🎓 Dr. Freemo 🇳🇱 @freemo@social.cleverlibre.org

@admitsWrongIfProven I'm not sure I get your point... In a totally unregulated market you have to pay to get healthcare, the demand for healthcare is infinite and thus people will pay extortion level prices to get it.. If they dont pay thoseprices you dont have access.

In a socialized system you have access regardless of if you can afford it, thats what makes it socialized. The demand is still infinite (people would pay anything to live longer healthier lives), but the costs are fixed.

Consumer goods arent remotely similar, the demand isnt infinite.

@admitsWrongIfProven Yes the demand is for healthcare (access to tools that extends one life).. not for a specific quantity of pills.

@admitsWrongIfProven The point here is not if the scenario is realistic or not. The point is you would pay **anything** for that 20 years, and most people would pay anything for ayear or even a month.. If someone is dying and they need an antibiotic no one will go "I'd rather die than spend 100$, just too expensive"... the demand for life is infinite, and no matter how much demand there is for something like an iphone it simply isnt infinite no matter how excessive it may be.

Now that doesnt mean you cant extort people with consumer goods, nor am I saying there isnt an issue in consume goods that is unhealthy... but the issues of overpriced goods is in another class of discussion than that of infinite demand.

@bot I am not sure I would pick that particular language, but short answer, yes.. I think anyone too poor to afford health insurance should have it provided by the government along with tools to get them out of poverty.

I dont like the word "entitled" here, however and prefer to say that it is in the best interest of society to look after those in society who are struggling.

@admitsWrongIfProven

If I told you that you were going to die in 24 hours, but if you gave me everything you owned you would live another 20 years, would you do it? Most people would.

Demand for iphones may be high but they dont approach infinite... If you learned today all your cellphones were destroyed and the only way for you to get one was to give up everything you owned and you'd get an iphone for 20 years, most people wont do it.

Ever increasing demand is not the same as infinite demand, there is still an equilibrium point. There are **many** cheap phones and a great many people will reject expensive iphones and get a much more affordable phone. Very few people would pay less if they knew paying less meant dying for healthcare, if they have a choice.

I think "What capitalism has become" is a very misleading and harmful choice of language... capitalism doesnt become things, its a core principle among thousands of other principles that make up a government. Capitalism doesnt exist in any pure form. Governments have become corrupt, corperations get away with things they shouldnt, this is likely what you mean and it has nothing to do with the idea of capitalism, which is just a fancy term for "fair markets where all players get a fair shake". Capitalism just means "free markets", and what "capitalism has become" is a fancy way of saying "the markets arent free anymore"... which really is anti-capitalism and not some neo new age capitalism at all :)

@admitsWrongIfProven Well thats a matter of opinion. I dont think capitalism is as evil as you do and feel systems that are mostly capitalism based, but not absolutist, are ideal. Capitalism, at least as one component in reasonable perportion, is not only not evil but good.

The reason healthcare is special is because healthcare doesnt follow the supply-demand rules where capitalism thrives. A person on their deathbed would give or pay everything they have to live just a bit longer (without suffering). So demand is infinite and thus equilibirum can not be reached in healthcare as it can with other goods and services. So while it is good for health care I would not go so far as to apply it to everything. That said it is often used when it comes to foods and farms and has been quite successful in that regard as well.

@admitsWrongIfProven There are lots of options in theory, but as I said few people talk about alternatives. The one that seems the best solution I ever heard of, and as the benefit of being put into action on small scales to see it work, is co-op based solutions. A co-op is where the clients of the service comprise the only owners of that service eliminating the greed element and addressing costs while still allowing for a somewhat free market to drive innovation and competing services. In the case of health insurance this means the policy holders are also the sole owners of the company.

@Dimestorehalo That is very odd that all specialists require a referal. That would be true of course if you have an HMO, but the whole point of a PPO is that you dont need referrals. I'd love to talk to a doctor in your area to know the details on that, its the first time I heard that.

I cabnt imagine why your case is so unusual for the american average but im sorry to hear that, it sounds awful!

I dont think you are wrong about the healthcare system in the USA getting worse, I've seen the same. I certainly wouldnt praise the american system. Like I said while on average it does fix some problems of socialized healthcare it also introduces just as many of its own problems too. So its hardly a system worthy of praise.

@Dimestorehalo I cant speak to your specific case, But statistically speaking wait times in the USA are less than almost all other socialized systems.

For example in Australia, canada, france, germany, Netherelands, new zealand, and the UK 20% to 42% of patients with chronic conditions needed to wait more than 2 months to get care.. these are people who are already diagnosed and suffering who need routine care to alleviate that suffering (so its particularly heinous).. In the USA half to a quartyer as many people (10%) have similar wait times.

for comparison In those same countries you have on average about 50% of the people who could get seen in less than 4 weeks, compare that to the USA where 75% of people can be seen in less than 4 weeks.

Specialized doctor referals arent really "centralized" because you dont really "need" it.. just get a ppo and you dont need referals at all. And we already have tons of private systems that are opt-in and centralized for finding doctors (do telehealth and go online and youll get seen super fast as you have a huge centralized database of docotrz)

All that said I do agree with you that there is a LOT of room for improvement and in certain states or regions the problem is likely a lot worse than others.

@hasmis yea monopolies can form in any system, the USA isnt immune. But its a big different when "single payer" by definition means you intentionally create monopolies of one form or another.

As someone living in socialized healthcare, and who has lived with socialized healthcare in about a dozen countries, just a reminder:

**Socialized Healthcare is a broken and backwards system**

inb4: No I am not promoting the american healthcare system. It may fix or address the parts that are broken in socialized healthcare, but it has its own problems... There are solutions (though no one talks about it) that doesnt resemble either of these failed systems.

Problems I have repeatidly faced both here and in other socialized health care countries:

* Abusive wait times leading to unnecessary suffering and in my case surgery that wouldnt have been needed if I had prompter care.

* Lack of access to many prescriptions - (I have had at least a dozen medicines I couldnt get because the cost would be too much of a burden to a socialized system).

* Monopolies making unfair and abusive rules to line their pockets at the expense of patients (A good example of this is melatonin being a prescription in Israel due to a pharmecutical monopoly).

* Lack of privacy / anonymity - Since everything is registered through centralized systems (usually) there is no way for you to hide or keep private your medical records. In the USA I would pay cash for prescriptions I dont want on record, not really an option in socialized systems.

#healthcare

@matei We are a fork of mastodon, our version doesnt track the mastodon version anymore, so that response doesnt make much sense. Our character limit is accessible via the API and follows the AP standard for doing so. Virtually all clients support our extended character limit, ivory is the first one I heard of that doesnt support it. Sadly it sounds like a bug where they dont support the standards and are instead keyed in to only work with mastodon and doesnt support non-mastodon software that follows the existing standard.

@Paulos_the_fog fixed rate for the term of the mortgage is the norm in the usa too.