Commentary: "Coronavirus shows again why 'Medicare for all' is a bad idea"

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esieffe said:
A lot easier said than done wouldn’t you agree? The only way to do that is to nationalize the healthcare system.
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Yup! Seems pretty easy to me. A number of countries have already done it in response to the coronavirus, most recently Ireland just today. It’s the only just thing to do.
 
Balto1 said:
The Affordable Care Act legislation was written by health insurance industry lobbyists. It was an improvement over what we had before but doesn’t do anything to really reduce costs in the long run. Now some analysts are projecting a 40% increase in insurance premiums next year due to the costs of coronavirus treatment.

The only way to reform our health care system is to remove the profit motive.
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I think you got this all wrong.
Yes it was written by industry lobbyists, but it was an improvement only for them, not for the individual or company footing their increased bills. Nothing in ACA was focused on actually reducing the cost of US healthcare.

Nationalized services will also be projecting a huge budget increase, due to the costs of coronavirus - same same.

For all it’s potential faults, I do think Nationalized health could reduce the costs in the us, but that would come from rationing services.
 
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According to the NY Times the U.S.A. has 177,000 ventilators (March 22, 2020). Compare that with Germany’s 25,000 and 1/4 the population (March 18, 2020). There is still a ventilator shortage but Americans have more than Europeans do. I could not find how many China has. I’m using the Wikipedia article on list of countries by hospital beds.
 
That is worrying. It’s clear that U.S. health care, provided someone has full insurance coverage, has more to offer. It’s just about whether people get access to it who need it, and how quickly. Compare the U.S. and Germany’s case fatality rate.
 
There are so many aspects to consider. One is what services are provided and/or emphasized. Another might be pressures to continue to develop therapeutic measures. Focus differentials on preventative care versus intervention. How each system rations care and delivery of services and providers. Degree to which life support for the preborn and aged (or the disabled, or those outside of the labor market) are supported- which is, itself, a form of rationing.
Watching the U.S. and Germany is interesting, but I am also attending to the LDCs (what we used to call the 3rd world) and thinking about differences in both testing and data compiling and reporting abilities. There is so much to think about and I’m sure we will be discussing all sorts of different issues as this situation continues to offer new perspectives on healthcare.
May God bless you and all who are participating in our thread.
jt
 
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Neithan,
I wanted to mention that I am crunching the numbers and there is a significant disparity between the U.S. and German death rates with Germany faring far better, at present.
Digging into the data should offer lots of insights down the road. I’m curious about comparisions in transmission (in WA state we are seeing lots of cases in eldercare facilities, in NY, news sources are pointing to a particular community). Age, community density, general health disparities, available health resources in relation to areas of concentration, immediately come to mind as areas of comparision, and I imagine others will speak to additional variables. We will also want to attend to changes over time. At present though, the disparity seems marked.
 
I don’t think people should use a pandemic as justification against universal healthcare. Especially since the problems in Italy don’t have anything to do with the quality of their healthcare, but the fact their system is over-taxed. If we had a comparative number of people sick, so would we.
StudentMI said:
Anarcho-capitalism for all!
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Anarcho-capitalism is impossible. Capitalism requires the state the function; things like copyright law, patent law, etc. And if you have a private police force enforce them… Well, that that private police force (or the people paying them) are the de facto ruler.
 
Theo520 said:
I think you got this all wrong.
Yes it was written by industry lobbyists, but it was an improvement only for them, not for the individual or company footing their increased bills. Nothing in ACA was focused on actually reducing the cost of US healthcare.
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Seems weird to tell me I got it wrong and then repeat what I said!
 
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xNoOnex said:
Anarcho-capitalism is impossible. Capitalism requires the state the function; things like copyright law, patent law, etc. And if you have a private police force enforce them… Well, that that private police force (or the people paying them) are the de facto ruler.
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If it were ever tried I personally think it would evolve into city states. But to be fair, more and more of the anarcho-capitalists are rejecting patents and copyrights.
 
Balto1 said:
Seems weird to tell me I got it wrong and then repeat what I said!
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Yes, I stand corrected.

I don’t think the problem is the profit motive, it is allowing them to write the regulations which in effect reduce competition that would reduce costs.
 
StudentMI said:
If it were ever tried I personally think it would evolve into city states. But to be fair, more and more of the anarcho-capitalists are rejecting patents and copyrights.
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Thing is once you start rejecting things like patents and copyrights, you’re either a would-be corporate baron (which means you’re effectively the state) or just a libertarian market socialist in denial.
 
Nah, it’s the profit motive, treating health care like a consumer good is disgusting. Paying people to sit around all day playing video games and occasionally strangle someone is as effective a use of money as paying them to deny insurance claims.
 
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jeannetherese said:
It’s argued that Italy has been hit hard by COVID-19 because of a higher median age of 45.5
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I have also seen the case made that the numbers coming out of Italy are over-inflated because of the multiple underlying conditions not being properly considered.

In other words, if the individual has several serious issues along with COVID-19, the cause of death is always listed as COVID-19 by the Italian reporting standards when it could very well have been those other issues that caused death but COVID merely exacerbated the problem but wouldn’t have been the direct cause of death if those other conditions were not present.

Of course, the higher median age in Italy comes into play as older persons are more likely to have other conditions.

Possibly even more important are the factors of temperature and relative humidity.
A new study from the University of Maryland hypothesizes that areas in latitudes between 30 and 50 degrees, along with other temperature and climatological factors, could be particularly vulnerable to the spread of COVID-19.
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The study examined the spread of COVID-19 across several locations around the world, and it noted that other virus hot spots like China, Iran, Japan, South Korea, Italy and western Washington are all located within similar latitudes. In particular, temperatures between 41 and 52 degrees Fahrenheit, or 5 and 11 degrees Celsius, appear to be the most conducive to the virus’ spread. Average humidity values between 47 and 79 percent are also noted within the other zones of COVID-19 spread.
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Balto1 said:
Nah, it’s the profit motive, treating health care like a consumer good is disgusting. Paying people to sit around all day playing video games and occasionally strangle someone is as effective a use of money as paying them to deny insurance claims.
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Why, then, is it NOT equally “disgusting” to treat food as a consumer good? Everyone needs food everyday, and in substantive quantity.

Yet it is the very fact that food is a consumer good that enables the quantity and variety of foods available in free market economies. The competition and consistent market ensures supply, demand and competition.

Again, we could point to the socialization of BOTH food and health care in Venezuela — which at one time, before socialism ravaged the country, was the wealthiest nation in South America — as a pointed example of what happens when a small group of political ideologues control access and supply.
 
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Balto1 said:
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HarryStotle:
Why, then, is it NOT equally “disgusting” to treat food as a consumer good?
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It is! ten characters
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So you prefer the food supply regimen in Venezuela to that in the US?
 
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Have you ever had Venezuelan food? Delicious and nutritious. And given that we aren’t currently victims of disgusting economic war crimes committed by the most powerful nation on earth you’ll still be able to eat whatever you want.
 
HarryStotle said:
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Balto1:
Nah, it’s the profit motive, treating health care like a consumer good is disgusting. Paying people to sit around all day playing video games and occasionally strangle someone is as effective a use of money as paying them to deny insurance claims.
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Why, then, is it NOT equally “disgusting” to treat food as a consumer good? Everyone needs food everyday, and in substantive quantity.

Yet it is the very fact that food is a consumer good that enables the quantity and variety of foods available in free market economies. The competition and consistent market ensures supply, demand and competition.

Again, we could point to the socialization of BOTH food and health care in Venezuela — which at one time, before socialism ravaged the country, was the wealthiest nation in South America — as a pointed example of what happens when a small group of political ideologues control access and supply.
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The competition is in large part self-manufactured, given how many food companies are ultimately owned by a handful of multinationals.

The competition in relation to food is also in large part possible because a lot of people are capable of growing or making a lot of foods themselves and so removing themselves from the market altogether. Therefore cheap prices are the only thing keeping them buying ready made food from the stores. This is not something that is true of healthcare.
 
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So you live in Venezuela, then?

Were all those traditional Venezuelan foods developed under the control of a socialist regime, or within a culture free to develop from the grassroots, so to speak?

Uh huh. “Disgusting economic war crimes…” No partial analysis there of the current situation, I see.
 
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