ONW
Well-known member
- Joined
- Apr 19, 2011
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So to recap: patient satisfaction numbers are unreliable, we can't accurately account for genetic differences across countries, we can't accurately account for nutrition variation across countries, the government health care programs we already have are ripe with fraud and utilization issues, and nobody wants anybody making less than $100k/year to pay more for anything because we need to just stick it all on The Man, but we are supposed to accept that (a) despite being unable to account for these extremely important variables we are supposed to just accept that some websites indicating single-payer systems "work" better than ours (whatever that means) performed by admittedly biased groups hold any grain of truth or applicability; and (b) it is possible for us to implement an even remotely well-functioning single-payor system akin to a Euro model given our last attempt at healthcare reform has been nothing less than a complete shitshow despite anyone with an ounce of common sense knowing well in advance that it was going to be a complete shitshow. Sounds great to me!
Look, nobody says that our current system is well-functioning. It is a disaster. But at the same time, as Ch points out, single-payer is simply not going to work here for a variety of cultural, political, and economic reasons that simply do not exist in other countries. The best way for us to start to control healthcare costs is to shift our national focus to nutrition and exercise to reduce our need for health care in the first place so that it is focusing on the truly unpreventable and the end-of-life process, and to link the cost of treatment with the cause of the problems. As I've mentioned before, there are ways to work within our current system to do just that, which are significantly easier and more likely to succeed than trying an overhaul to a single payer system.
This would be opening Pandora's Box and is a terrible idea.