay.

And btw, the average tax here is 37%. Just one number over the US tax average of 36% (last time I checked, might be different now).

 

[lostkeys]

I’ve never heard of insurance not covering a surgery because the person was a smoker. Maybe a surgeon could’ve refused to operate, but then the person could find a new surgeon. In my household we only pay for health insurance for a family member with a chronic illness, because otherwise their life-saving medicine would be $1,000’s out of pocket each month. Good health insurance for one person is like $300 a month. The rest of us go uninsured, but can pay $50-$150 out-of-pocket to go to a walk-in doctor if needed, and most common generic prescriptions are like $15-$60 out-of-pocket with a coupon. So in this instance it is cheaper to go without insurance, unless there’s an emergency where someone needs to go to the hospital. In that case, we are screwed and would have a ton of medical debt, but it’s kind of not a big deal in US since most people have medical debt.

I do think many things about our healthcare system is dumb, I don’t know enough about socialized medicine to have an opinion on whether it would work for America or not.

 

[Jizzrag]

I’ve never heard of insurance not covering
a surgery because the person was a smoker.

It literally just happened. He was supposed to have hip surgery surgery in April but they denied him due to smoking

“Because otherwise their life-saving medicine wold be 1000’s out of pocket each month”

That’s not the case with social healthcare. Meds are included. And we don’t need to pay 300 a month for it.

 

[Ser Prize]

Canadian here. Our health care is an utter joke and yours will be, too.

 

[Muttley]

communist healthcare systems might be fine for European countries with less than 1/3rd the population of my state (such as Sweden)
but let me enlighten you on two big things

first of all, we have the highest quality of care in the world. period.
you are objectively in better hands in the United States than anywhere else.
I do not, and will not ever trust a foreign doctor.
foreigners can't even make a good TV show to save their lives,
why would I trust their surgeons or oncologists or whoever?
I don't want to live in an America with a quality of care comparable to foreign nations.

secondly, and this is the big one that most people don't realize,
the United States accounts for more medical research than Europe and China combined.
and the vast majority of that research is privately funded, not publicly funded.
meaning the vast majority of advancement in medical science on planet earth is thanks to the United States and it's privatized healthcare system.
without it, you would be retarding the advancement of humanity as a whole.

so as I said before, commiecare might be fine for some European country that doesn't have a pot to piss in,
but medical science as whole, and therefore the entirety of humanity, depends on the United States and capitalism.

 

[Gravityqueen4life]

communist healthcare systems might be fine for European countries with less than 1/3rd the population of my state (such as Sweden)

fake news. people are dying left and right on the waiting line just to check if they have cancer or not and it has only gotten worse since covid. dont be fooled when a European brags about our health care system.

 

[Muttley]

fake news. people are dying left and right on the waiting line just to check if they have cancer or not and it has only gotten worse since covid. dont be fooled when a European brags about our health care system.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=PVEgxNvsKKs

hey in my defense I said they might be fine lol

 

[Chilson]

Its funny hearing all the cope with commie healthcare systems. They flat out don't work as people die and suffer more often on bloated waiting lists and mistakes made from overworked healthcare professionals than the private healthcare system. Its also a system that costs way more, its just the tax payers who have to shoulder the burden instead of the individuals, which ultimately costs everyone far more than if the individual was largely responsible for paying for it (be it out of pocket or through private insurance).

Even back 10+ years ago when they did kind of work (sometimes), it was only because the US was doing all the legwork with research, development and creating the best practices that everyone else aped/bought.

 

[Moja Zemlja]

The issue with any public healthcare is that it will inevitably bloat to a point where you're waiting months if not years for proceedures, I work with a guy almost half my age and he had to wait years for the same medical proceedure (putting a grommet in the year) that I had to wait a few months for.

 

[wtfNeedSignUp]

The issue with socialized healthcare is that it only functions as long as you have the majority of the population to fund it (or some ridiculous natural resources) but those things will eventually run out - Either the natural resource runs out/tanks due to speculation (Venezuela), or having a rich social systems will have the population forego reproduction, which will cut down the future base that funds it (as well as people willing to actually work in nursing/caring for old people).

From there it's just a matter of time until it stops. But it usually happens in the latter, with the common case of the government trying to import third worlders to get back more money only for them to waste even more social welfare money - accelerating the crash. The only people who fund healthcare are white/asian male adults. Women and niggers cost more than they give.

This is without talking about the bloat and corruption that will always sprout in a government backed system that is impossible to prune without MASSIVE political backlash, or global trends like fattening and trooning who only increase the pressure on the system.

I'm okay with some baseline social healthcare and private healthcare for the people who can pay, which will at least get a decent baseline across society but allow a release valve.

 

[XANA]

While private healthcare has a lot of issues (mainly overcharging and entering into agreements with hospital/medical systems regarding extortionate prices to be charged on patients), public healthcare does have a lot of issues on its own.

In addition to needing to tax the populace quite heavily for funding, people are living longer. This means that people past the retirement age become more of a burden as their health fails them more and more, leading to costly and time-consuming treatments. Social healthcare works well as long as the populace is relatively fit and pays into the system - that is, people who will mostly pay into the system (not needing to use its services besides for light things like health checkups) and will only take services for a few years as old people before they die. You have people becoming unhealthier in general (obesity, smoking, etc.) in their younger years, which means that more people are taking out of the system than originally envisioned.

Public healthcare tends to have less systems in place than private healthcare. That is, because of the centralization, you have long waiting lists for procedures and treatments because everyone will be funneled into the same queues of government-provided services. This is not helped due to more people getting sick in general, as previously mentioned.

You also have doctors leaving the system because they are not as well-paid as their private healthcare counterparts. For example, in England, doctors are paid approximately 50K pounds per year ($61.7K USD), or less depending on their practice. Salaries over 60K British pounds are not the norm. This is peanuts when compared to starter physician pay in the US (>$150K). So you have loss of talent as physicians decide to practice elsewhere. If you studied in the UK to be a doctor, your medical degree will be accepted so long as you pass the US' board exams and do their residencies.

This is besides the point of Canada encouraging euthanasia rather than treatment. Canada's idea is the exception and not the norm. Canada also pays its physicians comparable to US doctors.

I would also like to emphasize the point made by previous posters that medications in socialized healthcare systems are cheap because they're funded by US research, as the US has the facilities and production capabilities. Take that away, and you can bet that socialized healthcare systems will charge people up the ass for a single pill.

 

[Shart Attack]

Every level of American government above that of a small city council is run exclusively by soulless prostitutes, bloodthirsty psychopaths, authoritarian control freaks, and incompetent pig rapists who couldn't tell their ass from a hole in the ground if you gave it to them as a multiple-choice question, all of whom hate the filthy hoi polloi with every fiber of their being. I don't care if it would be cheaper, more equitable, or more "modern" to socialize our healthcare system. We simply can't trust the powers that be to run it efficiently, fairly, sensibly, or sustainably. Look at how any given Veterans Affairs (VA) hospital is run to see what US government healthcare would look like. VA hospitals are notoriously badly run. I know a guy who got blown up multiple times in Iraq, who describes his experience with the VA hospital like something out of a fucking Kafka novel. This is a guy who's owed a massive debt by his government, and they make it a nightmare for him to get a basic checkup.

I once read an interesting article about why the Nordic Model works so well in Nordic countries. One large factor is that Nordic society is a relatively high trust society, which is due in no small part to your racial and religious homogeneity. Sweden is 80% Swedish, and like half your immigrants come from other Nordic countries. It's relatively easy to manage a relatively small population with common backgrounds, values, and language. It's much harder to manage a relatively large population, let alone one as diverse as America's. Our black population-- a minority-- is three times larger than your entire population combined. It's much harder to make decisions that will benefit such a large and diverse population, let alone get them all to agree on it. The question of whether or not social healthcare should cover abortions would be a never-ending shitstorm that would never get resolved, because there are too many differing viewpoints to ever reach a consensus. It's also much harder to get a large and diverse population to work towards a common good, such as getting a fucking job, buying land, and paying the taxes that support the system.

Basically, different strokes for different folks. What works for Sweden doesn't necessarily work for America.

 

[gang weeder]

Anything based on gibs will inevitably decay over time and "public healthcare" is no exception. At best, you are giving current generations an easier ride, but at the expense of future generations when the bill eventually comes due. People act based on incentives and any form of gibs always creates perverse incentives. You can postpone the decay by having a highly functional society in other respects of course, so for instance countries that are nearly all homogeneous white/Asian can sustain gibs a lot better than places that have to deal with darker skin tones.