[TheAdamAndChe]

I'm not saying that we shouldn't continue pushing for reform. I'm just saying that our government has proven incapable of reformation, and we should be pushing towards non-governmental approaches until they can get their act together. If we can improve the way things are through capitalism, that's still better than just yelling at politicians that don't do anything.

[toomuchtodo]

Can you explain your logic about pushing for non-government reform if "government has proven incapable of reformation"? There is no healthcare fix without government reform. If you provide healthcare, you must adhere to government regulation. You must accept Medicare/Medicaid reimbursement rates. If you provide insurance, you are at the whim of the government and what each new year brings [+].

> If we can improve the way things are through capitalism, that's still better than just yelling at politicians that don't do anything.

You cannot improve this with capitalism. You can only improve this by replacing politicians who are married to a broken system through vested interests.

[+] Healthcare startup Oscar is going through the grinder: https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-15/obamacare...

[Joeri]

Any theories on why the US government is so much less capable than governments in other countries?

[megaman22]

Scale? If you look at governments that are comparable in size and number of citizens to the US, you don't see many that are all that effective.

Most of the comparisons that people like to bring up are European countries the size and population of US states.

[ceejayoz]

Scale is supposed to make things more efficient, not less. That's the whole idea behind "economies of scale".

Sure, if you want to pretend the EU doesn't exist, and that the US doesn't already manage Medicaid on a state-by-state level, there's a significant population difference... but Germany has nearly 100M people. We have strong evidence single-payer healthcare already works with large numbers of people.

[gech]

Gosh I wonder why politicians don't do anything in the interest of the public?