[nradov]

I generally agree (and sympathize with your wife), but let's not present an overly rosy view of government run healthcare or single-payer systems. In many countries with such systems, extensive therapy simply isn't available at all because the government refuses to pay for it. Every healthcare system has limited resources and care is always going to be rationed, the only question is how we do the rationing.

[cael450]

Government run healthcare can be done well or it can be done poorly. I’ve lived under both kinds and I would take the bad over America’s system. In Japan, I had to have a ton of cardiac work done, and it was done faster than I’d get it here.

[ToucanLoucan]

Every healthcare system has problems, yes. However the spectre of medical debt and bankruptcy is a uniquely American one, so, IMHO, even if we moved to single-payer healthcare and every other problem stayed the same, but we no longer shoved people into the capitalist fuck-barrel for things completely outside their control, I think that's an unmitigated, massive improvement.

[nradov]

Well now you're talking about a different problem and moving the goalposts. It would be impossible for every other problem to stay the same under a single-payer system. That would solve some existing problems and create other new problems. In particular the need to hold down government budgets would necessarily force increased care rationing and longer queues. Whether that would be a net positive or negative is a complex question with no clear answers.

The statistics you see about bankruptcy due to medical debt are highly misleading. While it is a problem, very few consumers are directly forced into bankruptcy by medical expenses. What tends to happen is that serious medical problems leave them unable to work and then with no income and then with no income all of their debts pile up. What we really need there is a better disability welfare system to keep consumers afloat.

[ToucanLoucan]

> Well now you're talking about a different problem and moving the goalposts.

I am absolutely not. I am reacting to what's been replied to what I've said. In common vernacular, this is called a "conversation."

To recap: the person who replied to me left a long comment about the various strugglings and limitations of healthcare when subjected to the whims of insurance companies. You then replied:

> I generally agree (and sympathize with your wife), but let's not present an overly rosy view of government run healthcare or single-payer systems. In many countries with such systems, extensive therapy simply isn't available at all because the government refuses to pay for it. Every healthcare system has limited resources and care is always going to be rationed, the only question is how we do the rationing.

Which, at least how I read it, attempts to lay the blame for the lack of availability of extensive therapies at the feet of a government's unwillingness to pay, citing that every system has limited resources and care is always being rationed.

I countered, implying that while that may or may not be true, that lack of availability is effectively status quo for the majority of Americans under our much more expensive, and highly exploitative insurance-and-pay-based healthcare system, and that, even if those issues around lack of availability persisted through a transition to a single-payer healthcare system, it would at least alleviate us from the uniquely American scourge of people being sent to the poorhouse, sometimes poor-lack-of-house, for suffering illnesses or injuries they are in no way responsible for which in my mind is still a huge improvement.

> The statistics you see about bankruptcy due to medical debt are highly misleading. While it is a problem, very few consumers are directly forced into bankruptcy by medical expenses. What tends to happen is that serious medical problems leave them unable to work and then with no income and then with no income all of their debts pile up.

I mean we can expand this if you like into a larger conversation about how insurance itself being tied to employment and everyone being kept broke on purpose to incentivize them to take on debt to survive, placing them on a debt treadmill their entire lives which has been demonstrably shown to reduce quality and length of life, as well as introducing the notion that missing any amount of work for no matter how valid a reason has the potential to ruin your life, is probably a highly un-optimal and inhumane way to structure a society.

> What we really need there is a better disability welfare system to keep consumers afloat.

On that at least, we can agree.

[lesostep]

>> extensive therapy simply isn't available at all because the government refuses to pay for it.

I don't know any country that has banned paid healthcare just because they have government run one.

If you can pay out of your pocket for it in USA system when denied by insurance company then you would be able to afford it when denied by goverment. Since the criteria of whats necessary wouldn't shift (hospitals might even more money per patient)