We always hear from the left that “all of the other industrialized nations have free healthcare. You shouldn’t have to go bankrupt in order to be healthy.”
Too bad that’s all bullshit. Healthcare is a service that is provided by people who are, for the most part, skilled at what they do. To demand that they provide it for free is not possible, even if slavery were to make a reappearance. In the event of slavery, you can compel physical labor, but there is no way to demand intellectual labor. That is, you can make someone go to work as a doctor, but you can’t make them be good at it.
For that reason, healthcare can either be free, or it can be good. Purchasing quality requires money. (edited to add) In this case, those who advocate for ‘free’ healthcare really are saying that they want the rest of the people in the country to pay for their care. This is little different than the system of insurance that we have now, except that the system will be compulsory through taxation and the government will decide who gets care, instead of an insurance company deciding. (end edit) The higher the quality, the more the cost. Even then, the number of people who can and will make good doctors, nurses, and other health professionals is a finite pool. For that reason, healthcare is a limited resource.
It’s a resource that must be rationed somehow. After all, if there is a finite commodity like healthcare, there cannot be free healthcare to everyone to receive all of it that they wish, with either cost or simple capacity of facilities being the controlling factor. If I have to explain that to my readers, let’s just say that I would be extremely disappointed. Here in the United States, we ration healthcare by cost- people can only have the care that they can afford. In Canada, it used to be rationed by government quota. That system was breaking down; I know one man with dual citizenship who waited for over two years to receive a knee replacement before giving up and moving back to the US, getting the surgery less than 3 months later.
Canada has a problem with spending too many resources on the sick and elderly. Taking a page from Logan’s Run, they have decided to encourage the sick to simply kill themselves. It’s an effective way to control costs- take those who are costing you the most and simply kill them. In fact, more Canadians have died from government assisted suicide since the program began than have died from COVID. Beginning in 2027, that program will be expanded to include those with mental illness.
It’s hard to see that this is an idea that we as Americans would or should accept, but I find it odd that the left supports the same idea that began the Holocaust while at the same time calling those of us who are to the right of Joseph Stalin “literally Hitler.” If we were to expand that to include mental illness, millions of Americans would likely choose to end their lives.
That free healthcare comes at a cost. But hey, as long as you can use the money you used to spend on care to get yourself a new BMW, who cares if a few eggs have to be broken, amirite?
10 Comments
Joe Blow · December 17, 2024 at 11:34 am
I don’t think the people advocating for ‘free’ healthcare mean that the worker’s should not get paid. They are demonstrating their ignorance in a different way… They want the Government to pay for it. And since in their world of Unicorn Farts and Rainbows, anything the Government pays for is ‘free’, they call it ‘free healthcare’. If it weren’t for the fact that its being driven as part of the marxist agenda in this country, I’d say it were a faux pas, but ‘free anything’ is a common tactic of politicians and slimebags alike.
Divemedic · December 17, 2024 at 12:14 pm
Which is the point here. I will edit it to make that more clear.
Rick · December 17, 2024 at 12:27 pm
The demand for a different form of healthcare is a respond to the piss poor system we have now. Proposing any of the Commonwealth countries as an ideal is simply a demonstration of ignorance and illiteracy.
The right and proper solution would be to kick government out of the healthcare business.
I favor rolling back to before HMOs and PPOs.
Even into the 2010s, an OV with prescription was $35 if I paid cash. A 90 day script for Levothyroxine was $8 if I paid cash. Increasingly, MDs refused cash until in 2012 I could not find any.
Divemedic · December 17, 2024 at 12:46 pm
Questions:
1 What makes the healthcare in the US a piss poor system?
2 What even makes it a system?
3 Do we have a restaurant system? A housing system?
4 Or is our healthcare delivered by independent providers operating their businesses according to market conditions?
5 Why is it piss poor?
James Harrison · December 17, 2024 at 1:28 pm
It’s piss poor because the media and the leftists say so. Our health care ends up with the best results compared to the rest if the planet. The drugs, the technology, the techniques are all from here. If you are really sick and have the money you come here.
Troy Messer · December 17, 2024 at 2:29 pm
1 What makes the healthcare in the US a piss poor system?
Overhead.
I once saw a story about some guy who had to get an MRI in Poland. It costs $200.00. The caveat was that he had to wait 4 hours. The same MRI, in the USA, cost over $2k or some such crazy exponential number. I assume that MRI are fungible.
“To demand that they provide it for free is not possible,”
Of course, doctors and nurses should get paid and paid well. My beef is with the overhead. I got a lens replacement. When I went to the Dr’s office there were always 3 workers behind the counters. 2 of them werent working. I visited 4-6 When I asked what do those 2 employees do and how much does it cost to pay them to do nothing, I didn’t get an explication but was told that it was none of my business.
My retina DR. has no less that 4 people behind the front desk. He has a person that follows him around and notates everything he says. He has a person who does nothing but set appointments for surgeries. In a word, he has a ton over head. How much of this overhead is necessary and how much is it just to make his life easier so he can bill more clients?
I’m willing to bet that small armies are needed just to deal with insurance paperwork. People that don’t add a damn thing to the work product: making people better.
As far as my primary care physician, I am not impressed. I had to explain to him the LD50 (which I see in pharmacy information sheets) is shorthand for median lethal dose. He didn’t know what the Bristol Stool Scale was. He never heard of the term Dunning-Krueger, which, ironically, makes him a member of the Dunning-Krueger demographic.
1 What makes the healthcare in the US a piss poor system?
Because Doctors and nurses have to answer to government bureaucrats to get their permission slip to try to earn a living. If you refuse to toe the narrative, your meal ticket can be revoked.
1 What makes the healthcare in the US a piss poor system?
Adherence to the narrative rather than the science.
I saw many stories of Drs. and staff that refused or were instructed not to file VAERS* reports, for whatever motive I don’t care, I lost my respect for medicine as an institution. I will acknowledge their competence on a case by case basis only.
1 What makes the healthcare in the US a piss poor system?
Torts. In my prior life, I practiced law. I worked for Satan….er I mean a tort lawyer. One thing I learned was, in the before times, that about 500 people a day were killed in hospitals by incompetent doctors and staff. If you piss tested every licensed doctor, it would blow your mind how many are on drugs. That said, I thought the “reasonable foreseeable” standard made that doctors were expected to be omnipotent. Insurance companies settle because discovery would show too much disfunction for the public to handle.
* Science is a process. And if you know your Karl Popper, the most important part of the process is evidence that negates, falsifies, your hypothesis. That is why some don’t consider string theory to be science because it can’t be falsified. A VAERS report is the very emodiment of science. It presents possible evidence that the hypothesis, that a particular vaccine is safe, is false.
Divemedic · December 17, 2024 at 2:44 pm
Cool. Who pays for the rest of it? The Polish health system, which is funded through a 9% payroll tax. That MRI costs you 9% of your pay, plus $200.
They were right- it isn’t any of your business. He is running a business, not you. Do you ask what the employees in your favorite restaurant do?
That person who follows him around is called a scribe. That person’s job is to type up the Dr’s reports, because it maximizes the Dr’s time. His time is too valuable to waste typing a report when it could be better used in seeing patients, interpreting test results, and other things that only a Dr can do. So yeah, it enables the Dr to see more patients, which is the entire point of being a doctor.
I have had to deal with women who have gone to unlicensed medical practitioners. One of them went to some idiot who injected silicone caulk into her ass cheeks to make it shapely. She has had extensive medical problems since. Is the licensing system perfect? Of course it isn’t, but it’s better than the alternative.
Now answer the other questions- what makes the industry a “system?” (Hint: it isn’t a system.)
JimmyPx · December 17, 2024 at 6:41 pm
I don’t think that the problem is our healthcare system rather it is the way that we fund it.
We discussed here a few weeks ago the staggering amount of money that the government pisses away and what to cut. Healthcare is a MASSIVE cost and no one is discussing what is being paid for and the outcomes.
For example, we spend a FORTUNE on frankly terminal patients. If you have stage 4 cancer, you are a dead man walking… you should be told to get your affairs in order and prepare to go to hospice when the time comes. Instead “I’m a fighter…I’m gonna beat this thing” and spend a fortune on chemo and treatments that don’t extend your life one day and you end up dying around when they originally said you would — what’s the point ?
I absolutely DON’T want a MAID system here like they have in Canada where those sick or elderly are encouraged to off themselves. Rather I just want the laws fixed so that doctors and nurses can be 100% honest with patients about their illnesses, the treatments and expected outcomes.
We need to increase funding for palliative care and hospice and start refusing to pay for unnecessary treatments that will do no good when you are terminally ill.
Beyond that it is way past time we have a discussion about how we pay for healthcare in this country AND since there is not an unlimited supply, how it will be rationed.
Divemedic · December 17, 2024 at 8:07 pm
I can’t tell you how many times I have had to have conversations with family about an unconscious patient who is on Levophed, a ventilator, and whose labs show that they are in real trouble, but they tell me “Grandma’s a fighter.”
JimmyPx · December 17, 2024 at 9:00 pm
I know, I work at a hospital and see it all of the time. If the doctors or nurses try to tell the family the truth people get furious and threaten lawsuits.
To paraphrase a Few Good Men “They Can’t Handle the TRUTH”