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That's in the same category as "who would consider health care an appropriate industry for profit?".
Who would consider it? The same people who are coming for public education.
The cruelty is the point.
Their end goal is a population of moronic wage-slaves who are living a barely subsistence lifestyle that will believe anything told of them rather than challenging the wealth, power, and right to rule of the ruling class.
They aren't just conservative, they're regressive. They long for the days of Feudal lordship with themselves cast as the lords.
"The cruelty is the point."
I see this phrase often, and I disagree with it and I'm not sure why people keep repeating it.
Cruelty: inflicting pain on others. This is not the point at all. They don't wake up every morning and say "how can I cause more pain" on individuals or the general populace.
They are almost completely indifferent to the suffering of others that they cause. They are simply greedy and selfish, they want all the money and power, so they can have it all to themselves. Fucking over everyone else is just the process to get and keep what they want. This is my opinion at least.
"Cruelty is the point" is just silly, and absolutely wrong. I also feel like it misdirects talking about the true motive, which I think is mostly greed and selfishness. Cruelty is just a side affect they don't care about.
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I think that there are spaces in healthcare where you could safely apply a free market. "Hey, yeah, I see you have a cane, but have you tried my super luxury high speed low drag jet-powered hover cane? Guaranteed to be 1000% more like a Nerf commercial than any standard cane!"
"Woah, check it out, we built an MRI that's way cheaper and doesn't scare the shit out of people!"
"Hey, I found a medicine that cures baldness!" Etc.
Right? I can see the intersection of luxury (in the sense that not buying it incurs no cost, not even an opportunity cost), convenience, and healthcare being a place where there's room for the free market. The problem is that we've gone and applied it to everything, including all kinds of things that shouldn't be free market. Then you end up with all kinds of goofy fucking bullshit like corporates parenting stuff that the DOD paid to develop (Epi Pens, vaccine adjuvants, etc), GSK opting to develop a singles vaccine instead of a tuberculosis vaccine, etc, etc, etc. Oh, that last one is real. Here: https://www.propublica.org/article/how-big-pharma-company-stalled-tuberculosis-vaccine-to-pursue-bigger-profits
This is probably an unpopular take on Lemmy, but I believe that free markets generally work well where they exist. But there's a lot of things that have no business being free markets, like healthcare, and aren't free markets (and won't behave like them) even if you try super hard to pretend that they are. You see, a truly free market requires the ability to say no and suffer no cost. You can buy Bob's Widget, Jan's Widget, or no Widget and be perfectly fine. This is not the case in healthcare. If you're having a heart attack, your choices are:
-Agree to pay for this widget but we can't/won't tell you how much it costs until we're done.
-Die
That's not a free market, that's not how free markets work.
History lesson time: This wasn't done on purpose. It's an artifact of decisions made by Congress during World War II to support war production.
So many young men were away at war that it created a labor shortage, even with some women entering the work force. This led to spiraling increases in wages that were threatening the viability of critical war manufacturers.
In an effort to protect this manufacturing sector, Congress capped wage increases. But those corporations were still competing for workers and now they were no longer able to offer them higher and higher wages. So instead, they started offering them "perks" like health insurance, pensions, and paid time off.
THEN:
"In 1943 the War Labor Board, which had one year earlier introduced wage and price controls, ruled that contributions to insurance and pension funds did not count as wages. In a war economy with labor shortages, employer contributions for employee health benefits became a means of maneuvering around wage controls."
Emphasis mine. And guess what? When those young men returned from war and re-entered the work force, they wanted those perks too. So which company was going to be the first to deescalate the arms race and NOT offer health insurance?
And those perks being so ubiquitous meant the government never had an incentive to provide health coverage directly to anyone of working age, so we only have Medicare for retirees.
You forgot this part, before WW2:
During the Great Depression, FDR considered making national health insurance part of his signature New Deal legislation — which would have made the US a pioneer — but those provisions were nixed to prioritize the Social Security retirement and disability programs, among others.
So old people chose something that benefits themselves only over something that benefits everyone.
And you also can't discount the role Unions played in the American healthcare system. Because not only can you get healthcare through your employer, if you're in a union you can get coverage through your union. And there was a time when unions had their own doctors on payroll.
Wage slavery.
No small businesses want to mess with this shit. Just give everyone health insurance, all the time, without the interference of corporate greed. Doing so would reap a huge savings of scale efficiency. Get rid of the middle man.
Indentured Servitude is the point. Business want to make it difficult for you to find another job.
My wife and I were just talking about this. We pay $600/m and the very few times we go to a doctor we end up paying anyways. We never meet the deductible but we can't not have insurance because we have a kid who does need it. In the twelve years we have paid we have never reached the deductible even with having a kiddo who's had surgery. Once you get past october it seems like they charge it to the following year if your close to meeting the deductible it's insane...
That’s not the problem with the healthcare in the US, because that eventually flips and you hit your deductible every year.
The problem is you lose healthcare if you need to quit your job and you pay more than any other country. And I attribute that simply to the middle man, aka the health insurance companies. They don’t seem to provide any benefit other than contributing at least 10% for pure profit reasons to the $3.4 trillion we spend every year on healthcare.
My biggest problem is some schmuck who I doubt has a medical degree, and has never seen me as a patient, but has absolute power over what a MEDICAL DOCTOR deems necessary.
At that point it really begins to sound like practicing medicine without a license to do so, let alone the knowledge required to get an MD.
Thats insane.
Here in Brazil I pay around 65-70 dollars per month and then I have full hospitalization coverage and full doctors appointment coverage.
And there are better options lol
I tell anyone and everyone we will not get universal healthcare until this is prohibited. Certain votes feel having a job with benefits is something they have earned. They see it as some badge of honor or some.
Abolish it. Make it illegal.
So we don't fuck off work to mass protest and dine in the flesh of the wealthy.
Saved you a click.
TLDR It's a deductible expense for the business, it's taken out pre-tax for the worker, and businesses get way better rates than if a individual was to go get a quote for the same plan.
That only makes sense because the system is so goddamn stupid.
The "most powerful nation in the world," but when it comes to our health, we just let the capitalists bend us over...
Canada's public/private system has a lot of this as well. Drug, dental, optical, anything else are part of employer's group benefits. There are public drug coverage options where your deductible is calculated as a percentage of your net income, and a public senior's plan with a flat deductible.
Tell me again why soulless corporations should not be in control of essential services for humans?
For all its talk about free markets, the GOP vehemently defends this very not-free-market system. To be fair, the Democrats defend it to the death too, but they don't pretend like they value free markets, so they're just greedy and corrupt, not greedy and corrupt hypocrites.
Because we've regressed into one of those shithole countries our wannabe dictator keeps harping about.
It even happens in Canada, just to differing levels.
We don't have a national pharmacare plan so any drugs you need outside a hospital will come out of pocket.
You either need to pay for private insurance or get it via a job where it becomes mandatory for full time employees (possibly past a certain enployee count)
Personal experience: having guaranteed health care not tied to my employment is a huge burden off my shoulders. I am so grateful that my wife and I are taken care of, and I vote for people who try to make it happen for everyone. But let’s face reality, there are huge entrenched interests that oppose any kind of universal plan, so the ACA with all its flaws is probably the best we will get for quite some time. Even where I live, in California, with the legislature and all statewide elected offices under single-party control for years now, it hasn’t happened. The ACA was a deal with the devil to get more people insured, yeah, but insurance is no guarantee of health care. I’m glad I have the latter.