The reason is that healthcare is somewhere you don't want the profits to be the main goal. The goal is to make sure everyone is taken care of, at the best cost for the society. Did you know the US is the country that spends most on healthcare, and still doesn't have universal coverage? (http://www.investopedia.com/ask/answers/020915/what-country-...)
Therefore, public pricing is not the optimal solution. Public heath system is.
Of course with the ACA, the US system looks a lot more like Switzerland than it did before (private providers and insurance, guaranteed access, individual mandate).
I wonder if this sort of comparison points to there being some less drastic regulatory changes that could be made in the US to help reduce prices.
I also wonder how much things like population density factor into US costs. We have a lot of small rural hospitals (with 24 hour emergency room coverage and CT scanners and so on). Medicare reimburses small rural hospitals at a higher rate than other hospitals (but Medicare is our most efficient spending, so probably this is not a problem).
That "eventually" word is killing me. When we leave these sorts of issues up to the forces in power, they never seem to get done. What we get instead are watered-down, doomed-to-fail, design-by-political-committee "solutions" such as the ACA.
I think we need an official roadmap. I think the public deserves a direct voice in guiding the direction of the country. At the very least, I think we need to set in stone a clear vision of what milestones we want to achieve as a nation.
My entire lifetime, our leadership has repeatedly demonstrated it is incapable of moving us in any single direction long enough and far enough to be meaningful (aside from war, perhaps). Let us choose the direction; let them work-out the implementation.
/end rant
I'm just speaking my mind. What do you all think? Is this even a "good" idea? How could we even begin to make this happen?
I think we need an official roadmap. I think the public deserves a direct voice in guiding the direction of the country. At the very least, I think we need to set in stone a clear vision of what milestones we want to achieve as a nation.
My entire lifetime, our leadership has repeatedly demonstrated it is incapable of moving us in any single direction long enough and far enough to be meaningful (aside from war, perhaps). Let us choose the direction; let them work-out the implementation.
To some extent the back and forth you talk about is evidence that the public doesn't agree on the direction to take.
Sure, there's never going to be unanimous agreement. Put it to a vote. I'm mainly just talking about letting the public choose which issues the leaders should focus on, and holding them accountable if they don't.
How would that be different than what we have now?
I think there are things that would be incremental improvements (like having more members in the House of Representatives) and maybe better districts, but most elections have the candidates crafting a message based at least partly on what they hear from people and pretty high desire to get reelected (so they have to at least appear to follow through on their message).
There's a lot of things I see people proposing that end up boiling down to wishing that others would 'vote better'. That's a tough problem to solve.
There's quite a few countries that have universal coverage with private medical providers (and maybe mostly private insurance).
For example, click through Switzerland at your link:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthcare_in_Switzerland
Of course with the ACA, the US system looks a lot more like Switzerland than it did before (private providers and insurance, guaranteed access, individual mandate).
I wonder if this sort of comparison points to there being some less drastic regulatory changes that could be made in the US to help reduce prices.
I also wonder how much things like population density factor into US costs. We have a lot of small rural hospitals (with 24 hour emergency room coverage and CT scanners and so on). Medicare reimburses small rural hospitals at a higher rate than other hospitals (but Medicare is our most efficient spending, so probably this is not a problem).