Perhaps relevant .
He sort of misses the point, and the fact that the main problem all of those involved have is that they're buying something called "insurance" basically to pay for things they'll definitely be getting in the future (basic checkups, etc), and if they have a pre-existing condition then they're basically preemptively buying themselves cheaper treatment. Under the ACA, these problems are not solved in the slightest, and in fact are made worse because now (A) everyone has to get insurance, which is a huge part of what makes the American system so screwed up, and (B) because everyone now has to get insurance, every hypochondriac gets to have hundreds of hugely expensive and largely pointless tests that drive prices way the hell up (this already occurs in the system, by the way). That's actually part of what makes "single payer" and "socialized" systems cheaper than the American system; in America, if you have insurance, the doctors will give you ludicrously expensive, marginally more expensive medicine as well as boatloads of expensive tests with expensive medical equipment, because they don't want to be sued because they didn't recommend every single precaution for every single possible problem, and because the patient isn't paying for it (and thus doesn't care about the cost), the insurance company is. So the insurance company is paying a lot out for these people, so they jack up premiums (the ACA gives these companies a stranglehold on their customers, too, so this isn't going to get any better) to pay for it. Furthermore, because of a wide variety of weird tax benefits and subsidies, American hospitals buy loads of experimental and high-tech equipment that realistically isn't worth the cost, so they increase prices to pay for these as well. So Pittsburgh has more MRI machines than all of Canada, but because Canada actually has some level of rationing we end up with less absurd prices, though we still get a few embarrassments (eg. ~1.5 year wait times for use of certain equipment, especially MRIs).
Actually, I've always wondered why people call America's system "Capitalist" and just about every other country's "Socialist". America's "private sector" involved in healthcare is so heavily intertwined, supported by, and regulated by the government that it really doesn't act like a market in any real sense, whereas several countries with socialized systems have significantly less controlled and more straightforward private systems. An argument could be made that places like Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong all have systems that are far more "Capitalist" than the one in America.
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Topic: Let's talk Capitalism. (Read 26816 times)