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by jquery 1907 days ago
Resource allocation is hard. Profit isn’t the problem. Access is. We should be spending more on healthcare as a country, not less. Guaranteed health care for everyone regardless of income level can still happen in a regulated for-profit system.

USA federal government is just in general shitty at execution. I didn’t get any stimulus checks. My unemployment I was supposed to get went to some other address I never inputted into the arcane-af website I had to use to register for unemployment. A traffic ticket that should’ve only cost me $29 ended up costing $468 because the government messed up and I didn’t want to risk getting covid going to court to protest and there was no way to appeal online. I would dread these same people in charge of my health care without at least the option of switching providers.

All that happened in the past 6 months.

If our government could start getting the basics right I’d trust them with my healthcare. Maybe MfA is a great idea but it should be expanded slowly, the way Biden has suggested.

1 comments

The president od my small local hospital is paid $985,000 per year. I looked it up.

My local hospital also cuts lots of corners to save a buck. I know some nurses who work there. They understaff while they overcharge patients and play absurd games with billing.

I think this is pretty normal in the US. The ratio of hospital beds to population is unusually small for a developed country.

As soon as my kids are a little older, I am getting out of this country. I am healthy now but as I get older I get more concerned about getting caught in the US healthcare system.

> The president od my small local hospital is paid $985,000 per year. I looked it up.

The CEO of a small local tech company is paid $10m per year. I looked it up.

> “my local hospital doesn’t allocate resources right”

Not surprising. Resource allocation is a difficult problem. Perhaps the hospital would be better off with limits on what they are allowed to pay people like you seem to be suggesting, but I doubt it.

To me this is all fundamentally a sign the USA doesn’t spend enough on health care. I don’t have confidence price controls and nationalization will improve matters.