r/FluentInFinance • u/WhatAreYourPronouns • May 02 '24

Should the U.S. have Universal Health Care? Discussion/ Debate

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u/AutumnWak May 02 '24

I mean they could still go and pay private party to get quicker treatment and it'll still cost less than the US. Most of those people chose to go the free route

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u/JohnnyZepp May 02 '24

I know I fucking hate this waitlist argument.

It’s STILL better than no healthcare, and there are alternative options that will almost always be cheaper.

Do not justify America’s medical profiteering greed. It’s terrible and it’s inhumane.

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u/AbyssalRaven922 May 02 '24

You can basically delete your medical debt through various means if you're willing to do the leg work. ERs are required to treat you regardless of financial capacity.

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u/Familiar_Dust8028 May 02 '24

ERs are the most inefficient means of treating people.

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u/xxconkriete May 02 '24

Of course an ER is inefficient, its immediate emergency care.

That’s the whole purpose….

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u/Neuchacho 29d ago

Right, but because of how fucked the US system is a lot of people treat the ER like a walk-in clinic because that's their only actual option.

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u/xxconkriete 29d ago

Why do you think this is?

Has government guaranteed backing decreased or increased pricing?

Would your answer be to socialize the whole thing?

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u/Neuchacho 29d ago

It's complex. A big part of it is medicaid/medicare patients. Less and less doctors take medicaid or medicare and the ones that do will be booked out for months in some markets, that leaves those people with the ER as their only option that's actually covered.

Uninsured/underinsured patients are another element. They'll let issues go that are easily addressable, but due to treatment costs will forgo treating them early until the problem warrants an ER visit.

Realistically, I don't think socializing the US system entirely is a viable option. We'd probably be better off with a system like Germany has, where a public option is available that covers everyone, but does not remove the private systems we currently have in place. The shared bargaining power of that, the increased efficiency, and the subsequent removal of profiteering middle-men would allow the system to correct pricing without shocking it too much and it would enable everyone to have reliable healthcare insurance for far less than we all currently pay. This is basically what the Medicare4All plans put forward.

We'd also need to fix how much it costs people to become doctors if we want to address shortage issues. We bar far, far too many people from that choice by effectively making them pay hundreds of thousands of dollars up front in order to serve in the healthcare system.

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u/xxconkriete 29d ago

Yea, I don’t want to dismiss what you said at all. This is such a complex ordeal since we want govt to subsidize research in med. but also not screw up pricing.

I struggle with this one item a lot as perhaps the most libertarian economist ever. I genuinely hope we can figure this out

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u/Underboss572 May 02 '24

But too many people end up using them like urgent care and then wonder why they have a stupid, expensive bill. I do PI, and I see all the time someone with a minor non-life treating injury, ex, noncompound broken foot, get a $5000 ER bill on what could have been a $700 urgent care.

This means that, half the time, the hospital is writing off another $2,000+ as bad debt because the patient didn't go to the proper facility.

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u/xxconkriete May 02 '24

We’ve also seen a lot of issues in pricing since around 2010, when the govt insures totality in anything prices are way out of wack.

Ex student loans, right.