[genderwhy]

When you don't spend the time and money on preventative care as a society, you end up spending much, much more on emergency care. I feel like this has been quantitatively demonstrated again and again, but it's somehow still a political football.

[nickff]

>"I feel like this has been quantitatively demonstrated again and again, but it's somehow still a political football."

I am aware of a number of studies which looked for a negative correlation between preventative care spending and overall healthcare spending, but all (of which I am aware) failed to find it.

[rightbyte]

Preventive care and good founding probably overshoots the point of very diminishing returns by alot so that should not be too suprising. Correlation is linear.

[pixl97]

This is like telling a tech monopoly to make a better product when they could just charge hundreds per hour for support calls.

When you allow lobbying this is the kind of issue that becomes rampant.

[lotsofpulp]

Because the “you” is not a single unit.

Due to freedom of movement around the US, population wide benefits such as healthcare, housing, and in some ways, education, require federal level solutions.

Otherwise, someone is going to end up being the sucker that foots the (giant) bill for everyone else.

On the federal level, there is quite a bit of gridlock, so what we have is an intractable problem at the non federal level where it is every man/neighborhood/city/county/state/hospital for themselves.

[gumby]

This mentality applies not just to health care but all sorts of infrastructure. There's money to build it but never money to maintain it.

[genderwhy]

Yep. Housing is the big one. And transit.

[notch656c]

Having worked in an ED I can tell you it's much more like "when you make ED the only place that can't turn away patients, patient goes there for everything including the common cold."

It's not so much a minor thing turned into an emergency (that is a problem of course) but rather the patient has no other venue for minor needs without money or insurance.

[ticviking]

This is the big thing.

If triage were able to turn away non-emergency cases legally it would gradually change, but for people with more time than money the ER basically ensures you'll be seen.