Can someone breakdown the argument against free-market private healthcare?

[WarpSpeedMolasses]

So my cousin and I were having a debate. I firmly believe in universal, single-payer, tax funded, FULL COVERAGE FOR ALL healthcare. I don't think basic essentials and rights that we need just to exist, should be commoditized or provided through private means. My cousin was of the view that if we had a true free market for healthcare (which afaik we've never had) with full market exchange, the competition would fill the need for coverage because "if there's a need, competition will serve it".

Can someone (I suppose more well read than I am) breakdown as to why this wouldn't work for healthcare?

 

[alloc]

There is a cost to providing healthcare. Firms will enter a free market until the cost of entering the market exceeds the benefit of their entering. That is, until the price falls below the cost. This means that prices can only fall as low as the cost. If they were any lower, there is no more incentive to enter the market. Consumers who cannot afford this "base" cost of healthcare would still not be able to afford it in a free market.

Just to throw some numbers into the mix, let's say the absolute minimum cost to perform heart surgery is $5000. Doctors and nurses must be paid a fair wage; there is a cost associated with the supplies needed for the surgery; it costs money to construct a hospital, which is built into that minimum $5000 cost; and so on. No healthcare provider would offer heart surgery for $4999 because they would lose money on it. If someone who does not have $5000 needed heart surgery, they would not get it, even in a free market.

Most proponents of single-payer healthcare believe that anyone who needs heart surgery should get it, even if they cannot afford it. It's more of a humanitarian position than an economic one (although there are economic arguments for single-payer healthcare, like the ability for governments to negotiate with healthcare firms to lower prices).

I should note that this purely theoretical free market doesn't really exist because of other complications, like unusual preferences and externalities. It's still a useful model for thinking about this problem.

 

[headfallsoff]

Someone can and will do that because there are many libertarians out there in the world unfortunately but it's easier to get ahead of that and just say you're right and your cousin is wrong. The Market will never provide for the needs because capitalism is a process by which resources are consolidated into a ruling class. Providing care to everyone is simply not compatible with profit motive and any argument that says otherwise is full of shit.

 

[Dude Abides]

Competition will not, in fact, solve it. Many of the heroic assumptions of capitalism, especially perfect and perfectly symmetrical information and zero barriers to entry, are particularly fantastical in the healthcare market.

 

[NinjaGarden]

Ask him how you shop for care while you're having a heart attack

 

[Video Games Are Dumb]

Your cousin should check out this new show called the news.

 

[I Don't Like]

When healthcare is treated as a business/profit-making venture, it sucks and causes people to die.

 

[Sei]

The idea that there would be competition is a myth and not well supported. Big market providers tend to consolidate and merge. For example, internet/telecom providers, airlines, certain industrial manufacturing. Once they merge they can collude or work together to lower the standard of service and to raise prices or add additional charges.

 

[electricblue]

a truly free market has to be free of coercion. That's impossible when your life is literally on the line

 

[Arebours]

free markets don't materialize on their own. Free markets happen under certain conditions and these conditions just don't exist in health care. Nobody is going to shop around for the best value health care while they are having a heart attack.

 

[jay]

When healthcare is treated as a business/profit-making venture, it sucks and causes people to die.

Click to shrink...

This is true of food and shelter, too.

 

[Kernel]

I would add:

- they're more likely to perform more profitable procedures rather than medically necessary ones. I think I read Caesarean section births are more common in the US than single payer systems. Also add on other miscellaneous crap just to run up the bill.

- hospitals need to cover costs for people who can't pay, so they'll bake their losses into the people who can, raising their costs.

 

[kyle mechlachlan]

There's a fundamental need to change the line of thinking that a free market is a thing. Companies playing fair is a pipe dream. Think about what is happening in the airline industry. The desire for profit will trump the free market.

 

[Deleted member 25600]

Has your cousin ever heard of a cartel?

 

[EdibleKnife]

The idea that there would be competition is a myth and not well supported. Big market providers tend to consolidate and merge. For example, internet providers, airlines, certain manufacturing. Once they merge they can collude or work together to lower the standard of service and to raise prices on what ever they want.

Click to shrink...

This. People like your cousin want to pretend like this shit is like two competing mom and pop bakeries where one is destined to win by providing the best bread at the lowest price. That shit is unrealistic once you get to wall street.

 

[Noodle]

My cousin was of the view that if we had a true free market for healthcare (which afaik we've never had) with full market exchange, the competition would fill the need for coverage because "if there's a need, competition will serve it".

Click to shrink...

Ask him how that's working out for broadband providers. Or indeed any industry. This "true free market" only exists in his head.

 

[TAJ]

Private health care adds extra layers of middle men.
We're also seeing that private health care's business model can't adjust to a pandemic. They're having to stop doing some of their more profitable procedures to take care of COVID-19 and it's making some of them broke.

 

[Deleted member 30681]

the key point of healthcare, is to provide for the health of your population, and you know, make sure they are alive, healthy, and when they get sick, get the care they need asap. A privatized healthcare system (like in the U.S.) is basically profiteering off people's suffering, while also making it painfully difficult for people to get the care they need which goes against the entire point of healthcare. This is especially true, when the best time to treat any illness is when it's caught early and is easily treatable, but this is basically impossible when you have a healthcare system that actively puts the fear of medical bankruptcy and financial ruin into the soul of your population and effectively instills the mentality of brushing off illnesses and basically crossing your fingers that it'll go away. The end result to a lot of serious illnesses in such a healthcare system is people not going to a doctor, or not going to a hospital until the illness becomes so severe that treatment costs substantially more or the patient is literally on death's door.

Some might argue that without a free market healthcare system, innovative treatments, and innovations in medical technology will not happen, however, almost all the medication that you and I use was literally researched and developed using federal dollars that at some point drug companies came in and swept up and bought. Hell, we just saw something similar during this coronavirus situation where I believe in 2015 it was, a corporation was tasked with making ventilators and with the help of the federal government, developed a ventilator that was smaller, easier to use, and I believe could be used on up to 4 patients at the same time (not sure about this, but I believe that was one of the benefits of it). The development of the new ventilator was literally at the point where it was ready for manufacturing, and then another company came in, bought the company that developed said ventilator, and effectively shut it down and as it turned out the company that bought them, was a company that produced the inferior ventilator, and they just so happened to have also scrapped the project and cancelled the federal contract. It was basically a case of one corporation buying the competition and killing any competition there ever was.

private markets have their place, but they absolutely do not belong in healthcare.

 

[EdibleKnife]

Ask him how that's working out for broadband providers. Or indeed any industry. This "true free market" only exists in his head.

Click to shrink...

I'd guess he'd say something about how broadband is "unessential" and something more critical like people's health will produce more "fair" market forces as though companies give two shits about people's lives enough to not rake them over the coals if they're allowed to.

 

[samoyed]

Not every need is profitable. This is why housing has never been solved by the housing market. Market logic seeks to extract profit, not serve needs.

The U.S. Tried to Build a New Fleet of Ventilators. The Mission Failed. (Published 2020)

As the coronavirus spreads, the collapse of the project helps explain America’s acute shortage.

www.nytimes.com

non-paywall:

NYT: Next gen ventilator project failed because it killed profits

www.motherjones.com

Then everything changed.

The medical device industry was undergoing rapid consolidation, with one company after another merging with or acquiring other makers….In May 2012, Covidien, a large medical device manufacturer, agreed to buy Newport for just over $100 million….Newport executives and government officials working on the ventilator contract said they immediately noticed a change when Covidien took over. Developing inexpensive portable ventilators no longer seemed like a top priority.

….Government officials and executives at rival ventilator companies said they suspected that Covidien had acquired Newport to prevent it from building a cheaper product that would undermine Covidien's profits from its existing ventilator business.

….In 2014, with no ventilators having been delivered to the government, Covidien executives told officials at the biomedical research agency that they wanted to get out of the contract, according to three former federal officials. The executives complained that it was not sufficiently profitable for the company.

Click to shrink...

It is generally mistaken and reductionist to think profit is only made by fulfilling a need.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Competition in the marketplace is creating a problem RIGHT NOW. Competition is why certain states are the only ones getting masks at inflated prices.

You shouldn't want your right to healthcare to be a competition. Competition goes both ways.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

I'd guess he'd say something about how broadband is "unessential"

Click to shrink...

Internet is classified as an essential utility in the united states. It was done when email was made an official means of government communication back in the 90's.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Tell him to consider this: We consider the unchecked open marketplace to be too detrimental to telephone communication over time that we've had to step in and break it up multiple times throughout history. Yet we think this same system is absolutely fine for healthcare??

 

[sfedai0]

the key point of healthcare, is to provide for the health of your population, and you know, make sure they are alive, healthy, and when they get sick, get the care they need asap. A privatized healthcare system (like in the U.S.) is basically profiteering off people's suffering, while also making it painfully difficult for people to get the care they need which goes against the entire point of healthcare. This is especially true, when the best time to treat any illness is when it's caught early and is easily treatable, but this is basically impossible when you have a healthcare system that actively puts the fear of medical bankruptcy and financial ruin into the soul of your population and effectively instills the mentality of brushing off illnesses and basically crossing your fingers that it'll go away. The end result to a lot of serious illnesses in such a healthcare system is people not going to a doctor, or not going to a hospital until the illness becomes so severe that treatment costs substantially more or the patient is literally on death's door.

Some might argue that without a free market healthcare system, innovative treatments, and innovations in medical technology will not happen, however, almost all the medication that you and I use was literally researched and developed using federal dollars that at some point drug companies came in and swept up and bought. Hell, we just saw something similar during this coronavirus situation where I believe in 2015 it was, a corporation was tasked with making ventilators and with the help of the federal government, developed a ventilator that was smaller, easier to use, and I believe could be used on up to 4 patients at the same time (not sure about this, but I believe that was one of the benefits of it). The development of the new ventilator was literally at the point where it was ready for manufacturing, and then another company came in, bought the company that developed said ventilator, and effectively shut it down and as it turned out the company that bought them, was a company that produced the inferior ventilator, and they just so happened to have also scrapped the project and cancelled the federal contract. It was basically a case of one corporation buying the competition and killing any competition there ever was.

private markets have their place, but they absolutely do not belong in healthcare.

Click to shrink...

^this. THeres something to be said of humanity if we need motivation and incentive to reasearch, create new forms of treatments, creating vaccines etc.

 

[WarpSpeedMolasses]

I'd guess he'd say something about how broadband is "unessential" and something more critical like people's health will produce more "fair" market forces as though companies give two shits about people's lives enough to not rake them over the coals if they're allowed to.

Click to shrink...

Tell him to consider this: We consider the unchecked open marketplace to be too detrimental to telephone communication over time that we've had to step in and break it up multiple times throughout history. Yet we think this same system is absolutely fine for healthcare??

Click to shrink...

His argument was that telecom companies collude too much by pie-ing off areas of service among eachother, and people living in particular areas are left without choice, and that this isn't an example of true competition.
His hypothetical is private businesses fulfilling needs while promoting R&D due to competition, but not being allowed to collude or section off areas just for specific businesses.

There is a cost to providing healthcare. Firms will enter a free market until the cost of entering the market exceeds the benefit of their entering. That is, until the price falls below the cost. This means that prices can only fall as low as the cost. If they were any lower, there is no more incentive to enter the market. Consumers who cannot afford this "base" cost of healthcare would still not be able to afford it in a free market.

Just to throw some numbers into the mix, let's say the absolute minimum cost to perform heart surgery is $5000. Doctors and nurses must be paid a fair wage; there is a cost associated with the supplies needed for the surgery; it costs money to construct a hospital, which is built into that minimum $5000 cost; and so on. No healthcare provider would offer heart surgery for $4999 because they would lose money on it. If someone who does not have $5000 needed heart surgery, they would not get it, even in a free market.

Most proponents of single-payer healthcare believe that anyone who needs heart surgery should get it, even if they cannot afford it. It's more of a humanitarian position than an economic one (although there are economic arguments for single-payer healthcare, like the ability for governments to negotiate with healthcare firms to lower prices).

I should note that this purely theoretical free market doesn't really exist because of other complications, like unusual preferences and externalities. It's still a useful model for thinking about this problem.

Click to shrink...

Thanks, I really like this post a lot, and fully agree. Can you elaborate more on the bolded part though?

 

[Deleted member 48897]

Someone in health insurance making profit means they are either not paying out claims or are taking their customers' money for nothing. We could control that in theory with profit caps but then we wind up with multiple competing health insurance providers with fiefdoms of in-network coverage, leading to cases where emergency care could still bankrupt people depending on their coverage rules. That's still a bad outcome. At some point you control the profit motive and companies so tightly in order to prevent these outcomes that there is no benefit to leaving them as private companies.

 

[dabig2]

Private health care adds extra layers of middle men.
We're also seeing that private health care's business model can't adjust to a pandemic. They're having to stop doing some of their more profitable procedures to take care of COVID-19 and it's making some of them broke.

Click to shrink...

True that.

and the last 10 years have not seen that really change.
Especially with stories like this:

Healthcare paperwork cost U.S. $812 billion in 2017, 4 times more per capita than Canada

Doctors, hospitals, and other health providers in the U.S. spent far more on administration due to complexity.

www.healthcarefinancenews.com

Healthcare bureaucracy cost Americans $812 billion in 2017, representing more than one-third of total expenditures for doctor visits, hospitals, long-term care and health insurance, according to the latest findings published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. Cutting U.S. administrative costs to Canadian levels would have saved more than $600 billion in 2017, the research found.

Health administration costs were more than fourfold higher per capita in the U.S. than in Canada ($2,479 vs. $551 per person), which implemented a single-payer, Medicare For All-style system in 1962. Americans spent $844 per person on insurers' overhead while Canadians spent $146.

Additionally, doctors, hospitals, and other health providers in the U.S. spent far more on administration due to the complexity entailed in billing multiple payers and dealing with the bureaucratic hurdles insurers impose. As a result, hospital administration cost Americans $933 per capita vs. $196 in Canada.

Click to shrink...

like come on, over 800 billion on shitty bureaucracy alone, and then consider how many still aren't getting anything close to proper care or even attention in this literally sick country. And even in a pandemic we get these late stage capitalism stories about entire hospitals going bankrupt or being held hostage, can't get proper equipment to the workers, literally zero plans at all.

But some people been making a real killing in the healthcare industries as this rot was allowed to continue for decades. We all definitely need to have more words with those people. Long overdue.

 

[faceless]

His argument was that telecom companies collude too much by pie-ing off areas of service among eachother, and people living in particular areas are left without choice, and that this isn't an example of true competition.
His hypothetical is private businesses fulfilling needs while promoting R&D due to competition, but not being allowed to collude or section off areas just for specific businesses.

Click to shrink...

that's exactly what 'true competiton' looks like though. collusion, mergers, price fixing, lobbying and backdoor agreements. that is the inevitable end result. the best way to win is to rig the game.

 

[EdibleKnife]

His argument was that telecom companies collude too much by pie-ing off areas of service among eachother, and people living in particular areas are left without choice, and that this isn't an example of true competition.
His hypothetical is private businesses fulfilling needs while promoting R&D due to competition, but not being allowed to collude or section off areas just for specific businesses.

Click to shrink...

"Not being allowed" is doing a lot of load bearing in your cousin's argument. Ask them what "not being allowed" means exactly. If it means governmental or legal intervention, ask what would happen if say a company funneled money at a candidate with the subtle directive of either loosening or outright ending such restrictions.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

His argument was that telecom companies collude too much by pie-ing off areas of service among eachother, and people living in particular areas are left without choice, and that this isn't an example of true competition.
His hypothetical is private businesses fulfilling needs while promoting R&D due to competition, but not being allowed to collude or section off areas just for specific businesses.

Click to shrink...

He is absolutely correct about how it works. Thing is, the free market is more about capitalism than actual competition, and what he describes is a feature of capitalism. Free market is not necessarily competition. Government intervention can ensure competition when the people run the government. Government intervention doesn't have to be against the people.

Also mention to him that the "fault" in how it works with telecomms is how it works with healthcare. It very honestly is not easy to just pick and choose where you want to go, even if you aren't dead broke.

 

[HardTimesFamilyPride]

The idea that there would be competition is a myth and not well supported. Big market providers tend to consolidate and merge. For example, internet/telecom providers, airlines, certain industrial manufacturing. Once they merge they can collude or work together to lower the standard of service and to raise prices or add additional charges.

Click to shrink...

Yep had a libertarian going on about how the free market is great for his kind of anti-pharmaceutical stance because it just takes one company making a better product than - in context of our conversation - the opioids J&J produce to disrupt the market.

Historically, if a small company is on the come-up like that what will most likely happen is their market cap will hit a certain point and J&J will buy them up. Back to business as usual.

 

[WarpSpeedMolasses]

"Not being allowed" is doing a lot of load bearing in your cousin's argument. Ask them what "not being allowed" means exactly. If it means governmental or legal intervention, ask him what would happen if say a company funneled money at a candidate with the subtle directive of either loosening or outright ending such restrictions.

Click to shrink...

We also had a debate that touched on this aside from healthcare. I believe businesses (or absolutely anybody for that matter) should never be allowed to exchange money, goods, or services so that they can legislate a law in return. Regardless of whether it's called lobbying or bribery. He disagrees, and believes that rather than taking an entity's ability to funnel money for laws away, we should instead heavily reduce politicians' abilities to write and legislate laws without heavy oversight from citizens.

 

[samoyed]

Well-regulated free market is kind of oxymoronic, someone needs to be the regulator, and the more regulating they do, the less "free" it is.

Idealized competition is just that, idealized, and doesn't pay attention to how firms actually behave (collusion, lobbying, price fixing, monopoly, etc). As long as there's a way to extract profit without R&D, why would a firm not take it, and if you need a referee to make sure everyone is playing by the rules and only creating profit by introducing cheaper/superior products, is it still a "true free market"?

I think your friend argued himself into ordoliberalism.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

We're also seeing that private health care's business model can't adjust to a pandemic.

Click to shrink...

This should be the main argument, honestly. Private healthcare can't protect people during a pandemic, it's being proven right now. The entire system breaks down when you need it the most. People will say, "what about nationalized healthcare being over run in other countries," but their problem is that they have to exist in a global economy that also competes with private healthcare industry. The mere presence of a global super power like the USA letting private healthcare into the global health market fucks with the whole world, upsetting balance and pricing.

 

[Link25ca]

All insurance is based on odds over the person using the service and how much to charge that person. There are some people that will give their car insurance company thousands of dollars and never use their services. In healthcare, 100% of people will need medical care. Everyone will get kidney stones or the flu or a broken leg or into an accident or high blood pressure and need to see a doctor or go to the hospital.

A 100% free market system has no reason to insure people that are high risk as they are drains on revenue that have no chance of making a profit. The price to a customer/patient would be too large and you would have uninsured people. A businesses main goal is to make money for their shareholders.

Ask your cousin what reason would a company insure a segment of population that will not bring in profit. How can you make a profit if you have to charge them a price so high that they can't afford it to begin with.

 

[hurlex]

The idea assumes that healthcare providers will provide better care when they attempt to maximize profits. In practice, optimizing profits is not the same as providing quality care.

 

[EdibleKnife]

He is absolutely correct about how it works. Thing is, the free market is more about capitalism than actual competition, and what he describes is a feature of capitalism. Free market is not necessarily competition. Government intervention can ensure competition when the people run the government. Government intervention doesn't have to be against the people.

Also mention to him that the "fault" in how it works with telecomms is how it works with healthcare. It very honestly is not easy to just pick and choose where you want to go, even if you aren't dead broke.

Click to shrink...

Right on this point too. I have good insurance but not every hospital or doctor or specialist is in network. If competion bears out for person X and they get a plan they can afford, it's still possible to live in an area where none of the hospitals within reasonable distance accept that particular insurance plan.

 

[WarpSpeedMolasses]

Ask your cousin what reason would a company insure a segment of population that will not bring in profit. How can you make a profit if you have to charge them a price so high that they can't afford it to begin with.

Click to shrink...

We talked about this too. Basically he believes whether it's an insurance company, or directly a hospital, doctor, or whatever sized privated practice, so long as there is a need or market, (however low their budget or purchasing power is) a private entity will come in with a model to serve that group.

 

[Deleted member 48897]

that's exactly what 'true competiton' looks like though. collusion, mergers, price fixing, lobbying and backdoor agreements. that is the inevitable end result. the best way to win is to rig the game.

Click to shrink...

And what the hell are Cigna, BCBS, etc. even supposed to compete on? All they do is take your money and (see whether or not they have to) give it to somebody else. The closest thing they can compete on is size of network. So it's basically what the phone companies do.

And most people don't actually shop for this shit anyway. It's provided by contract as a result of employment.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Right on this point too. I have good insurance but not every hospital or doctor or specialist is in network. If competion bears out for person X and they get a plan they can afford, it's still possible to live in an area where none of the hospitals within reasonable distance accept that particular insurance plan.

Click to shrink...

I'll give an experience my mom went through last year as she was waiting for radiotherapy. My mom actually has cancer insurance, she took a job working at the school district as a bus aid a few years ago as a part time job, solely for insurance. She got a very tiny paycheck, but she used the entirety of it to upgrade her insurance to a better tier. It wound up actually paying off in spades as she was hit by both a hurricane and cancer back to back.

Anyways, right before her surgery to remove the cancerous tumor, her insurance and the hospital she was going to had a fight. It's complex to explain, but the basic gist is, you know how when cable companies will fight with television channels sometimes and drop the channel as part of negotiations? Like suddenly TNT will be off of Comcast for a month or so, because TNT wants the public to get mad and call up Comcast and demand they bring it back to break their negotiations or some deal. That basically happened with her insurance and the hospital. She didn't know for 2 months where she was going to get her surgery, who her doctor was, anything. It took her ultimately 6 months from the day she was diagnosed with breast cancer until the tumor was removed, because of insurance fuckery.

Suffice to say my parents HATE the current health care system now. And they were ones who paid for better insurance.

 

[Deleted member 4413]

Ah yes, the age old argument that if their is a need, the private sector will fill it.

I remember a particular idiot I knew who used the PR campaign by Dominoes to fill potholes as an example that the free market could and would maintain and expand our countries infrastructure. No government help needed.

 

[danm999]

Why compete when you can just buy a patent and price gouge? Or do patents not exist in this theoretical free market libertarian utopia.

 

[Link25ca]

We talked about this too. Basically he believes whether it's an insurance company, or directly a hospital, doctor, or whatever sized privated practice, so long as there is a need or market, (however low their budget or purchasing power is) a private entity will come in with a model to serve that group.

Click to shrink...

But that is not really a answer to the question. If a person is a high risk of heart attack and the insurance company assumes they will needs $50,000 worth or doctors, test, equipment and medicine and want to charge the customer enough to cover it and make a profit and they can't afford it, then the customer won't have insurance. When they do have the heart attack, it is left to the hospital or bankruptcy or some other agency to help. That is part socialism and not a true free market. The costs on health care are so high, that any company that says they will only cover high risks customers will end up bankrupt so fast you wouldn't even know they were in business.

 

[Imperfected]

Thread: Medical personnel being fired by hospitals for reporting unsafe conditions.

 

[EdibleKnife]

We also had a debate that touched on this aside from healthcare. I believe businesses (or absolutely anybody for that matter) should never be allowed to exchange money, goods, or services so that they can legislate a law in return. Regardless of whether it's called lobbying or bribery. He disagrees, and believes that rather than taking an entity's ability to funnel money for laws away, we should instead heavily reduce politicians' abilities to write and legislate laws without heavy oversight from citizens.

Click to shrink...

Here's the thing though: Citizens often vote against their own interest particularly when fed false or misleading rhetoric. We have heavy oversight over who we choose as president and yet elected a monster/toddler due in no small part to millions of people taking lies as truth and disregarding rationality. If a company were to simultaneously feed money into corp-friendly politicians while developing a narrative multimedia campaign meant to blind or indoctrinate citizens to the insidious parts of certain legislation suddenly things aren't so cut and dry. In a capitalist system, it's capital that holds the power and citizens often only have the illusion of power. As long as capital reigns, the system your cousin suggests is open to loopholes and manipulations.

I'll give an experience my mom went through last year as she was waiting for radiotherapy. My mom actually has cancer insurance, she took a job working at the school district as a bus aid a few years ago as a part time job, solely for insurance. She got a very tiny paycheck, but she used the entirety of it to upgrade her insurance to a better tier. It wound up actually paying off in spades as she was hit by both a hurricane and cancer back to back.

Anyways, right before her surgery to remove the cancerous tumor, her insurance and the hospital she was going to had a fight. It's complex to explain, but the basic gist is, you know how when cable companies will fight with television channels sometimes and drop the channel as part of negotiations? Like suddenly TNT will be off of Comcast for a month or so, because TNT wants the public to get mad and call up Comcast and demand they bring it back to break their negotiations or some deal. That basically happened with her insurance and the hospital. She didn't know for 2 months where she was going to get her surgery, who her doctor was, anything. It took her ultimately 6 months from the day she was diagnosed with breast cancer until the tumor was removed, because of insurance fuckery.

Suffice to say my parents HATE the current health care system now. And they were ones who paid for better insurance.

Click to shrink...

Good lord, I'm glad she was at least able to make it in time. And stories like your own are similar to many all over the country. So many people have underlying stress because of situations like this where their health and well-being is up in the air subject to the whims of CEOs who could pay for the treatment of an ill patient like your mom for the rest of her natural life without a sweat. It's astounding that not only do people not see shit is broken but that there are people who want it to be even worse under the delusion that the free market will solve all problems.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

Good lord, I'm glad she was at least able to make it in time. And stories like your own are similar to many all over the country. So many people have underlying stress because of situations like this where their health and well-being is up in the air subject to the whims of CEOs who could pay for the treatment of an ill patient like your mom for the rest of her natural life without a sweat. It's astounding that not only do people not see shit is broken but that there are people who want it to be even worse under the delusion that the free market will solve all problems.

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That's another thing, besides the obvious horribleness of having to wait 6 months for treatment, everyone else in my mom's life was sick to their stomach the entire time. My poor dad, I have no idea how he kept it together the last 3 years.

 

[EdibleKnife]

That's another thing, besides the obvious horribleness of having to wait 6 months for treatment, everyone else in my mom's life was sick to their stomach the entire time. My poor dad, I have no idea how he kept it together the last 3 years.

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I can't even imagine. Waiting everyday in a state of near panic while bureaucratic, corporate gears are slowly turning elsewhere wondering if good news will come through. The impact of scares like that are big enough without having to throw money and/or availability into the equation anyway. When you get down to it this system seems to only hurt rather than truly help. Everything about it makes it a process that isn't smooth and barely reliable. It shouldn't have to be this way. Patients and their families should be certain that they can be cared for worry-free with no strings. A health scare shouldn't have to come with also being scared of whether you'll remain financially stable while you recover. That would be humane. Not this shit we have now.

 

[Deleted member 12790]

I can't even imagine. Waiting everyday in a state of near panic while bureaucratic, corporate gears are slowly turning elsewhere wondering if good news will come through. The impact of scares like that are big enough without having to throw money and/or availability into the equation anyway. When you get down to it this system seems to only hurt rather than truly help. Everything about it makes it a process that isn't smooth and barely reliable. It shouldn't have to be this way. Patients and their families should be certain that they can be cared for worry-free with no strings. A health scare shouldn't have to come with also being scared of whether you'll remain financially stable while you recover. That would be humane. Not this shit we have now.

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In a weird way, it all happened at just the right time. My mom finished her radiotherapy just as the outbreak hit the US. She's fine and holed up. They want her to get chemotherapy as well but that's part of an experimental study she is in to see if it'll reduce the chance of occurrence and isn't something immediately necessary. They said they could put it off even a couple of years if necessary so she can wait out the virus. If she was still weak from radiotherapy, this would all be ten times more scary.

 

[Combo]

My cousin was of the view that if we had a true free market for healthcare (which afaik we've never had) with full market exchange, the competition would fill the need for coverage because "if there's a need, competition will serve it".

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Not when monopolies exist or near monopolies. For example in the UK we have some terrible ISPs and we can't find any alternatives. Look it up.

Think about how many times you have had terrible customer service only to find no alternatives. Your cousin is thinking in theory but reality is often different from what people imagine.

 

[Messofanego]

It sounds like your cousin's mind lives in libertarian fantasies and idealised "free market" utopia, maybe because he doesn't want to confront the messy reality.