The audio is enraging.

So fucked.

But most Americans seem happy with it because they're scared of the word socialism and have the attitude "why should we have to pay for someone else who is sick?"

Plus the amount you guys pay for medicine is criminal.

Look at the rest of the world.

Checking in from Chile. The CIA-backed coup of 1973 established private healthcare here, which is still on force to this day. A decent family health insurance costs roughly one median wage. And you still have to pay for stuff if something happens to you.

It's basically health for the wealthy. They are literally the only social group who can afford good healthcare.

I just googled the median Chilean income. Roughly 28,257,709 CLP.

Which is equal to $42682.70 USD.

Are you saying that family health insurance costs that much per year? Or have i made a mistake in my maths?

What happens if you can't afford insurance?

The median wage in Chile is roughly USD 600 per month! The average wage is around USD 1,400 per month, as Chile is the most unequal country on Earth.

If you can't afford insurance, you have to use the public healthcare system, which I've read and heard is extremely grim. "Women have been known to give birth in toilets because they can't wait anymore"-level of grimness. And, obviously, waiting lists that go for years and years.

And I think you still have to pay for stuff.

If you're poor or middle class and, for example, you suffer a stroke, you and your family may have to declare bankrupcy. Simple as that.

Oh wow. I guess this site is completely inaccurate then, http://www.salaryexplorer.com/salary-survey.php?loc=43&loctype=1

That's where I got the figure from :/

We're brainwashed as fuck here. Do not underestimate our propaganda.

Many of the complaints I hear about paying for other people's health care is that there is little to no incentive for people to live healthy lives.

It's like paying for the gas of someone who drives a gas guzzling truck who uses it for commuting - there will always be people that use more than they contribute and do so with no regard to the costs shouldered by their neighbors.

tragedy of the commons in play.

Gonna propose a pretty controversial topic, but I say once anyone hits the "Obese" part of the BMI chart, instant lap-band or gastric bypass... Against their will if need be. I don't think it's fair that right now obese people are a large part of the cost of health care. link This way, after the surgery, we aren't paying for Chubby McTubberson to wolf down Big Macs and go to the hospital when their diabetes flares up. If that doesn't work then we put them in exercise jail or something.

It's one thing to pay for each other's gas if everyone drives hybrids because when money gets tight we can rely on each other to help us fuel up. But yeah, Mr. Hummer H2 can downsize, and would probably be better off for it anyways.

Your freedom to destroy your body ends when I have to pick up the bill for the damage?

Sucks that we cannot talk about the elephant (heh) in the room when it comes to health care costs.

Gonna propose a relatively uncontroversial topic:

Focus on 1- Mental healthcare 2- Poverty 3- Education, first.

Happy sane intelligent people with a decent income mostly don't want to be fat, and will try not to be. Mental wellbeing can affect eating habits in a negative way. Being poor incentivizes bad eating. And many people are very ignorant when it comes to food and exercise. If they were better informed, this might help the problem.

And it's not just the fat guy who's driving up your health costs. It's the system itself.

I'd say it's more about education, having graphic commercials about the consequences of being overweight and the illnesses it can cause (works for smoking) and put a tax on fast food/junk food and use it to subsidise healthy food.

Here in Aus, a pack of smokes is $30. I nearly fell over when I was in america a few years ago and saw packs of cigarettes for like $3.50 in the south. Our govt tax the shit outta them.

If you did that to fast food/junk food and lowered the price of good healthy produce it would make people change habits.

But I'm guessing the people and corporations behind fast food are pretty powerful and that is an unlikely scenario.

Many of the complaints I hear about paying for other people's health care is that there is little to no incentive for people to live healthy lives.

Isn't the incentive for someone to live a long healthy life enough?

We both know that isn't the case.

But most Americans seem happy with it because they're scared of the word socialism and have the attitude "why should we have to pay for someone else who is sick?"

Yeah, the US Propaganda Machine has done a fantastic job of making the word "Socialism" and all related concepts to be the dirtiest thing imaginable, and Completely Unamerican to the average citizen. Right behind "communism."

I don't know how many here grew up in the 80s like me, but I'm pretty sure I heard the word "commie" thrown around as an insult about a dozen-dozen times, before i even knew what the word meant.

And y'know... if this country were still living like we were in the 1950s... where an average guy could get a decent job and support and entire family on his own, all without having gone to college, I might agree that "The American Way" is superior to "dirty communism."

But you know what? Someone came along, and grabbed "The American Dream," and tied its hands behind its back, and held its head under a toilet bowl, while inviting all their friends to fucking GANG-RAPE it while it drowned to death.

Who's responsible?

Well, who benefitted? Who's got the money and power today? Those are the people who sold out The American Dream for quick profits, and fucked us all.

/rant

Americans are very, very stupid and highly manipulated. At this point, I blame my fellow americans more than anyone else.

I came here to post this.

This transcript pissed me off so much! Nixon was a disgusting human being.

Interesting post. Another reason to hate Nixon.

There's a clip in the Nixon tapes where he's speaking to I think it was Max Keiser, of Keiser HMO's fame, and Nixon just decides profiting from healthcare is a great idea. What a colossal asshole Nixon was.

classic asshole love that!

Capitalism is not a conspiracy and is responsible for the greatest improvement in the lot of the common man in all of human history.

You need a better argument than herp-derp to establish why making a profit while providing a service is "assholian wrong".

I've heard this line too many times. Capitalism is also responsible for the environmental collapse we are all about to face. I give us about 10-20 years. Yeah, having a microwave oven and a nice car in modern times has been nice though.

I, for one, am most grateful for flushing toilets.

I don't know how I could live without my porcelain throne.

Hot showers, man

Well, you can thank the Romans for plumbing, and you can thank Thomas Crapper for the toilets.

I, for one, enjoy Roman numerals.

Indeed. I think I shall go take a number II

The Minoans had running water, baths, flushibg toilets and sewers long before the Romans

Capitalism gave us toilets?

Who knew.

Labor gave us toilets, capitalism stole the profits for a few.

Labor gave us toilets, capitalism gave us shit.

And people looking at each other and seeing dollar signs us read of human beings

The idea that everything has to have a price tag in this world, is going to lead to our demise. Soon, people will convince themselves that only the rich deserve good healthcare. Ethics and morality will become words with no meaning.

Yup either change our ways or die

Soon, people will convince themselves that only the rich deserve good healthcare.

This is already the state of affairs in the United States. Everything is a commodity, eg. health, justice.

The us does have the best healthcare. But best doesn't mean most available, and when it comes to health care I think most Americans are willing to take a tiny hit to the quality of doctors if it means the price lowers enough that it's actually affordable

The us does have the best healthcare.

Not when we have worse outcomes for higher costs.

But when it comes to trauma, yes we're good. Heart surgery? Ditto. So I'd say in certain areas the US has the best healthcare, but not enough areas to claim the title.

I was going to say this. I work in the healthcare industry (3 doctors in my family). We definitely have some flaws, but to just say our healthcare is terrible across the board is ignorant. People from all over the world (including countries with socialized medicine) come to see our heart, brain specialists etc. So sick of people simplifying these issues to continue a lazy narrative. US healthcare is complicated, that's why it's hard to fix. I personally blame the money grubbing insurance companies...

I'm sorry, I wasn't aware that I was saying healthcare in the US was horrible across the board.

Overall we do have worse outcomes for more money. On average. But so far the only long-lasting things that have been done to "improve" our healthcare are to not require a woman to see her doctor just because she has a yeast infection. And to not require a prescription for things like nicotine patches, and the like. But we probably only did that because someone stood to make a profit.

I agree that the healthcare industry in the US has been ruined by the insurance companies. And the industry isn't too hard to fix, there's just no will to have it done by the people who can do something about it.

Might want to check out those infant mortality rates bro...

If you cant even figure out babies, you might not actually have the best healthcare in the world...

But keep drinking that cool aid and chanting USA USA USA

People seem to be unaware that they are the rich for now. What's happening is they're slowly being squeezed out of that class.

Soon? Hasn't that been the Republican argument for a while?

I can go to the best doctor in the world anytime I want, all I need is a half a million dollars upfront. I literally have access to the best medical care on Earth, and all I have to do is get access to that half million dollars.

Good capitalistic hospital: sorry, we won't pay for your very expansive immergency room care visits anymore, it cuts into our profits. However we do offer a complementary euthanasia kit to expedite your freeloading ass to the communal incinerator.

If only suicide and euthanasia were legal...

Oh wow - even when euthanasia is legal suicide will probably still be illegal. :/

suicide will probably still be illegal. :/

Most laws making suicide illegal have been repealed, and the ones that remain are hardly ever enforced.

It can still get you committed because you're 'a danger to yourself or others', but it's not a crime.

Most laws making suicide illegal have been repealed, and the ones that remain are hardly ever enforced.

I think they were kind of hard to enforce anyway. And I'm going to guess that weren't always ignored... It's nice to know they've largely been repealed though!

But they might make a comeback because a successful suicide could be considered that you're depriving the healthcare and pharmaceutical industries of their due profit. ;)

Well, failed suicide attempts could still be punished.

Though it turns out that punishing suicidal people isn't exactly conducive to recovery.

Is that you money? I could use a few more of you moneys... I mean... Uhh... People.

Money is people, my friends...

^/s

And people looking at each other and seeing dollar signscapital instead of human beings

Human capital is a thing in business parlance...

Personally this is why I find the concept of "Human Resources" to be disgusting as well - they're not resources to be burned through like so much kindling, they're people.

Why don't you just off yourself now?

Nah, I'd rather stick around so I can annoy you and watch this whole shit show unfold. Grab a seat a-hole, we're in this thing together.

You're gonna have to get a job eventually when you realize the apocalypse isn't coming and you can't just shirk your responsibilities as an adult.

Hahaha! This kid taking any responsibility? Adult?

Lol. It's poor and sad which is why it wants the world to end.

Capitalism is about free trade, it is just an economical and political system.

What kind of trades? Do we respect environment or not? That is up to citizens. How we use system or modify/replace? Up to the citizens.

For example, green movement and accessibility technology have greatly benefited from capitalism.

...and also for the technology we use to measure the climate, to know that it's changing drastically. It's a vicious circle really.

Better thank our publicly owned/publicly funded research institutions for that one too, my friend. The whole idea of capitalism being solely responsible for all the world's breakthroughs is disingenuous and just mentally lazy.

Blaming money is mentally lazy. Can you name me one technological advancement that did not come from competition of some sort? Everything up to NASA is profit driven.

I think you would do well to re-read my comment, and this time actually pay attention to the words and what they mean.

Lol. K. Nice attempt at trying reeeeeeeeeeeeeeeal hard to sound smart with your awkward ass wording. I do say, good show old bean!

It's all relative, I guess.

Yes. People have been saying this since 1988, and I'm sure before that.

We won't do anything different, and 20 years will come and go and we'll all be fine, same as always.

No thats the fault of the government for.buying patents and sitting on them. We cold have a private and public innovation sector but we dont..

Good leaders + capitalism = economic growth/boom

Corrupt leaders + capitalism = hell

Good leaders + socialism = happy commune (as long as everyone wants to take part)

Corrupt leaders + socialism = hell

Don't really know where i was going with this except that i don't really have a preference. I can see the good in each side and i can also see the bad. Globalism takes the form of the last example, so it may be why so many people seem to be turning towards capitalism right now. Maybe if we can swing center as a country, we can avoid the hells?

& this is exactly why the US supreme court used to hold that wages were taxable. They were not "income" as income had previously been defined to mean a return on an investment.

Those days are long gone.

Heh. I should start claiming lost time and labor as deductions on my taxes.

These things have value, obviously, and I traded them for the wages. Therefore my net income is zero.

Maybe they could stop raising my premiums 30% a year if they stopped paying $60MM to their CEO running a taxpayer subsidized Healthcare system.

60mm to a ceo is hardly the problem (it's crazy exorbitant) the problem is the medical industry and insurance companies working hand in hand to work out ways that we can justify healthcare costs that allow bills like my last emergency room bill.

$4,800

1 shot of morphine 1 shot of steroid 1 cat scan of lower back I talked to two people, was given a scripts for a couple of light pain meds and anti spazmodics.

My insurance covers 80%, so I'm still on the hook for ~$1,200. Now we all know my insurance company is paying nowhere near $3,600 because of "discounts". So for my wife and two kids I pay $700 a month with $1,500 deductible for each and 20% co insurance...if everyone meets their deductibles we are spending around 12k before insurance really kicks in anything.

Now, I have to remind myself from time to time that my insurance company has spent way more on me than I have for them (son has cochlear implants after three pairs of hearing aids, wife had cancer last year, my daughter spent 10 days in the nicu after birth with a helicopter flight to the nearest children's hospital) but those bills are terribly inflated too. They sent me the bill for the helicopter flight...50k... 10 days in the nicu? 280k. Cochlear implant surgery? 75k... never saw any of the bills for the wife's cancer.

Welcome to American healthcare, where the prices are made up and sound economics don’t matter.

The only reason the prices are that high in the first place, is insurance company financial voodoo. I read a great article that explained all this a while back. They charge way more than it's really worth, because insurance companies have the power to negotiate the bill down. You do not. So they will charge you $700 for something that may literally cost them $1, because they expect the insurance company to haggle. Just like when you try to sell something on craigslist, or whatever. Except these pricks are playing with peoples lives and wellbeing.

And of course you and I have zero power to negotiate, like the insurance company does. So if you don't have insurance, or your insurance will only cover so much, you're basically fucked.

This whole system needs to be torn to the ground and rebuilt from the bottom up. The level of corruption, chicanery, and horseshit is too high to ever really fix, I fear, without a complete change...

They don't even haggle. The discounts are pre negotiated

even within trade the exchange is not equal.

the reason i give up x for y is because i think x is less valuable, but someone else finds x is more valuable than y. the result of trade is not equal outcome but a win-win improvement

It's not a win win when someone needs y to survive, and you're artificially raising the price of it. We're talking about people's lives not trading pudding for cookies in the lunchroom.

If you raise prices to the point nobody will buy it, guess what? You won't get shit, and you might get a bullet in the brain. Free market beyotch.

And pharmaceutical companies.

And anything that includes excessive profits for the parasite class in its cost.

the result of trade is not equal outcome but a win-win improvement

Ideally, sure. But it doesn't always wokk that way.

well barring fraud, incompetence or ignorance sure

In fact those wages are inadequate and the employer is making a profit. They should give all the leftover money to the employees at the end of the month.

They do so at end of year and its called 'Bonus'.

Most places don't do that.

I bet most of them do... to only a select few "important" employees.

Haaaaaaaaa. Good one.

What percentage of the profits are mandated by law to be equally distributed to all employees?

Why would anyone start a business and continue to run it without profiting?

The lulz?

Why would anyone do anything without a blatant profit?

Passion?

If our society turned into some kind of paradisal utopia tomorrow, and all my needs were met for free, there are definitely certain types of "work" I would do for free, just because I wanted to. Might be a little harder to come by... I don't know.... doctors or maybe accountants in a world like that. Janitors. Shit-cleaners. lol. I don't claim to have all the answers. I just know our current system is corrupt, unfair, and unsustainable.

The compensation is necessarily less than the value of the laborer's time and skills, since otherwise the capitalist wouldn't hire them. It's not even a trade, much less profit; it's exploitation.

And the worker values the money more than their time. It is not exploitation, it is win-win.

The worker values the wages over his time because capitalism dictates he must. Without ownership of capital, in a capitalist society, the alternative to wages is starvation and death.

Is a fair trade possible if one side has a gun pointed at his head? Is it possible if the gun is pointed at his stomach?

No, reality dictates he must. We need food to survive and in the end the only one really responsible for your life is you.

Now, I think we should take care of people. And in most capitalistic states people don't starve to death. The same is hard to say about states with socialistic governments.

You never know if the compensation/wage is fair, one could be making a profit if he has a higer wage than he should be getting, or making a loss if he is being paid too little, do it is technically possible to make a profit from your wages.

When you voluntarily exchange something (labor/time for money in this case) you valued the thing you were exchanging Less than what you were exchanging it for and therefore, they are not of equal value from the perspective of the individual.

Profit though is best understood through realizing the additional consumption goods gained by the investment into capital goods. The more productive for the same amount of time, the more profit.

It is ones individual productivity that defines its value in this context.

Hello :)

I want to make sure we are defining our terms the same way so that I know that we on the same page as we communicate. When you say that "corporations are people" do you mean that corporations are made up of people whom each own their lives and private property and then choose to contractually relate to each other in certain ways so that profits and be made and distributed within those contractual terms? Or do you mean something else?

There are many concepts wrapped up in conversations like these and I don't want to take any of your positions or world views for granted as being similar to mine.

When you say that "corporations are people" Google the phrase.

Wow I have not heard "Trivium" since I used to listen to the Tragedy and Hope podcast!

I have not heard this corporate personhood term. Thanks for the link. I will read.

Yeah, do look into that. The gist is that legally speaking, corporations are considered to be people. Just like you and I. So from the perspective of the law, General Electric is an actual person (although presumably not a real General. lol)

If corporations have the same rights as people, why do people not have the same rights as corporations?

Interesting question Will. I've seen this sentiment out there and am not sure to what degree this legal concept makes sense or not.

What!? No, the reason why people work is because they value money more than their free time and the reason the employer hires workers is because they value the workers time more than they value the money. Both parties get something more valuable (for them, as value is completely subjective) in exchange for something less valuable (again, for them). Thus both parties profit from the employer/employee relationship.

No, they are not exchanging something of equal value! That's the whole point. They value things differently.

Yes, that is exactly why paid labor is not immoral. Workers aren't exploited. They profit from labor, much more than if they would have worked the land for food themselves.

We have similar tax advantages, they are called deductions. The difference is that we don't itemize each transaction.

As I said, I believe there should be more deductibles. One shouldn't need to pay taxes on the amount of income that corresponds to the poverty level. That should cover tax free acquisition of most essential products for most people.

They profit from labor, much more than if they would have worked the land for food themselves.

This may have been true once upon a time, but I don't think it is any longer. That only works when those who own the means of production share some of those profits among the workers, in the form of higher wages. Wages have not kept up with inflation for a very long time now. Workers are being exploited.

No, the reason why people work is because they value money more than their free time and the reason the employer hires workers is because they value the workers time more than they value the money.

As an aside here: Many, if not most people value their time far more than what they're actually being paid for it, and only accept the pay they do, because they haven't found anyone willing to pay them more.

So it's not like this is a perfectly fair arrangement, and most people participating are content with the deal. The company hiring is usually getting a much better deal than the person being hired. If they weren't, then the company would be making less profits.

So most people are paid less than their time is actually worth. Yay for economic coercion!

Many, if not most people value their time far more than what they're actually being paid for it, and only accept the pay they do, because they haven't found anyone willing to pay them more.

No, they don't. If they valued their time more than the money they get paid then they wouldn't work. It is as simple as that. But of course they want to be paid more, everyone does.

Exchanging something of equal value is not profit. Therefore a person laboring cannot technically make "profit" from their wages. Since you are trading your time and skills for compensation of equal value in money.

This. But in reality, it's much worse than that for many. Especially those working for minimum wage. I'm sorry, but with the current value of the dollar, in this economy, just about any person's time / labor should be worth more than a measly $7-8 per hour. That's practically legalized wage slavery.

People making a real living wage are the ones trading their time for what it's worth. Everyone else is getting ripped off. Cheated.

profit is a risk premium that is built into the price. there is always a risk premium

Capitalism is not a conspiracy and is responsible for the greatest improvement in the lot of the common man in all of human history.

Except for kicking all those people of the land through the enclosure acts in England and American-Indian wars in the States, and then passing legislation forcing people to become wage laborers and create the working class. Primitive accumulation is a process still going on in different parts of the world.

Then making sure that any value system and any communal arrangement is destroyed or becomes subservient to capital accumulation.

Then making sure that education systems are created where we can be trained to be nice docile workers.

Then fighting wars to acquire resources and open up markets.

All the while treating the planet as an infinite reserve of resources and an infinite garbage can.

You need a better argument than herp-derp to establish why making a profit while providing a service is "assholian wrong".

Because the service is a cost you will minimize what you actually provide all the while maximizing the price, therefore providing people with worse quality and higher price.

What you described doesn't sound like capitalism it sounds like state sanctioned regressive bullshit that purposefully makes it easier for the wealthy to gain more wealth.

So you're saying it sounds like Late Stage Capitalism instead, then?

There is nothing capitalism about it. It's a form of state sanctioned handouts. One could even argue it's socialism. THough in a very different form from what everyone thinks of as socialism.

What's Capitalism if not maximising profit while minimising costs and controlling the means of production? And if it's not that, has whatever it is ever actually existed beyond some bright eyed AnCap discussions?

Capitalism is a means of free trade. Restricting that trade to the point where it's only in the hands of a few is certainly not capitalism. While my boyfriend likes to argue that it's socialism, I'll just argue that it's a very broken and unrepresentative government that allows shit like that to happen. It's also a reason why I think stronger state governments should be a thing. Calling it late stage capitalism is just a red herring for the bigger problem of having a corrupt government. And switching economic systems won't stop the government from being corrupt. Just see Uncle Joe.

It has nothing to do with free trade. Such profound ignorance.

No, just no.

If it looks like capitalism and it behaves like capitalism, it's capitalism.

Capitalism is a means of free trade.

Free Trade is a means of free trade, and it can exist under any economic model if it's allowed.

"Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of the means of production and their operation for profit", and the mixed economy is a form of capitalism.

Restricting that trade to the point where it's only in the hands of a few is certainly not capitalism.

Trade isn't restricted "to the few" though. You participate in it all the time, and if you have capital you can engage in it too. It's not a closed system, though you'd be hard pressed to actually get to a point where you have any say in the means of production.

And switching economic systems won't stop the government from being corrupt.

Corruption, as it currently exists, is generally a means to increase your own wealth, right? If anything shady is going on the mantra is follow the money.

So what happens if there's no money, and production is controlled collectively? I don't think I have to spell it out.

Just see Uncle Joe.

Stalin was authoritarian. It's not restricted to Communism. He used his position at the head of a strong, centralised, government for his personal gain and was by most accounts ruthless in supporting the mechanism that allowed him to exist in that way.

Calling it late stage capitalism is just a red herring for the bigger problem of having a corrupt government.

Calling it late stage capitalism is calling a duck a duck, assuming you subscribe to the duck-naming economic theories. All of the negatives are symptomatic of a capitalist society, regardless of how socialised it is, and can't be solved by legislation or governance, as the mechanisms of capitalism are already so firmly entrenched and, to badly quote Mr Lenin, "there are no hopeless situations for capitalism".

You can't just say that "capitalism isn't the problem, it's the way in which it's being used!" any more than you can say that "releasing carbon into the atmosphere isn't causing climate change, it's the way in which it's being released!". Capitalism is enabling all of these shitty things, and using it in a different way or dismissing it as "not real capitalism" won't changed the fact that it's real and it's fucking over millions of people all the time.

Whew, such edge, comrade!

the quote you're debating against isn't really from this poster, it's from a nobel prize winning economist. and it is true, that throughout history the only proven way of improving the situation of everyone has been capitalism

there is room for profit in healthcare, as it drives better service, innovation, etc - but the system we have now is a government enforced oligopoly by multiple ways.

Because the service is a cost you will minimize what you actually provide all the while maximizing the price, therefore providing people with worse quality and higher price.

stuff like this shows how little of economics a lot of people understand. without the huge government barriers, if your insurance company is providing a shitty service at $100/mo, and I realize I can provide equal or better service for cheaper, i will do it and take all your customers. when you get companies competing against each other, that's how the average person wins. when you have the BS we have now, you get the healthcare sector being the strongest in the S&P500 starting when obama took office

That's not capitalism. That's greed and corruption

Hey now.

It's not like he's posting from a capitalist made computer on a capitalist made computer network on a capitalist made website supported by capitalist made web advertisements while typing on a capitalist made keyboard while sitting on capitalist made chair while drinking a capitalist made soda and eating capitalist made chips while his capitalist made smartphone rings in the background and his capitalist made television provides background entertainment through a capitalist made programming package as he rids his body of chlamydia with capitalist made penicillin provided by capitalist run health care system........ at the ass end of winter sitting in his capitalist made house heated by his capitalist made central heating.

People make things, you're onto something here!

Gork the caveman wouldn't have invented the wheel or the pulley or the lever or harnessed fire if there was no profit motive after all! He did it for the dividends!

It's seems more to me that people's desire to create things is a basic drive regardless of their social and economic systems.

There is an insurmountable difference between inventing a singular wheel, and mass producing billions of wheels of various make, shape, sizes for use all over the planet over hundreds of years.

The sheer amount of natural resource gathering, engineer, production hurdles, shipping requirements, sales, disposal; literally everything is capitalistically motivated. Capitalism has created everything.

Capitalism has created everything.

Completely silly.

No, monarchy created everything, we've got to go back to that! There was no science before Feudalism! Sumerian economics came first, we wouldn't be here with out them, we need to go back to that! etc etc.

I... I... think I love you.

Careful I'm just some fringe weirdie on the internet! :D

Love you too!

He listed things that came after capitalism was widespread. You can argue they would have happened anyways, but you'd have a hard time of it.

Necessity is the mother of invention; not profits.

the fulfilment of neccessity IS profit.

It's valuable but it's not profit.

Found the Ferengi.

Lol how anyone could downvote or disagree with that statement is beyond me. Linguistically its self obvious.

If you do accomplish something, you have profited from your efforts.

There's no disputing that.

One of the rules for ferengis is "deep down everyone is a ferengi.

In my experience people advocating that capitalism is inherently evil have been the most self serving and untrustworthy people.

The kind of people who are the crabs in the bucket and feel completely justified to steal from you and fuck you over in outrageous ways, even if you are actively helping them, just because you have things they dont have.

Also. The fulfillment of necessity is innovation; not profits.

You do not understand the difference between invention and mass production.

Spoken like someone who's never truly created anything of value, and if so, certainly not at any real risk.

Computers were invented by government scientists.

The internet too.

Government scientists didn't mass produce the computers used by billions around the world. Capitalism did.

You guys fail to understand the difference between inventing a single idea or product, and mass production.

Actually communism mass produced them in China.

CPU's are not only NOT manufactured in China, China's manufacturing is highly Capitalistic.

America and europe are socialist.

Capitalism has killed more people than any other philosophy.

Capitalism is directly responsible for bringing billions and billions of people out of poverty, and Communism has killed the most people.

Lies

More lies

Can't tell if trolling or dumb.

Can't tell if trolling or dumb.

You're a fake anti capitalist anyway, as you sit there posting on a Capitalist made computer and on a Capitalist computer network.

Go live in the woods instead of living the life of a hypocrite.

You're a fake anti socialist anyway, as you sit there posting in a socialist supported home and live on socialized healthcare and writing words taught by socialist education.

Go live in the woods instead of living the life of a hypocrite.

socialist supported home

Wrong.

live on socialized healthcare

Wrong.

socialist education on a internet that is provided by socialist monopolies.

All Wrong.

socialist supported home

Wrong.

live on socialized healthcare

Wrong.

socialist education on a internet that is provided by socialist monopolies.

All Wrong

No you're wrong.

Would you say he deserves capital punishment?

Labor made that stuff, capitalism did nothing and demands the largest share of the rewards.

Labor incentivized by Capitalism. Labor doesn't mass produce for shits and giggles. Workers don't sweat in a rubber factory for 60 hours a week because it feels good to make tires for other people.

Labor is forced toil due to the custom of inherited property, otherwise we would be free to work the land and enjoy free time to produce all that we need. Unfortunately the unnatural virus of capitalism has enslaved many minds, and through violence those diseased minds have created a system that forces people to work many times what they need to so the parasite class can have ever more than they ever need. Is a mugging victim incentivized to give up their wallet by having a gun shoved in their face?

We can have the free and open exchange of ideas, goods, and services without trying to win one over on the other guy, trying to extract more profit than the work and material that went into something.

Our current system is not ideal, it seeks to expand infinitely in a finite space with finite resources, for the sole sake of generating money instead of actual value. We can do better than this, our system turns plunderers into kings, gangsters into politicians, monopolies into governments. Imagining it to be the only thing that works and the only thing that could work is silly.

Because the stock market exists and is linked to most people's retirement, generating money is important. If my company provides value at cost, my competitor (who turns a profit) will be able to not only reinvest in his company, but return dividends to shareholders.

It's definitely not a perfect system, and a "free market" doesn't always mean a competitive market (which is more important imo). However, I think the right type of capitalism with effective government regulation can be good for a country.

even at cost is subjective, and within cost a risk premium is built (profit)

I agree yet I see where our culture can become to consumer based and we end up working way to many hours making all kinds of shit no one actually needs. I think we could work less hours and spend our resources on making quality rather than quantity

So don't spend your money on shit you don't need? Who are you to say that someone doesn't need what they want to purchase?

People spend their lives manufacturing MARGERINE. Margerine is a synthetic vegetable oil derived "spread" shudders. It's an insult to humanity to feed our fellow humans this cancerous excuse for a food. But the market allows disgusting products like margerine to be produced and marketed when its cancerous poison. WE DONT NEED PEOPLE SPENDING THEIR LIVES AND LABOUR MAKING MARGERINE. ITS SOMETHING WE COULD DO WITHOUT. Unless your pro cancer.

I'd rather have people make margarine by choice than support the enslavement of cows in the milk industry.

Good for you lad.

Move to North Korea or Venezuela.

Says a 1 percenter, or wannabe.

If you live in the US, you're a "1 percenter"

Compared to the rest of the world, I guess. Sorry, but I didn't have any choice about where I was born.

However, I'm using the term as it was originally coined, and the topic is about the US, so...

I'm tired of wealth redistribution in the form of my tax dollars subsidizing the 1% (or .1%) - because they need the help...

What do you have against universal healthcare? Healthier, more productive workers! Happier, too. But they'd probably live longer and that's not necessary anymore - especially when robots take all the jobs.

Compared to the rest of the world, I guess. Sorry, but I didn't have any choice about where I was born.

Exactly the same argument any "1 percenter" could use. Thanks for making my point for me.

However, I'm using the term as it was originally coined, and the topic is about the US, so...

The term as it was originally coined was hopelessly naive and incredibly offensive to the rest of the world.

I'm tired of wealth redistribution in the form of my tax dollars subsidizing the 1% (or .1%) - because they need the help...

I'm guessing the workers in developing nations living off $1/day are tired of their wealth being distributed to your lazy American ass (and mine).

What do you have against universal healthcare? Healthier, more productive workers! Happier, too. But they'd probably live longer and that's not necessary anymore - especially when robots take all the jobs.

I have nothing against it as a concept, but I have a lot against it as a practice. There are no solvent universal healthcare systems in the world. It is far from a solved problem. I don't believe in positive rights.

I don't believe in positive rights.

What about the right to a speedy trial?

I'm not sure I would call that a positive right. It's more like a right to not be detained indefinitely.

Okay, then using that same logic, isn't healthcare just the right to life?

No, because it's not the right to life. If you contract a disease, and you force someone else to treat you for that disease, that's a positive right. If someone else infected you with that disease on purpose, though, they would be violating your negative right to life.

But forcing judges and public counsel to give you a speedy trial isn't a positive rights?

When you are charged with a crime, that is done at the request of someone else, and it's an eminent threat to your basic negative rights. So asking that the criminal justice system that is threatening your negative rights do so in a way that minimizes the damage to those rights should you be found innocent doesn't seem like a positive right to me. Because you're innocent until proven guilty, requiring that your negative rights be honored until such time you are proven guilty isn't a positive right.

So you agree that positive duties can be required in order to fulfill a negative right? (Judges, lawyers, juries, etc.)

No. Negative rights are bestowed by God (or whatever you consider transcendent), and exist whether or not someone enforces them. Retaliation against someone attempting to violate my negative right is justified , such as defending my home from an intruder, but forcing someone provide that defense is not.

Exactly the same argument any "1 percenter" could use. Thanks for making my point for me.

Dude, quit trying to change the argument and quit trying to make it about me.

And tell me, just how, in my conceived-but-as-yet-unborn state I was supposed to make my parents move anyplace?

The term as it was originally coined was hopelessly naive and incredibly offensive to the rest of the world.

Whatever. I'm sorry that the US is full of a bunch of clueless and greedy assholes.

I'm guessing the workers in developing nations living off $1/day are tired of their wealth being distributed to your lazy American ass (and mine).

How so.

I have nothing against it as a concept, but I have a lot against it as a practice. There are no solvent universal healthcare systems in the world. It is far from a solved problem. I don't believe in positive rights.

I think your original premise - that if you don't like capitalism the only alternatives are communism as practiced in Venezuela or NK is a false dichotomy.

And I don't see why you're arguing that healthcare should be a for-profit business when the post is clearly about "when it was better".

Dude, quit trying to change the argument and quit trying to make it about me.

Well, you kinda made it about me when you said "Says a 1 percenter, or wannabe."

And tell me, just how, in my conceived-but-as-yet-unborn state I was supposed to make my parents move anyplace?

Well, I can't. But you also have to acknowledge that a lot of "1 percenters" also had no choice about being born in the "1 percent", just like you were born in the 1 percent by being an American citizen. The point is, stop focusing on shit that people had no control over and focus on improving your own situation.

Whatever. I'm sorry that the US is full of a bunch of clueless and greedy assholes.

Well, you're one of em'. Maybe you should start paying reparations to developing nations?

How so.

Well, they're building all the products that we use and enjoy on a daily basis, and doing it for wages far below our minimum wage and in conditions far worse than our labor laws allow. The computer you're happily typing away on was built by them. They're subsidizing your fat, greedy, lazy American lifestyle.

I think your original premise - that if you don't like capitalism the only alternatives are communism as practiced in Venezuela or NK is a false dichotomy.

You got me here. My comment was snarky and did rely on a false dichotomy. Allow me to step back from it a bit and say that there is a proper balance that needs to be struck between socialism and capitalism, but that in my opinion the balance should lean more toward free-market capitalism.

And I don't see why you're arguing that healthcare should be a for-profit business when the post is clearly about "when it was better".

Well it's the "when it was better" part I would disagree with. You'd have to define what you mean by "better". When people rail against "profits" they typically reveal a lack of basic understanding about risk/reward and how it relates to innovation and economic growth. More often than not, it reveals an underlying adherence to Marxism.

Well, you kinda made it about me when you said "Says a 1 percenter, or wannabe."

True. But the entirety of your response to the other guy was "move". And to North Korea? Come on. As I said, a false dichotomy.

But you also have to acknowledge that a lot of "1 percenters" also had no choice about being born in the "1 percent",

The .1%, sure. But when you consider that doctors and lawyers and dentists and architects are also in the 1%, not so much.

just like you were born in the 1 percent by being an American citizen.

Since you insist on continuing to use/misuse the term, at least use it properly and say "global 1%".

The point is, stop focusing on shit that people had no control over and focus on improving your own situation.

Oh, because of course this is America. Work hard and make all the right decisions and you, too, will be in the 1%. Except that's not the real world.

Well, they're building all the products that we use and enjoy on a daily basis, and doing it for wages far below our minimum wage and in conditions far worse than our labor laws allow.

Not my choice. You're attacking me for the decisions made by greedy capitalists. Because they weren't making a large enough profit before.

They're subsidizing your fat, greedy, lazy American lifestyle.

Again, where's my choice? When I can buy American I do. When I can buy European I do. And I'll thank you to not assume (or project) the adjectives.

You'd have to define what you mean by "better". When people rail against "profits" they typically reveal a lack of basic understanding about risk/reward and how it relates to innovation and economic growth. More often than not, it reveals an underlying adherence to Marxism.

I think your belief is bullshit. What risk is being rewarded? Capitalism as it's currently practiced in this country - and been exported to the entire effing world - depends upon "risk" entirely borne by the government (in other words, taxpayers) and rewards entirely going to the so-called risk-takers.

You think any corporation expands anywhere these days without some guarantee of profit before the first architect gets a paper cut?

Showers 1% of days.

Not everything in a capitalist country needs to be strictly capitalist. In fact, I would argue that in order for capitalism to flourish, socialist concessions need to be made to keep the less fortunate comfortable enough that they dont choose to abort the whole system by force

nope.

It's simple maths.

America pays a larger percentage of its gdp towards healthcare than the countries who used a socialist (or part socialist) system

It's obviously going to be more efficient if nobody is skimming profit off the top (not to mention the millions employed by the insurance industry to make sure your policy covers almost nothing)

Because we subsidize the medical innovations all the socialist countries benefit from.

Subsidize them, how? By making them a giant dependent market that virtually guarantees profit from all the innovation and research we do?

So, the same way the third world benefits from the way we subsidized the industrial revolution.

Because those markets are single payer, their governments are able to negotiate prices down below true market value because of the lack of competition. Any profit that eliminates for the drug company offering the drug there now needs to be made up for elsewhere, and that elsewhere is the U.S.

Of course, we're rich as fuck and don't have single payer, so the the prices can be set much higher without stifling demand. With those high prices, medical product companies are still able to earn a profit, although much less than if less countries had single payer. If those profits were to vanish—or worse, become losses—that would dry up all new investments in private medical innovation and capital would seek other industries like software or real estate in search of a return.

Of course you'll probably say good riddance because nobody should profit from the health care industry. But I would ask yourself why health care is any more fundamental to our happiness and well being than food, energy, information access, clothing, housing, etc., all of which yield profits for investors.

If you believe all profit is bad, well, then I'm afraid we're unlikely to learn much from each other in this thread.

So, the same way the third world benefits from the way we subsidized the industrial revolution.

No. Not in the same way at all.

Wow, slot of mental loop holes you have to jump through to come to some of the conclusions you've implied.

let's just take information access as an example. An industry that has taken billions in public funds from state, city and federal governments contracts to ensure its citizens have access to broad band and then abandoned those plans, conspires with competition to drive up prices while driving down quality and provided legendarily terrible customer service all mingled with fraudulent charges.

Do you want to do the energy sector with its billions in subsidies provided by public tax dollars?

Perhaps you want to do housing which has brought the US to an all time low of house ownership and economic decimation while chasing profit?

It seem perhaps your argument is clearly disingenuous or grossly ignorant of the problem and avoidance by the industry.

It seems that you feel like the private profits are great for the health industry despite all of the problems it causes ( unnecessarily dangerous drugs in the market, insurance companies dropping customers who get sick, refusing to cover people who are sick) but when someone collectively bargain for prices suddenly it's unfair.

That's like saying boats are great except for the water.

i'm not sure how common it is, but so far every person I know in the UK and Canada pay for their own private type of insurance in addition to the 'free' one. they aren't rich people either

It's obviously going to be more efficient if nobody is skimming profit off the top

private businesses are more efficient than government run ones. the problem isn't that there are people profiting from it, it's due to the government helping create only a select few who can compete against each other

I heard Canadians were flocking across the border to go bankrupt in our hospitals rather than waiting a couple months for a procedure that could easily wait a couple months.

Which is really just some horseshit Republicans tell themselves so they won't feel stupid for fighting for other people's right to profit off of our illness.

every person you know in the UK pays for private healthcare??

Bullshit. I'm from the UK, and I don't know a single person who is private

private businesses are more efficient than government run ones. the problem isn't that there are people profiting from it, it's due to the government helping create only a select few who can compete against each other

Which is also not true. As every European country with universal healthcare spends less as a percentage of GDP on healthcare than the US

As a Canadian, I feel the need to correct your statement a little bit.

Yes, you are technically correct that just about everyone has secondary "private" health insurance. This is generally done through peoples employers and a deduction is taken off that vast majority of peoples paycheques for it. As for me, my company pays the insurance fee for me, so I'm one of the lucky few that don't have to pay for my own private insurance.

However, the private insurance generally covers the 3 things that the government plan doesn't. Namely, Dental, Vision and Prescription drugs. They also handle things like short term disability, long term disability, medical devices, etc. etc. that a person outside of a hospital in Canada is not covered for.

However, anything, literally ANYTHING medical in nature given in a hospital is "free" (free being in quotes because we pay for it through taxes). Most people hear about wait times. Yes, this is true, because there are a lot of people who need their hips/knees/joints replaced and only so many operating rooms. If you can afford to wait, you wait. If you can't afford to wait, you're seen immediately.

I've been to the ER exactly once. I had severe, debilitating pain in my back/left side. The triage nurse at the hospital took one look at me, and didn't even ask to see my health card before I was whisked away to the front of the line of ~30 other people in the ER. I was seen immediately by a doctor, had a diagnosis, a morphine drip, my own bed, and a CT scan to confirm the diagnosis. Turns out it was a kidney stone. I walked out of the hospital with a prescription, so urine funnels, and an appointment with a urologist in 2 weeks. Total cost to me: $0.

I broke my wrist a few years back. The doctor that I saw didn't feel comfortable fixing it with the amount of damage there was. 1 week later I'm seeing a specialist. 1 week after that I'm in surgery having everything fixed. Antibiotics, pain killers, etc. 1 week after the surgery and my cast comes off, the health care team refers me to physiotherapy. 2 months of physio exercises, going in to see a therapist once a week to return full motion and flexibility to my primary wrist. Total cost to me: $0.

I have experienced the socialized medicine you people seem to be so scared of. We have some of the best care in the world, and, more importantly, EVERYONE has access to it. Sure, there are people who don't have family doctors that plug up ERs. Sure, there are wait times for non-life threatening problems. However, it can be flexible when it needs to.

Back to my kidney stone... I was travelling a lot for work at the time, and my stone was stuck between my kidney and bladder. I couldn't travel to the US where a majority of our clients were because the insurance called it a "pre-existing condition" and wouldn't cover me. After 6 weeks of "wait-and-see" I finally said to my urologist that this was affecting my job since I was grounded. I had surgery scheduled next week.

The Canadian health care system is not the boogey man your Republicans make it out to be.

Ah yes, short term gains.

at the end of the month whatever money you didn't spend

Ah, it's clear you don't understand the people you are talking down to. The thing you described here doesn't exist for them. Yet the huge companies they work for bring home massive amounts of money; to them that's capitalism.

You need a better argument than herp-derp to establish why making a profit while providing a service is "assholian wrong".

Completely different aspect when it comes to the health and well being of people.

Capitalism works great in mangy cases but the reason it is wrong to apply to healthcare cones down to supply and demand. Supply and demand for a product the consumer chooses to buy works well at maintaining fair prices but healthcare demand by the consumer is not a choice. When you are sick you need healthcare which inevitably everyone needs at some point. Thus the endless demand for it. By allowing profits on this you end up with rising costs that the consumer had no choice but to accept and had no leverage to drive the price down. Take for instance out ever rising drug prices. The pharma companies can charge whatever they want for a life saving drug because the demand is always there. If you don't think it's a dick move to charge someone a huge amount for a pill or they die than I don't know what is.

https://i.imgflip.com/1lifrx.jpg

Americans pay way too much for mediocre healthcare, which most Americans are not satisfied with. When I see healthcare companies dropping coverage for someone because their needs are too expensive, and the company just gets to revert to the old standby: "Sorry, we have to think of our shareholders", you get a sense of how this system isn't about making our healthcare system high quality for the American people, but making money for investors & shareholders. For something as basic & fundamental as healthcare in a modern society, it seems like a detriment to that society to make the first focus be all about the capital that can be generated for investors. I wouldn't have a problem with it if we were the best healthcare on the planet with a high rate of satisfaction.. But we are most definitely NOT.

This is our healthcare system in America. But don't worry, complaints like mine & a million other people don't mean shit, because these companies spend a lot of money lobbying, and that means they won't have anything to worry about & business & profits will remain good for them.

So much for the Hippocratic Oath though..

Are you bitter because if your own inadequacy or because no one loves you?

nixon took us off the gold standard doncha get it they have robbed us blind ever since!

Its an assholian thing because it concentrates almost all wealth on the hands of the 1% while exploring the labor of the majority, which could have a way better life if the wealth was distributed. Its specially disusting when the service provided is an universal right, such as health or food. They are even pushing for water!

You can also say "herp derp greatest improvement for the commom man", but if you stopped gazing at your own navel you would see 15 million people die annualy due to avoidable poverty in the world, according to UNICEF. So while we could be making life better for everyone, well, whatever, lets profit instead. Its criminal.

Also yea, great last argument. Obviously the problem is the American Medical Association, not the private capital that bribes its members to fit their agenda. Herp derp indeed.

Oh, indignant and ignorant.

I like how the first part of your comment is willfully ignorant and the second part makes it obvious how little grasp you have on the subject despite your fervor.

Of course the third part is just parroting talking points you clearly don't understand.

Now to the "asshole" proof:

Healthcare Insurers refusing to cover pre-existing condition: An industry that serves the purpose of meeting a need such as health care that refuses to meet that need based on the lack of profitability is exactly why it was illegal to profit from health care and is only 1 example of the biggest asshole move.

I don't see it as a case of morality. The regu

This guy hasn't read Das Capital...

False dichotomy!

You want to go EXTREME?!

OK..

That we can't sell meth, heroine and crack on the open market is an assault against fundamental rights. I should also be able to sell tanks and nuclear materials too.

To restrict any industry is to restrict all industry. Let the capital flow!

Profiting off medicine incentivizes inflating prices to make money off of a market that largely cannot shop around for better prices and is required by humans for a good quality of life. We got what we predicted from doing so. We got high prices and many people going without medical care.

I know, we could privatize fire fighting, police, road maintenance funding, the military and other government services. That will lead to more freedom and prosperity, because capitalism just kicks so much ass.

Capitalism is not a conspiracy and is responsible for the greatest improvement in the lot of the common man in all of human history.

Capitalism includes the very definition of conspiracy -- people colluding in secret, for a particular aim.

As for your example:

If you think I'm an asshole now then at the end of the month whatever money you didn't spend, take it and return it to your employer because making a profit makes you an asshole and you don't want to be an asshole, right?

You're either being purposefully disingenuous, or your logical faculties are so out of order it's amazing. Trading labor for wages is not the same thing as profit from a business. In one, you're using the only capital a poor worker has -- their body and time, to expend work to earn a small reward.

In business you use your capital, (combined with the economic coercion inherent in the capitalist system) to convince many poor workers to expend their energey, to run your business, so you can make large profits. Each worker helps to make your company $X per day, and only receive a small percentage of that for their own labor.

So "profiting" from one's own labor, and profiting off of the labor of others, are two very different concepts.

Keep on figuratively sucking the cock of one of the biggest villains in US politics though. It's a great way to illustrate to everyone else how bad your thought process is.

https://youtu.be/3qpLVTbVHnU?t=37s

Jesus, look how much he blinks after lying so horribly

https://youtu.be/3qpLVTbVHnU?t=108

I know someone who blinks when they talk and I don't think they're lying but I so find it very suspicious.

As for tricky Dick, the only time he wasn't lying is when he was sleeping.

No way man, he was even lying in bed! ... painful groans

Ehrlichman: “This … this is a …”

President Nixon: “I don’t [unclear] …”

Ehrlichman: “… private enterprise one.”

President Nixon: “Well, that appeals to me.”

Ehrlichman: “Edgar Kaiser is running his Permanente deal for profit. And the reason that he can … the reason he can do it … I had Edgar Kaiser come in … talk to me about this and I went into it in some depth. All the incentives are toward less medical care, because …”

President Nixon: [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: “… the less care they give them, the more money they make.”

President Nixon: “Fine.” [Unclear.]

Ehrlichman: [Unclear] “… and the incentives run the right way.”

President Nixon: “Not bad.”

Can we go piss on Nixon's grave? Not just for this, but for this and a lot more...

Sounds good to me. Personally, I'd like to shit on Cheney's and Kissinger's even more so.

Cheney and Kissinger are still alive, so perhaps we can piss on them before they die. LOL.

I'd love to go all Abu Ghraib on any of them. Right here, right now.

Certainly not praise them like Republicans and Democrats, or dance with them like liberals, but throw them in prison

They'd like it though.

Probably...

well if they had a family plot or something you might be able to go piss on where they may be buried in the future at some point

Add in Albright as well - she's cut from the same evil cloth as Kissinger

How about the president who presided over more wars than any before him? Or how about the president who allowed the CIA to traffic tons of cocaine through his state when he was a governor?

Why can't you see you are looking at two sides of the same coin?

took us offa the gold standard we have been robbed ever since

I've been studying a lot of Nixon recently and I really feel like we're currently sitting through the reign of Nixon 2.0.

I'm not sure he's in a grave. At least his head is preserved somewhere. I saw this on TV

It is at his library:

https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=1418

We would have to infiltrate. Maybe use "water" balloons. LOL.

here's where I saw what I'm talking about

It seems legit

Oh. I stand corrected. Great find! Maybe he is still directing events from his jar.

Really? You don't even understand the context and half of it is inaudible and you're going to commend him?

You meant condemn. Hell yes. It's perfectly clear what they are saying.

I agree with /u/Faggotitus , it's hard to make out 20-30% of this, and from what we can make out, The simplistic narrative that Nixon is some super-villain intent on destroying the american people doesn't make a lot of sense, its possible but seems too illogical to me, Nixon wasn't stupid.

Why and to what end? how would he benefit from that more than he's going to suffer for it?

Here's the conversation in context: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Transcript_of_taped_conversation_between_President_Richard_Nixon_and_John_D._Ehrlichman_(1971)_that_led_to_the_HMO_act_of_1973:

Fine post, OP. I'm not really surprised no one responds. Few people dig very deep anymore. ADD is real. It's all about sensationalist headlines, soundbites, one-liners, et al.

So, Republican Nixon and his corporate buddy Edgar Kaiser shafted us all? No matter. They're gotta cover that political party ass. Cognitive dissonance is a helluva drug.

Rarely see soad being referenced, or at the very least, applicable .

I didn't know this. But I have been saying since Obamacare that they are acting just like modern medicine. They are trying to treat they symptom instead of the cause of the problem. The problem is the outrageous cost of health care and medicine.

did you know during obama's presidency, the healthcare sector stocks outperformed the rest of the market?

The market was pulled down by the fall in price of commodities and oil. A lot of sectors outperformed the market because of this.

Exactly!

When you only treat the symptoms and not the problem you can keep making money!

I've got some-opiod induced constipation medicine I'd like to discuss with you...

We love you man!

And to be clear, it wasn't illegal for the insurance companies to make money, it was illegal for them to make unlimited money - they were non-profit organizations which meant they were limited to (I believe) 12% profits.

Which meant they were obliged to reinvest any money they made above 12% profit margins into things like patient care.

And Obamacare reinstated limits on Insurance company profits, holding them to 20% for small groups and 15% for large groups. Of course Trump and the Republican party have eliminated this provision from their Trumpcare bill.

This is why I don't like the "both parties are the same" rhetoric. There are many ways in which they are beholden to the same interests and many obvious problems with both institutions and specific people from both institutions, it is true indeed, but on this and many other things - including a host of social issues - there are tremendous differences.

Though I have to wonder how many of the Dems were only supporting it for appearances, and would have dropped their support the moment it looked like it might actually pass...

I get the feeling that the Dems often set themselves up to fail on anti-corporatist issues, then use that as an opportunity to blame the other side. It's like they're trying to be the anti-big-business party ... as long as they don't have to actually hurt big business.

Except, I don't any members of the Democratic party supporting the new Republican healthcare plan and I have no doubt that if either party is going to work towards something like universal healthcare it clearly isn't the right. Even a difference diligently maintain for appearances is a difference; I don't think that's it, though.

Both parties are certainly too close to corporate interests, but I only have to look at history since the last party re-alignment to know that - even so - all the "both parties are just the same lolol" talk is typically a facile attempt to justify supporting Republican policies over people's own best interests. Like, "I know their tax plan sucks for me and my family, but both parties are just the same lololol". Well, even if one party is supporting restricting insurance company over-profiting for the sake of keeping up appearances and the other party doesn't give a shit about keeping up appearances, that's a profound difference.

So you think the democratic party is superior?

I think the Democratic party imposed limits on insurance industry profiteering and the Republicans seek to blatantly remove them. I think the Republican party has been selling the public a big lie about deficit spending and taxes - and their role in such things. I think that even if the only difference between the parties was that one was more blatant in their crony capitalist antics, it definitely wouldn't be the sort of difference that would encourage me to support that party. I stand a better chance of influencing the Democratic party than those who have been pushing a reverse Robinhood ideology since Reagan. Do I think the Democratic party is superior to the Republican party? In what way? Enough so that the only Republican I've ever voted for was a well-loved state comptroller who considered his position nonpartisan, at any rate.

That's exactly what they did.

http://www.salon.com/2010/02/23/democrats_34/

Ah, fuck.

Looks like I'm voting Green in the next election, too.

Ha voting, like that's going to do anything.

Yeah, true...

As soon as anyone actually good manages to get some influence, they'll wind up dead. This country is so fucked.

Not if you kill them first

Vote local.

The presidential race may be a giant fucking sham, but we may still have some level of influence on the state / local level. And that is important. Trump can only do so much damage by himself...

Yeah, keep splitting that vote down.

Y'know if more people had only voted third party in the last election... Trump would have won the popular vote by a goddamn landslide and then we wouldn't be able to point to the electoral college as a broken corrupt system.

The whole 2-party system is a broken and corrupt system.

Electing a Democrat wouldn't have fixed anything. For the most part, they're as oligarch-friendly as the Republicans.

Source on the Trump plan?

...

Yeah! Party on medical stocks! Pay up sick suckers. Die poor sick suckers.

Meh. Insurance companies had a work around that. What they did was jack up the negotiated price of service with a doctor/provider to make up for it. Ex. Patient A, w/o Obamacare used to pay 100$ for doctor's visit. With her Obamacare, doctor was billing her 400$. She tells doctor just consider her as having no insurance then. Doctor tells her he can't because that's his contract with the insurance company. Point is get the gross to be as big as you can, so that 15% will still be huge.

Obama should have at least put in the public option but he got lobbied by the biggest lobby in DC -- the healthcare industry. He had a super majority. He wasted it. He's worse than a republican because he's a sellout.

Obama should have at least put in the public option but he got lobbied by the biggest lobby in DC -- the healthcare industry. He had a super majority. He wasted it. He's worse than a republican because he's a sellout.

Presidents can't put anything into bills. Although he did try to convince congress to include a public option, there weren't enough Democrats to go along with it so it got dropped.

that whole Ted Kennedy dying and Scott Brown taking the Senate seat back for the GOP, and how it completely took over the potentially progressive narrative, didn't help either :(

It's not that Obama got lobbied out of it. It's that fucking Joe Lieberman and the blue dog Democrats refused to vote yes on any bill that included the public option. So it had to be removed in order to pass.

Obama should have threatened to primary their asses.

If they refuse to support a progressive party policy, then the party leader shouldn't support them.

Lieberman did get primaried and he won and a lot of those blue dogs fears were shown to be true when they lost their elections in the midterms.

The losing the supermajority was in my view the primary factor.

The irony that Ted Kennedy's death, hindered his most cherished pursuit, healthcare reform.

'Drinking Scotch' would have been Ted's #1 cherished pursuit.

Right up there with jumping out of a sinking car

That accident was a CIA operation to discredit the Kennedy family.

https://ratical.org/ratville/JFK/ToA/ToAchp7.html#fn5

Thank you for that link - very interesting read! Any thoughts on the amazing coincidence of the Chappaquidick story ending up on page 8 or so of the morning papers due to it being the same day as the moon landing? I always thought that was just a lucky break for Ted Kennedy, not making the front page.

Glad you enjoyed!

Here's where I first heard the entire idea, that the Kennedy SONS (not the father) were uniquely principled individuals. This documentary even suggests we lost WW2, and is generally a fascinating watch. It's a long one though, might be best to take it in chunks. :)

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=U1Qt6a-vaNM

Terribly sad. :\

You should go back and look at the 2006 Senate election in Connecticut. Lamont won the primary but wasn't supported in the general by the either the Connecticut or national Democratic party, who were openly campaigning for Joementum and the Connecticut For Lieberman party (which Lieberman want even a member of). We could have easily gotten Lamont in if the Democrats were interested in supporting their own nominee

In characteristic short-sighted fashion, the Democrats were repaid for their loyalty just two years later by Joementum endorsing McCain and becoming one of the biggest roadblocks in Congress to the passage of Obamacare.

Lieberman and Pelosi.

It's crazy how Obama lobbied for the public option, 58 Democrats supported it, two Democrats/independents didn't, and 100% of Republicans staunchly opposed it, and its failure gets blamed on the Democrats.

You will notice that the main republican obstructionists are now attacking trump just the same.

You don't stay a senator by being steadfast. You have to learn how to go with the flow.

Gotta learn how to get nothing done no matter wjo you're obstructing

They are?

McCain, Graham, McConnell, and Ryan, all top senate republicans that consistently came out against obama all eight years and are now very publicly speaking out against Trump and everything he is doing.

Ryan

yea, no he isn't

Ryan has been against trump from the start, there are so many articles from cnn, politico, and other sources about how he denounced trump uninvited him from certain party events and has been very publicly critical of trump.

He's not a senator though.....

That is technically true, I should have said congress instead of senate, but that is just semantics. Ryan is speaker of the house, a massively important political position.

Ryan told Chuck Todd of NBC’s “Meet the Press” that he feels an obligation as leader of the House Republicans to back Trump, warts and all. To do otherwise, he said, would divide the party and ultimately lead to a third consecutive Democratic victory in November’s presidential election.

“I feel like I have certain responsibilities, as not just Congressman Paul Ryan from the 1st District of Wisconsin, but as speaker of the House,” Ryan said in an interview that aired Sunday. “And imagine the speaker of the House not supporting the duly elected nominee of our party, therefore creating a chasm in our party to split us in half, which basically helps deny us the White House and strong majorities in Congress.”

http://www.politico.com/story/2016/06/ryan-trump-respontibility-paul-donald-224521

If one would like to recall, Ryan was a nevertrumper, right up until trump won the republican nomination and realized his ass was on the line because of the change in opinion.

I do recall he changed his tune to save his ass, just like 90% of never Trumpers in congress.

That quote does not change the fact that Ryan is fighting Trump on a lot of his policies.

Like the healthcare bill? Lol no he's not, he is presenting it all over town.

http://imgur.com/a/xHYQD

https://mic.com/articles/170748/paul-ryan-s-slideshow-on-gop-health-care-plan-suggests-he-has-no-idea-how-insurance-works#.0hK05T6PR

Every word in this sentence is a different link to why you're wrong.

Did you even read any of those articles?

Here's a quote from one

“Paul is going from the guy everyone looked to to rebuild the party to being a helping hand to the president,” said retiring Rep. Lynn Westmoreland (R-Ga.). Lawmakers typically fall in line behind the president when their party controls the White House, he continued, so Republicans in Congress won't "have as much freedom ... as they did when [they] were working against a Democratic president."

Which exactly proves my point.

Did you even read them? Apparently you didn't, just searched for a quote to use in refutation.

I read one article and it already disproved your entire post, I'm not wasting my time.

Show me a recent quote that disproves my sourced evidence above.

What about THIS one?

Removed. Rule 4.

Sorry. Got worked up and shouldn't have gone there.

Ryan's only cozied up to Trump because Trump won. Ryan REALLY needs Trump's signature on the legislation his house passes.

I don't expect their relationship to be nice forever.

Hell, in High School Paul Ryan was voted "biggest brown noser."

lmao source?

You could have done a simple google search before you were condescending.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/answer-sheet/post/paul-ryan-in-high-school-voted-by-his-senior-class-as/2012/08/11/5ec92fca-e420-11e1-a25e-15067bb31849_blog.html?utm_term=.07615efbda9c

The "lmao" was because it's hilarious, fuck Paul Ryan.

Thanks for the condescension though.

McCain I've seen but Ryan stills trying to push the health bill right? He's just saying how Trump has been a part of it so that he's not alone if/when this particular ship goes down was my impression.

Trump has had nothing to do with the healthcare bill so far, it is the sole work of the house republicans and more specifically ryan. In fact there things trump campaigned on, such as opening markets across state lines, that are lacking from the bill.

McCain and Graham have voted with Trump and nearly every single thing that has come up. They might verbally dress him down to get headlines but they aren't standing in his way legislatively the way blue dog dems did to Obama.

and Ryan and McConnell? lol.

What exactly has been put up for vote in congress for them to vote for? The cabinet appointments? Much of which are still waiting confirmation due to these same people dragging their heels.

Yes, the cabinet appointments. And no, they aren't waiting due to them "dragging their feet". They are waiting because the inept, amateur hour white house has been extremely slow vetting, producing documents, or even offering candidates for these positions.

That is just not true, this administration has had the most difficulty getting appointments confirmed of any in recent history. At the moment republicans could force through any nominee they want due to a rule change that took place by democrats under obama, yet the confirmation hearings are still taking longer than most any in the past.

I didn't disagree that they are taking longer. I said the blame falls with the Administration. Look at how many nominations they've made, how far along they are in terms of producing documents, the vetting, etc. Things are moving slowly because they simply aren't doing their job quickly. It has very, very little to do with Democratic obstructionism.

Of all the articles I have read none have mentioned that the administration has been slow to provide "documents" for their appointments and many of the cabinet positions were nominated before inauguration yet have taken unusually long to confirm despite a republican majority.

It is true they have they to nominate many positions, but of the ones that have been they have taken an uncharacteristically long time to be confirmed. My original point was that if the congressional republicans were fully behind trump it would not have taken this long because they can force a majority vote to confirm.

Of all the articles I have read none have mentioned that the administration has been slow to provide "documents" for their appointments

Get off of Breitbart? Because this is absolutely the case.

https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/trump-transition-cabinet-behind-schedule/511928/

http://www.cnn.com/2017/03/10/politics/trump-administration-deputies/

http://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/21/14672984/trump-transition-slow

I know you're going to hate the sources, but actually read them and you'll find them well sourced and well argued.

First of all, I read breitbart about as much as I read any other source.

So from these articles what is made apparent, to me, is that most of the nominees were not pre-vetted prior to being approached by the administration, which is where the lack of documentation comes into play. So on that front I am more sympathetic to your argument, but my original point was not so much that the administration is without fault.

Rather that senate republicans could be doing more to support trump, but choose not to, while at the same time being outspoken in their dislike of his administration. It appears, in my opinion, that these people are playing their part both to the special interests they receive funding from and their republican base who voted trump into office. The result being that they don't want to work with trump, but are forced to vote along party lines to retain support from republican voters who want trumps agenda pushed through.

Which is the usual corrupt politics that we've seen for decades now and the reason trump was elected, people want politicians who will do what they were voted into office to do, not what their corporate special interest donors want them to do.

McCain is a disgrace.

RINOs... All the guys you just named are lobbied, establishment sellouts.

Ryan is not in the Senate, he's The Speaker of the House so he's a congress-critter of The House of Representatives and has to stand for re-election every 2 years.

McCain - yes
Ryan - certainly no

Ryan is speaking out against trump?! You're kidding right?

The previous guy just spelled out how Obama did not put in a public option. He was an insurance sell out. So how did Obama ever lobby for the public option?

If he would have just had the balls during his first 100 days in office he would have said "Americans need a universal health plan, we're going to do this. If you won't vote WITH me and give the people what they need, I'm going to start releasing the names of everyone who opposes this with the headline "these are the people stopping you from getting a single-payer system" and then everyone will know exactly where you all stand."

instead he chose "a retirement worth living". can't say most wouldn't have done the same. think about his family, daughters, etc...

"Leader of the Free World" my ass. ugh. sad.

Obama didn't control Congress with a filibuster-proof majority until late September 2009 and only lasted to February 2010.

The one vote that really blocked him with the public option was Joe Lieberman, as everyone else was on board from the Democratic side.

The one vote that really blocked him with the public option was Joe Lieberman, as everyone else was on board from the Democratic side.

With all the Great People who have been taken from us this century, by cancer, and heart disease, and whatnot... and yet we still have Joe Fucking Lieberman kicking around, presumably healthy as an ox.

Fuck this world, man.

Because Joe Lieberman (CT) said h3 would kill anything bill with a public option. Several large insurance companies are headquartered in Connecticut's capital Hartford. "The Insurance City".

Following politics is weird, when you get older. You start to see some patterns. You start to notice that time and time again, the same few names are attached to harmful bullshit in one form or another.

Joe Lieberman is a fucking cancer on American politics. I honestly cringe a little, every time I hear his name.

Hey, maybe we'll get lucky, and 2017 will do to politicians, what 2016 did to celebrities...

Yes, Democrats passed the bill they were happy with, and it's now the Republicans fault after it fails, right? Ok.

Hate to break it to you, but insurance companies did not collude with providers to jack up prices. Prices went up, but this type of collusion didn't happen.

How do you know?

That's a bold claim, not sure how you're gonna back that up.

So it's a coincidence that we suddenly have a crisis of rising prescription drug costs?

When insurance has a government mandated Medical Loss Ratio, there is only one way to collect more money to the company. You increase the cost of everything.

Simple math. $1000 and 80% MLR. Insurance company gets at most $200 for their business.

Suppose they need $400 to operate. Without a MLR they could try to convince medical providers to accept $200 less out of that $800. But that's illegal now. So for the insurer to get $400, they need to make sure there is $2000 and then $400 and $1600 passed to medical providers.

Its the most perverse incentive ever, it's a government mandate to skyrocket healthcare cost.

it's a government mandate to skyrocket healthcare cost.

lol because unregulated, the prices would be much lower right? No chance

Actually yes.

Unregulated healthcare was very affordable. It wasn't until WW2 wage controls that created the employer provided health insurance that is now systemic.

Also look at LASIK. Unregulated and paid for by the consumer directly. It's now measured in hundreds of dollars. This was something that didn't even exist in Healthcare 25 years ago. It revolutionized eye care and is affordable to almost every single American.

Lasik is absolutely regulated and the cost is about $3000 for the cheaper jobs.

I absolutely know what I'm talking about out.

Regulated is a gigantic word in scope.

Would you prefer it described as healthcare that is not part of the US health insurance club membership system?

And I've had LASIK done to me several years ago. I paid a little over a thousand per eye for pinnacle quality care with the latest in technology from a surgeon who completed thousands of successful procedures. The other day on the radio I heard the same provider advertising LASIK for $250 per eye.

Doesnt change the fact that Lasik is regulated by the FDA.

And you can buy almost any surgery or treatment with cash. Doesn't mean it isn't regulated, and when you pay personally it is the highest possible cost, more than what any insurers negotiated rates are.

No one said FDA until you did now.

Healthcare is also heavily regulated by health insurers. You can regulate and not be the government too.

What lmao government is the only one who 'regulates' you mean 'rationing' lmao I'm done talking to you.

So UL doesn't regulate to companies the products it certifies?

An insurer doesn't regulate to doctors by controlling what cost tiers drugs and all the various procedures are in for treating a single health condition?

That's not what a regulation is dude. UL certifies products and companies in order for them to meet government regulations and standards

UL provides safety-related certification, validation, testing, inspection, auditing, advising and training services to a wide range of clients, including manufacturers, retailers, policymakers, regulators, service companies, and consumers.

UL is one of several companies approved to perform safety testing by the US federal agency Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). OSHA maintains a list of approved testing laboratories, which are known as Nationally Recognized Testing Laboratories.

You're talking about negotiating fee schedules.

Your lame attempts at being pedantic because you can't confront the argument so you avoid it and deflect.

If you believe health insurers don't have vast impacts on the practice of healthcare, you're sticking your head in the sand. That affects the market. When enough insurers operate consistently in contracts that ultimately becomes written rules or regulations. Hell, on the HMO side, they literally regulate how doctors deliver care according to mandated procedure schedules.

Explain how an insurance company in California can regulate and enforce regulations for health care in New York?

They cant. They can't even regulate in the their own state because they have no regulatory authority

They enforce their regulations onto healthcare providers.

They apply the carrot, money. The government applies the stick, fines and jail.

When your company is responsible for giving millions and billions of dollars out, that has clout. An insurer can tell any healthcare provider you must do XX to be in-network. If this insurer covers 25% of the providers market, that means to reject the terms of the insurer they might lose over 25% of their revenue.

Are do you just not believe at all that people who are responsible to dole out $$$$$$$$ have no power unless government guns are behind it?

I'm not arguing with you because you don't know the meaning of the word regulation.

regulation [reg-yuh-ley-shuh n] noun a law, rule, or other order prescribed by authority, especially to regulate conduct. the act of regulating or the state of being regulated.

AUTHORITY it doesn't say government.

regulate [reg-yuh-leyt] verb (used with object), reg·u·lat·ed, reg·u·lat·ing. to control or direct by a rule, principle, method, etc.: to regulate household expenses. to adjust to some standard or requirement, as amount, degree, etc.: to regulate the temperature.

Doesn't even mention authority.

'#BTFO

And who regulates the healthcare industry?

Primarily the health insurers.

Incorrect. The government.

You tried though.

And who regulates the healthcare industry?

Okay. So I'm an insurance company. I walk into a hospital negotiation and tell them I should pay them more money than I currently pay them. First of all, this doesn't happen, and I've never seen it happen. But let's say it did. Let's even say I did that with all my other providers. My competitors would undercut me without even trying, charging individuals/employers a lot less and winning business from me.

That's not it works.

Each insurance contract stipulates reimbursement rates. Each contract year/duration has negotiations at each renewal about reimbursement, or what the provider sees in cash money. The provider will want more money each year due to cost inflation, they will request XX% more dollars.

Insurers will counter offer with some lower percentage in regular markets. Now in a mandated MLR market, insurers are incentivized to accept the largest reimbursement rates. Then insurers pass along this higher cost to beneficiaries through higher premiums, higher deductibles, higher coinsurance.

See it now?

Nope. Don't know what to tell you other than I have firsthand experience as part of insurance company, where we seek lowest reimbursement possible with new providers and fight year increases tooth and nail. We operate in an MLR market. We want to have affordable premiums so that people buy our product.

I was wondering why some of these comments aren't echo chamber BS. Then I realized I was on r/conspiracy not r/politics... you're not allowed to say anything negative about Obama remember ;)

I had the same experience, except in reverse, this morning on /r/politics.

What do you mean?

I think he means he thought he was on /r/conspiracy and was surprised at how closeminded people were then realized where he was.

Lol r/conspiracy close minded? Isn't that an oxymoron?

but he wasnt on cospiracye, he just thought he was.

And also, I would say people are often close minded on /r/conspiracy, often just in other ways. Perhaps they become stubbornly convinced about a conspiracy and refuse to see evidence that shows it incorrect.

...they're actually much more open minded in order to even start contemplating conspiracies?

Why are you regurgitating shill talking points aimed at discrediting r/conspiracy?

Being open and close minded is not so black and white. Nor is everyone who disagrees with you "regurgitation shill talking points"

People can be close minded about any belief, regardless of whether they hold a true belief or not. Some conspiracies are false, and people are convinced that they are true. Some of those people are so stubborn in that belief that they are close minded.

Others believe all conspiracies are false, and THEY too are close minded.

Your exactly right. A friend of mine is paying more now with Obamacare than without it.

She used to pay cash for Dr visits and they cost less than $100 prior to Obamacare

it's all good. hospital administrators and investors got what they wanted!

Wait how is Obama worse than a republican? He tried working with Boehner as the Speaker to get something that the Republicans wouldnt block. If he had tried to ram single payer through the House and Senate, the Republicans would have just shot it down. So wouldnt the blame lie with the Republicans not the President?

Didn't every Republican vote against it anyways?

Yes because they negotiated in bad faith. They had no intention of supporting anything Obama did.

I think his point was that they didn't need republican support anyway, so why even act like you're compromising?

It's not entirely accurate or fair to say he sold out by not doing a public option. The super majority thing is misleading as well. That's a tough sell to either party, but definitely near impossible to the tea partiers and establishment republicans. In Washington, the farther left or right people who want more extreme measures generally don't have any bargaining power. They got thrown under the bus because they'll take any decent reform over nothing. Obama had to convince everyone else. The ACA did good things but also created unforseeable problems, but that's the nature of healthcare, it's really complicated and if you ever want to really fix it, and I've listened to policy experts debate about the many different factors, most of them agree that it's almost impossible to sell a real solution to politicians. Good luck convincing someone you're gonna need 10 years when they run for election basically every other year. The ACA really should've been a stepping stone for future administrations to improve upon. But apparently working together just isn't gonna happen anymore at the rate we're going and the new health bill looks pretty damn shitty. The way things are going, we're already seeing a new generation of young, I'm talking under 25 far right wing christian extremists already taking office all over the country at the state levels and soon they'll be in Washington. What the hell happened to centrists?? Reality is that a fine mix of liberalism and conservatism can fix most problems. But politicians don't want to fix things. It literally is not in their interest to fix most things. That's a big problem. I'm on board with increasing term length as a way to possibly address that. If you have 5, 10 years to do something and you have zero results to show, well you can get the fuck out of office.

How long was Obama's Super Majority?

Relevant

https://youtu.be/99I-0GWlTqQ

You misspelled crook.

Have you seen the bill?

Penalties are still bullshit

Please understand, it does not work like that in practice. They know have a disincetive to contain costs so they divest in clinical management and invest more in advertising. The 80/20 (MLR) creates that externality

Can you please explain? contain costs of what? why divest in clinical management and invest more in advertising?

Contain the costs of healthcare, there has to be transparency. So what actually happens behind closed doors is insuance CEO's meet with jospital CEO's and literally ask the hospitals to raise their chargemaster rates just so the insurance comapny can advertise the fact that they have the best discounts. The question is discounts off of what? If I charge you 100 million dollars for a knee replacement and give you a 99% discount you are still getting fucked.

So what happens in real life is major insurance companies downsize their clinical management departments, full of nurses that are helping people adhere to caremaps layed out by doctors, and reinvest that extra cash to advertise their wonderful discounts.

There is no transparency in the fully insured market. PPO networks and hospitals collude to maintain profit margins and monopolies. It's impossible to get an exact price of a procedure up from a hospital. Some ambulatory surgical centers, like the one in Oklahoma, do actually advertise prices but that is an anomaly in the market.

appreciate your answer, very interesting.

in addition to creating 'fake discounts', is the overcharged quote used to increase the money that 20-15% cap allows or is the cap put on the actual amount paid?

Cap is in regards to the ratio of premium vs claims expenditures. So if the insurance company spends less than 80% of the premium it received to cover the risk of the policy on claims costs they are supposed to return whatever x% of that amount under 80% to the policy holder. That creates a disincentive to actually save the client money.

I see, thanks

No problem sir

It's not Trumpcare, it's Ryancare. Even Trump supporters hate this bill.

Trump co-wrote the bill and he owns the responsibility for it: //youtu.be/NBv8BIYNIdg. Any Trump voters that continue to support him are sheep and fools.

Lol it's like having to pick over shit or vomit, either way it's sick

...profits, holding them to 20% for small groups and 15% for large groups.

That's not what your link shows. It's 20% and 15% for all expenses, taxes, commissions, and profits.

Trumpcare

Trump and the Republican party have eliminated this provision from their Trumpcare bill.

Haha, fuck.

to make unlimited money...

Money is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, it acts as an incentive to provide a service like health care.

On the other hand, money is a very corrupting influence. As soon as people can make a profit doing something, they begin to change they way they do that thing so as to make more and more profits.

Eventually, the original purpose of the activity (e.g. providing health care) becomes a secondary consideration... and making as much money as possible becomes the primary consideration.

This is where things get interesting. Some people can see what has happened and begin to call for change. But then you've got the people who want to keep things from changing because they're the ones making all that money. So they make up all kinds of bullshit excuses and outright lies why changing the system would be bad. Even worse, you get a bunch of fuckwits who believe them and take their side.

Now Big Medicine is making so much money, they can easily pay their lawmaker friends to keep things the way they are. It's hard to see any real improvement ever being made as long as so much money is at stake.

Thanks a lot Nixon.

The War on Health and The War on Drugs

Thanks, Nixon.

Funny how both of those wars "coincidentally" favor big pharma.

Funny... RIGHT.

That's why unrestricted competition is so important. Regulatory capture is the real problem, not capitalism.

Could it be argued that regulatory capture is an inevitable consequence of capitalism?

Even worse, you get a bunch of fuckwits who believe them and take their side.

Yes! This is maddening! But I'm glad someone else sees it.

Same bullshit with the "War On Drugs." At first it was being pushed by insiders who knew exactly what they were doing, and that their real objectives didn't match the publicly-stated goals. But the thing gets big, and picks up some steam, and a decade of propaganda later, you've good honest, hard-working (but unfortunately stupid and easily mislead) people, thinking it's The Best Thing Since Sliced Bread, Because it Keeps Us Safe, Because Someone In Authority Told me So...

And then you have real people, with a real passion, buying the lies wholesale, and fighting tooth and nail to spread what started out as bullshit and propaganda, because they believe they're truly arguing for the greater good.

It almost hurts my brain.

Because Someone In Authority Told me So...

This is one of the best magic tricks of all time. For whatever reason, a certain percentage of people equate authority with truth.

Nothing could be farther from the truth.

Piggybacking on your comment for visibility-

I'm a primary source on this. I help people navigate the healthcare delivery system, negotiate with providers and dispute fraudulent medical bills. Even the Federal Government admits 97% of medical bills contain errors, fraud or both. Below is a comment I made in another subreddit while trying to explain the system to people that have no idea what they are discussing.

Let's dispel the notion that there is some sort of magic bullet legislation that will fix our broken system. TrumpCare, ObamaCare, they are both disasters.

When medicare part D was passed, a Senator who I cannot remember at the moment (maybe Baucus) slipped a rider into the bill that made it so medicare could not negotiate with Big Pharma on the price of drugs. So Pharma can charge whatever the hell they want, see epipen. Obamacare was rammed through congress in a budget conciliatory vote before any of the legislators even read the fucking 1000+ page bill. Nancy Pelosi, "We have to pass it to see what's in it!" Great fucking idea Nancy.

The "Affordable" Care Act is nothing more than an insurance company subsidy bill. Yes, it helped people that have never had coverage before gain access to care, which is great. But, that comes with consequences; all Americans were mandated to buy health insurance, and let me be very clear, health insurance is not equivalent to healthcare. So, many people are stuck with $6000 deductibles and $1000 a month premiums to just to avoid a fucking government penalty. EDIT the penalty I'm referencing is the employer mandate, not the individual mandate. There are so many companies that can't afford to compete in the global market and offer competitive benefits simultaneously

This TrumpCare bill will be more of the same, crony capitalistic policies that take OUR tax money and pad the profits of private companies. Capitalist dream- privatized profits, socialized losses. Now, BOTH sides of the aisle have royally fucked the healthcare delivery system. All of us need to stop bickering about partisan issues and take responsibility for our own health. The government will not solve your problems.

So, to sum up that rant, the current system is dominated by three cartels; the giant hospital systems like HCA, the giant insurance companies like BCBS, CIGNA, and Aetna, and finally Big Pharma. They all collude together to maintain their profits.

The only difference between these cartels and the one's you might think of in regards to Mexico or Pablo Escobar is that they enforce their market power with bill collectors and lawyers rather than men with guns (though one could argue the DEA fills that role). Many politicians are owned by these powers and have no interest in disrupting the status quo and their feathered nests in DC. Rant over.

Disclaimer- I know there are genetic disorders that no one can control, I am not dismissing those. I am happy that people finally have access to care, but anyone who knows about basic economics knows that there is always a trade-off.

So whats the solution?

This is certainly a difficult question. If there was actually a free market in place (100% transparency, lots of buyers and sellers, low barriers to entry, and a homogeneous product) things would theoretically work. We don't have anything like that though. I'm copying one of my other comments-

Govt, policies have assisted the healthcare industry in blocking each one of these. Medicare pricing allowed insurers to piggyback on govt pricing, thus concentrating "buyers", and Obamacare is concentrating sellers through mergers. It is impossible to compare procedures, effectiveness or any information on costs , benefits or substitutes because insurers deliberately obscure it (antitrust exemption for insurers) and state and fed regulators are complicit to allowing cost shifting to avoid the state paying for the uninsured. Regulatory hurdles to paraprofessionals, walk in clinics and access to the prescription pad, are entry barriers. It is therefore amusing to read comments proclaiming the failure of the free market. The free market has not failed to work. It has been blocked at every point by industry, which is deeply embedded in govt and health care policy, and every reform effort begins with meetings with the "industry", which has captured the government and legislatures. So the industry redivides the pie and moves he deck chairs. It is a parasite that feeds on the host but must not kill it, because then it too will die. The power of market economics is apparent from the interest in the topic and the websites springing up in response to demands or information. Unchain it.

Then, after so many pitiful efforts to put in place a free market for healthcare, can we be forgiven for concluding that though it may a good idea when all the pieces are in place and allowed to function, it simply cannot work in practicality today?

Especially now that the insurance industry has grown to monolithic proportions and has every resource available to them to squash ideas like trust-busting from even making the news.

Even if healthcare functioned as a market, with the goals of a market being profit, where would insurances ever find incentive to actually improve care while driving down costs? Wouldn't they have a vested interest in keeping us at the doctor's through mediocre care and pushing unnecessary tests/hurdles on us?

Is there a chance that there are some sectors like healthcare and education that a market does not improve?

Large insurance companies are definitely a problem, but the situation has a hell of a lot more nuance than that. It is so convoluted (intentionally I might add) that it is difficult to pinpoint one problem area to fix. Every time you try to fix one thing, the Law of Unintended consequences rears its ugly head. Like wack-a-mole

Very familiar with the current FUBAR situation, have been in non-profit and private healthcare my whole career.

I'm just wondering how you, as someone who seems to have a handle on this, envisions free market healthcare actually putting healthcare before profits? What mechanisms or incentive would they ever have to do that? By definition a market this field would translate worse healthcare into loyal customers.

What problem would the market solve, that single-payer wouldn't, that makes this a system worth fixing?

The issue I would like to be addressed first and foremost is the lack of transparency. After that, my hope is that people will be more proactive about healthcare consumption.

We are passive about healthcare consumption, I used the example of a car warranty earlier and feel that it is valid analogy. When your car is under warranty, you take it to the dealership for maintenance because you don't care, you have a warranty. Once the warranty expires, you actually go out and look for the best deal, yes?

Now replace warranty in that sentence with insurance.

So let's grant the unlikely event that transparency is put in place across the entire system, though I would disagree even with this premise being possible when it is in a publicly owned company's interest to protect their mode of business and profits, which is directly threatened by advertising things like reimbursement rates.

Your argument here that a free market is still a viable mode of delivering Healthcare, is that people will then be able to find a deal?

I'm willing to pay a few thousand to repair a car that I love.

I'm willing to pay my retirement and take a second mortgage out on my home to save my child.

That's the problem. I don't want to rely on the cheap doctor to save my loved one and I will accept a life of debt if it means they live. This was the US before the ACA, with millions in insurmountable debt or bankrupt because it was that or don't treat the cancer. We tried a free market in healthcare and that was what happened.

On an open market there is a vested interest to keep you sick and a returning customer, or to squeeze as much money as they can out of you when disaster strikes and you have no choice but to get treatment or die.

A single-payer system through the government has a vested interest in keeping you a productive member of society and paying taxes.

When it comes to improving people's health, it sure seems like one of those options is far better than the other.

So again, I'll ask, what is it about a free market that makes the downsides worth it?

Will I get to choose while Im on rhe phone with 911 which ambulance company comes to my home when I get shot?

Will I get to choose between discount chemo and premo-chemo when my cancer comes back after going with the discount one the first time?

Will I get to choose the half rate doctor who has a sepsis rate 5x higher than the national average, but no one knows it because no one is subsidizing better quality care so no one is reporting outcomes?

How exactly can the free market ever put something like Healthcare before profit and still be able to call it "care", when they know it's the one thing people will pay any amount in order to get?

I've mentioned multiple times that there is inelastic demand, which is why I would prefer a single payer system...... but here's the thing, you're on /r/conspiracy advocating for a federally run health system....

A single-payer system through the government has a vested interest in keeping you a productive member of society and paying taxes

Maybe in other countries, but I don't trust this government to have my best interest in mind, even if it means I keep paying taxes.

The one federally run medical system in this country, the VA, is considered the most inefficient in the country; rife with fraud and corruption. Those are our veterans, the ones we salute at each of our "bread and circus" football games, the one's we buy a drink at the bar for, yet they have the worst healthcare in the country. How does that make sense?

In a perfect world where factions of the Federal Government didn't subdue their own population with fear and useless trinkets I would advocate for a single payer system. If the government didn't drone strike an american citizen without due process, if the government didn't continually violate our 4th amendment rights, if the government didn't waste trillions on wars for profit of the few at the expense of the many, I would advocate for single payer.

You may say I'm moving the goalposts, but I would strongly disagree. The main reason I advocate for the free market is because I don't want THIS government to have anything to do with my healthcare.

You absolutely are moving the goalposts, but not in the manner you hedged.

The VA is a socialized healthcare delivery system. It is administered by government and military officials and pays for practically all of the care it administers and its facilities.

Medicare Part D is a single payer health insurance. It pays for the care administered by all contracted healthcare providers on a variable reimbursement rate, most often tied to value (quality + cost).

No sane person looking at healthcare reform is arguing that we should expand the abomination that is the VA, or model jack shit after it out of the gate.

They're generally arguing that if Medicare eligibility were expanded you could cripple the insurance companies' hold on prices and premiums. They would be relegated to offering catastrophic supplementals people could purchase to sit on top of their basic government coverage. In addition it would incentivize private market competition for healthcare delivery components like pharmaceuticals, diagnostic tests and technological integrations, as they would still be competing to gain coverage by Medicare. But reimbursement for actual healthcare delivery, like office visits, surgeries and lab tests, would be dependent on the value calculations of Medicare and the ability of providers to report it. It is a single-payer system that encourages competition. A win-win.

As someone well aware of where this conversation is taking place, I completely sympathize with the deep seated rejection of any expansion to bureaucratic administration, but that just wouldn't be necessary in order to accomplish this. Also having worked in healthcare going on a decade, I have seen first hand the giant leaps forward CMS has rewarded and taken the lead on across the healthcare landscape.

10 years ago the VA was the only healthcare system apart from perhaps ones like Kaiser and large private hospitals to have even a semi-functioning Electronic Health Record system (EHR), let alone any capability whatsoever to regularly measure and track actual health outcomes and performance. But, their budget and their organization had practically no correlation to the standard of care they were delivering, only to patient volume, and perhaps things like billing data or re-admittance rates.

Today, we're all on EHRs and gearing up for MACRA to begin tying reimbursement rates to quality improvement efforts, performance measurements and outcomes, patient engagement and cost optimization on an even larger scale. All indications point to this being the only mechanism around right now to even slightly pressure private insurances to be more transparent about their reimbursement rates.

And it is coming from a Federal Agency.

To me, looking at CMS' previous actions, results, and stated goals, and trying to hold it independent of the politics going on in the much larger government (which it has successfully maneuvered for over 50 years) there is clearly a track record worth trusting, or at least a model worth seriously considering.

If the system was able to work in the manner that you describe on a mass scale I would be right next to you supporting it.

That would be a massive power transfer to the government though, on of which I am wary.

Actually, some providers are trying to fix this. Going back to the basics. It's called direct pay primary care. There's a menu for services, you can pay as you go, or a flat fee per month and see your dr. As much as you want. There's even some surgery centers going this route. Dr's get to do what they love, patient care, and ditch ask the administrative crap.

I know of the ambulatory surgery center in Oklahoma that advertises prices online, but do you have examples of the PCP's you mentioned? I am genuinely curious and would like to recommend these to people. I guess I could google it but a personal recommendation carries more weight, in my opinion.

Search direct pay primary care. There are listing for Drs. by state. This is the route I went this year and I'm loving it. Have catastrophic for serious illness to back me up.

Thank you for the insight!

Love everything you said here. All true.

I would push back a little on the role of the Big Healthcare Systems Cartel. Healthcare systems and hospitals FOR SURE share the blame with the other two for the situation leading to the passage of the ACA. Since the ACA however, they have not exactly been 'raking in the cash'.

I work for one of the major non-profit healthcare systems and can say a lot on the topic of who is really benefiting from these lobbied changes. Instead, I would "follow the money" and invite folks to google "pharma profits", "healthcare/hospital profits" and "health insurance profits." I believe you will find that Healthcare Systems are bearing the brunt of cost cutting measures, while Insurers and Pharma are reaping the benefits.

Now, when the switch to value-based care and population health are complete... Healthcare Systems will have absorbed the role of the insurance companies and both cover and provide care for populations cutting out an unhelpful, inefficient, profit-sucking middle man. ...unless they sell out to insurers first having not being able to survive the current climate.

TL/DR: Healthcare Systems and Hospitals did not have as big a say as some might think in the problems with the ACA. Their financial performance is evidence of this.

I believe you will find that Healthcare Systems are bearing the brunt of cost cutting measures, while Insurers and Pharma are reaping the benefits.

I agree with you here because Emergency Rooms are required by law to accept anyone who comes in. However, this leads to cost shifting on to private plans.

The large systems that dominate mostly rural states have virtual monopolies though. Medicare was designed to reimburse "efficiently" run hospitals at a profitable rate. Problem is, in my experience, efficient hospitals are hard to come by.

Big Pharma definitely benefits the most though

admits 97% of medical bills contain errors,

Any source on this? As someone who codes all day it sounds like the biggest bullshit I've ever heard.

As someone who audits medical bills as part of my job, it sounds like you don't know what you're talking about.

I'd love to see the study. I honestly can't find it, that's not just me being a jerk about it. What I know is that if I submitted anything with an error rate of more than 10% I'd lose my job. There are audit trails in place and every year you hear about OCR stomping down on people.

Mind you there's probably been a lot of changes in all of that since that letter was sent 11 years ago too.

I've only seen it in paper form at a seminar before. It is referenced in the industry as fact though, for what its worth.

It is a proprietary study, not mine or my company's intellectual property.

Yea everybody does their best to avoid HHS scrutiny, but that's not the best incentive. It only encourages people to do just enough not to get audited.

Mind you there's probably been a lot of changes in all of that since that letter was sent 11 years ago too.

Valid point. Thing is, almost every Network Service Agreement between a PPO and a health system stipulates a no audit provision on medical bills. It's fucking insane. The actual plan participant has to request an itemized bill, and since everyone treats healthcare as a passive cost they are rarely requested by individuals.

For example, think about having a car under warranty; you're definitely going to go to the dealership for maintenance because you don't give a shit, it's covered under warranty. But once the warranty is up you actually start to shop for the best deal. Apply that latter mindset to healthcare and you would see a lot more efficiency simply because transparency would be demanded.

Any source on this? As someone who codes all day it sounds like the biggest bullshit I've ever heard.

Were you aware it's actually possible to say stuff like that, without all the shitty attitude where it makes it sound like you're calling someone a shitty liar, over a subject you clearly know little about, just because "it doesn't sound like it should be right?"

Username ironic?

If you make a claim that's obviously bullshit people should be a bit rude about it. There's not an industry in the country where a 97% failure rate would work.

I code medical bills every day. I don't know every inch of the industry, that's right. But I know enough to know that the insurance companies audit and deny at a high enough percentage that if you're submitting wrong claims that often you aren't actually getting any work done or payments in.

As it turns out the study was done in 1986 on a subset of high risk claims for hospitals. The number makes sense for something from 30 years ago before a huge amount of regulations have changed. It has nothing to do with the ACA or anything going on at this point.

If someone shows up and says 97% of anything is wrong your first reaction should be "no fucking way".

97% of medical bills contain errors, fraud or both

I know this will sound pedantic, but not every error is catastrophic, many are minor which is why the stat holds some merit. I will give you the point that that is a very difficult threshold hold to meet, and probably exaggerated a bit. This is in reference to private bills though which inherently implies cost shifting from uninsured patients to private ones.

Probably should have mentioned that caveat in the first place, but I was on a rant haha. Just trying to have reasonable discussion with you

Cheers

I think we both went on a rant man lol. We see this stuff from two different sides of the coin. I think it's an old study and specific study and don't think we can apply it to everything today. But I think it'd be good to see anyway because if that number is true under any time frame or stipulation then it can hopefully shed some light on issues regardless.

Yea man, I appreciate hearing your perspective though

Or reinvesting in their executives.

Some NFPs have restrictions on executive compensation

There is a clever loophole to get around your profits being limited to a percentage. You just make your organization more wasteful and then youcan take the same percentage from higher revenue.

Exactly

Many states are still like this, like MN, the extra profits go to CEO bonuses

So wouldn't the execs pay themselves huge bonuses to keep profits low?

Now? Maybe. Back then they didn't.

Plus some NFPs have restrictions on executive compensation

Gotcha. Thank you.

Nixon declared the War on Cancer. And we know how everything these assholes do is an inversion of reality.

How did the Cancer Act slow down progress for finding treatment for cancer?

Should I copy/paste OP's article or what?

We need to go back to that. What we have now is a complete failure.

I can't find any evidence that this is true on wikipedia or google.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QkgUkM0o6Q

How could it be illegal to profit from health care. Most doctors were independent and they lived off the profits from health care. Private hospitals ran off profits.

Mayo clinic is a good example of non-profit. They are also rated #1.

Yeah, I mean our family doctor had examination rooms in his basement, employed a nurse, had an x-ray machine, plus had to stock all those tongue depressers (haha) ... so he had considerable expenses and made a good profit besides, for his family to live on.

Expenses like salaries, operating expenses, equipment, etc. were paid, then the profits were put back into the business or medical field instead of wall street , corp, and elites pockets.

In other words, eliminating any incentives to invest in new medical companies. Nice.

How's that working for America? Most expensive. 37th in quality. medical error is 3rd leading cause of death in US.

How is incentivizing research and development working for us? Amazingly. We are the world leader in innovation including new medical technology and medication.

I am not so sure that is true anymore. We are sliding behind. http://knowledge.insead.edu/entrepreneurship/the-worlds-most-innovative-countries-2016-4864 ocamels.com/2016/05/10-world-changing-israeli-technologies/ http://www.afr.com/technology/australia-will-lead-world-in-medical-technology-says-bill-ferris-20170314-guy969

Well it is true and neither of your sources say differently.

It's not that simple. America is a massive country with a hugely diverse population. Comparing them to much smaller and more homogeneous countries is disingenuous. We also spend the most on health care because we're the richest country in the world. Funny how rich people spend more money on stuff they want, isn't it? But more than that, we spend the most on health care because we subsidize the medical research that the rest of the world benefits from. If we switched to single-payer it would dramatically impact the medical industry by reducing investments in innovation, and ultimately hurt the rest of the world.

Most every country has medical research. I have looked at other countries regarding disease and research. That is an excuse that medical industry and big Pharma use for high prices. Australia has some medical break through's in Alzheimers and cancer. My Dad had Alzheimers and I searched world wide to see what other countries were doing and research. China is way ahead of us on medical research. Please look behind the curtain and you will see the truth.

Of course other countries have some research breakthroughs, but the vast majority come from the US.

motherfuckin SOURCE? I'm sure if you compare numbers they're small af. Be sure you compare POST 70s breakthroughs. We're looking for cures, or NEW treatments, not alternative treatment options. (which are what the US incentivizes researchers to look for ANYWAY if they WANT PROFITS)

http://www.scimagojr.com/countryrank.php

Links a site of rankings based on number of scientific documents by country.

Yep, those are definitely 936,000 cures US came up with. Not alternative treatment options.

I have yet to find a study myself, but legislation like this one by nixon, and follow ups like ones permitting pharma to call drugs 'medicine' as well as air commercials all suggest treatments that don't actually cure an illness are the more common drug studied.

No one wants to create cures.

So until you can provide me with a better source to refute my claim, I think it's clear you're talking out your ass.

And then no successive administration did a damn thing about it?

Who cares if it's for profit??? The problem is government intervention and regulations that prohibit competition. That's why prices and costs go up. I feel many of you don't understand the basic economics of the matter.

Greed is what makes many of the costs go up. I have had the same Rx for years, a low dosage antibiotic that I used to fill for $8 a month (paying full price) at Costco. Obamacare had no cost controls, so now that same fucking Rx is over $700! You are full of shit.

Greed IS what is causing it but unfortunately the drive to better ones station in live is baked into the human condition.

The good news is that businesses are usually unable to come to your house, point a gun at you and force you to buy a product for more than a fair price. Further, in a free market people will greedily lower their prices to undercut their competition if their competition is charging exorbitant rates.

Now, the problem comes in when governments (who ARE able to come to your house and point guns at you) get into the mix to warp markets, tilt playing fields, incentivize bad behavior and introduce corruption. This is when we end up paying $700 for $8 pills.

As if "the hidden hand" of a fictional free market is a good idea when it comes to health coverage.

It's borderline psychotic that someone profits from other's ill health. Society needs to grow past this insanity. Everyone eventually gets sick. Money should play no role in health coverage, period.

I don't necessarily disagree with you that for social purposes we may want to treat buying heathcare differently than say, buying candy. However, we can't ignore the basic laws of economics. Whatever solution we come up with MUST take into account the laws of supply and demand, scarcity, diminishing returns, moral hazard, etc...

Like gravity, these immutable laws exist. We can dislike them, ignore them or try to cheat them for awhile but they will always be there waiting to fuck up artificially controlled systems.

The best situation, and what WORKS in every other first-world country in the whole world, and for much less money than americans currently pay, is a single payer health care system. People are very, very happy and satisfied in places like France with their system. In backward 'Murica, we don't do one goddamn thing right.

However, we can't ignore the basic laws of economics.

Health services are inelastic goods, meaning prices can be increased and real demand shrink while profits rise. Providers know this. Translating diminishing demand to make profit into human terms means people will be priced out of products they need.

Health care decisions are made in conditions where cost/benefit analysis by the patient can't be done, therefore opportunity cost arithmetic does not apply.

There is severe informational asymmetry between buyers and sellers.

Health care services are not a good like other products on the market place as you yourself admit.

I think reasonable people agree that if a resource is really scarce not make up economics scarce then we need to ration it in some means. I don't see why a priori it should be monetary access that is criterion for distribution.

propensity of humans with power to abuse that power to enrich themselves.

Here we have agreement! We should limit bureaucratic centralization and the profit motive in health care. As the profit motive leads to:

Ehrlichman: “… the less care they give them, the more money they make.”

Nice equivocation of the word laws by the way. The idea that perfectly rational agents, with perfect information are interested in maximizing utils( a made up measurment) respond to price increases in ceteris paribus conditions in definitve way is in any way a law is unfounded.

Your reference to "the hidden hand" is only appropriate IF it's describing an actual free market.

When private business colludes with government it is not a free market, and therefore not Capitalism.

It is crazy and upsetting when governments and business work together to protect and enrich each other.

This collusion instead shows clearly why there should be a complete separation of State and economics.

What I have said is a simple distinction.

I'm not mad, I'm not yelling. I want to be your friend.

Now, the problem comes in when governments (who ARE able to come to your house and point guns at you) get into the mix to warp markets, tilt playing fields, incentivize bad behavior and introduce corruption. This is when we end up paying $700 for $8 pills.

Weird, in Europe, I don't have to pay 700 € for pills...hmmm...

No, you just don't get them at all and prescribe something "approved" which is cheaper and less effective.

You are also at the mercy of the central-office to get the funding correct otherwise they cause a shortage which means you get in line with excessive wait-time for your appointment to get the prescription in the first place.

Simply not true. You go to a doctor and you get a prescription. That's it. No "central-office" involved, whatever that is. A+ corporate misinformation, mate.

ah, are you thinking of soviet russia mate? We have socialised health care in australia and while its not perfect I don't remember getting in line for a prescription any time in the last whole of my life

They might only cost $8/ea to manufacture but you have to cover NRE cost.

That's right. Drugs and health care have improved vastly since 1973. It's only in the past decade or so that costs got out of hand. People want to demonize Nixon so much.

Many people have died because HMOs are shit. Did you not read Nixon's words about health coverage above? All he could give a shit about, was that someone would make money.

I've been misdiagnosed at least twice in my own life, and with Kaiser. In fact, a friend of mine, someone with no health background, diagnosed me with gall stones when I had been in Kaiser Permanente at least 5x about the matter in tremendous pain, and with every classic symptom that it causes. It should have been absolutely easy for them to recognize, but they didn't. People are CATTLE in HMO situations. Nixon caused untold misery by okaying HMOs.

All he could give a shit about, was that someone would make money.

Not true but even so introducing a market drives innovation.

I'm not an economist but to me free markets should not be in control of people's health. In everything else the free market works because people can just choose not to buy a certain thing. People can't just choose not to buy a liver if they need one. That 12% still allows for competition and innovation.

Your reading comprehension is poor. The point you made about collusion is accurate. As I stated, government creates lobbyist game. Puts in stupid as rules and regulations to benefit those who line their pockets. Government gets out of the way and allows for free and competitive market and you might see some real progress.

I do appreciate your valid, if not anecdotal, single piece of data.

Greed is what makes many of the costs go up.

BUZZZZ.

Sorry, try again.

Greed has NEVER played a part in it. Oh, wait...

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/30/health/drugmakers-lawsuit-insulin-drugs.html

http://money.cnn.com/2017/01/18/news/drug-pricing-mallinckrodt-ftc-fine/

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34320413

I'm certain it was a completely necessary to raise prices on a 65 year old drug, suddenly, by over 1000%.

Exactly! I mean guys look at all the other countries doing healthcare the american way! Its going great!...

This website is unbearable when it comes to this shit. No one gets that you can't get drugs from out of country, no one gets there's no competition among health insurance agencies since they can't criss state borders. Everyone is evil martin shkreli!!!

For how much longer will people cling to this false idea?

Same fn year Trudeau senior sold out Canada's central Bank to international banking cartels

Why is this post picking up no upvotes?

Every single thing in this country is fucked up no matter where you look, the prison system, the hospitals, the "schools", our media, it's depressing but with wiki leaks and pizzagate coming to light I have hope, and with the Internet people are learning just how evil and corrupt our government is.

Uprising?

Go back to the limited, non-interventionist government we started with. Get rid of private banks controlling our monetary policy. Educate our population so it's harder for the sociopaths to do this again.

But that requires money and we all know the government doesn't have the money to do that!

/s

Oh no they have vast amounts of money, it all gets funnelled into the taxpayer funded "democratic" war machine

Just to be clear, Congress approved the bill. Nixon signed it into law.

The 545 People Responsible For All of America's Woes

Well all of America's woes might be a bit of a stretch.

Some of America's woes don't originate from America ... or from modern history at all.

Say ... alcoholism. That's one of America's woes. But you're going to have to look really far back for someone to blame that on.

Pedantically true.

Plus alcoholism is a global woe not just an "American woe".

Heh, giving me a taste of my own pedantic medicine, are you?

Yes. But to be honest, I'd have to admit the article's title is a bit hyperbolic.

The pedantry is strong with this one. But he's also a hell of a link-poster.

You should check out the page he linked above. A couple excellent thought-provoking essays.

http://www.apfn.org/apfn/woes.htm

Wrong. http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article/20160528/MAGAZINE/305289981

https://www.ssa.gov/history/pdf/HealthCareEarly1960s.pdf

There's nothing wrong with for-profit. There's a lot wrong with monopoly (you have to go with whatever your employer offers), collusion to fix prices ("negotiated rates"), unpublished prices, and hidden fees.

Lets not forget that 'networks' and PCP's prevent free market forces from taking anything into account also since its pretty much impossible to change from one dr. or network to another ( I tried this when my son was born, the only way they would let me move my kids from one network to another was if I understood that there was going to be a cooling off period where they wouldn't pay out anything no matter what. )

I've been under the impression rampant healthcare prices started with drug advertisements, thanks for the info.

Started with greed, like everything else that turns to shit

AKA capitalism

And now, just getting sick can very easily result in having your credit ruined, which ruins your life, of course. As long as this continues we are fucked - simply and undeniably.

Many states you can't sue the Dr that screws you up, but you had better pay his bill or you will get sued. Then you have to pay to fix his mistake. Their profit margin is huge when errors occur No other industry profits from their mistakes like the medical community. No way would a car manufacturer be allowed to cause this many deaths and injuries. No way could they produce a product this lousy and not be shut down. People need to wake up to this fact. You are someone you love WILL become a victim

i know its hard but i would be trying everything i could to leave and start a new life in one of the other english speaking countries

I'd suggest New Zealand. English speaking and breathtaking scenery. Chill people too.

yeah i love new zealand my cousins are from there. (australian here)

The catch is, if you're poor enough where your lack of good health insurance might kill you... none of these other countries want to take you either. Countries screen their residents. They don't let people come in to live, if they think they're going to be a drain on the system. So that mostly means people who are already well off, or have the potential to be well-off (education, etc.) But if you're already well to do, or have that potential, then the cost of health care in the US isn't as big a problem in the first place.

It's a giant goddamn catch 22.

yeah for sure, thats something to consider I hadn't really thought about.

We don't need socialized health care. We need American health care again.

Rand Paul S. 222

Thats your opinion, and I respectfully disagree.

That's too bad.

I'm waiting on baited breathe for why introducing market-forces were a bad idea.

Do you even have any idea how most health-care works?
The company you work for ponies up the capital, they have to have a big ass fund, which they then hire a company like Aetna or Blue Cross and Blue Shield to manage and comply with law and regulations. They charge a nominal fee for this service (way less than what contracted HR services charge.)

When you buy health-insurance individually you do not pony-up the capital to fund it. You borrow it which is why it's so freaking expensive.

Health care or health insurance? They are not the same thing.

What Op means by heath care cost is the cost of procedures that hospitals and clinics are charging.

Hundreds of uninsured people everyday visit hospitals for any little thing like a cold or tiny cut can't be turned away and never pay for their care forcing the hospitals to find away to make up for lost profits.

So what they do is when someone with heath insurance visits, they see $$$ since they know they're going to get paid. They overcharge insured patients for whatever care provided because hospitals and insurance negotiate over the cost.

Insurance will pay the minimum amount and hospitals know this so they charge more to get to trick the insurance into paying.

Also hospitals know patients with good insurance are scared to death of getting the credit ruined so if their insurance refuses to pay the entire cost then they'll just bill the patients the rest forcing you to either argue with your insurance to pay the rest, you just paying it, or risk getting sent to collections.

It's why many people hated how there was no opt out option in Obama care

That's not what I was asking. Op said he/she was without healthcare. Healthcare is a service provided by healthcare professionals. Health insurance is a scheme to pay for health care. Not the same thing. Part of the problem we have is that this term is used interchangeably.

/u/sameindianguy

At least Clinton didn't win. She'd get rid of healthcare for everyone

Jesus, and the fact that this has to be posted on r/conspiracy to get any traction is a fucking joke.

Because half of reddit already hates him and the other half dont want to hear

Why would anyone not want to hear it?

They either like him (you'd be surprised how much t_d likes him) or they don't care about politics at all

I used to enjoy t_d a long time back but now it feels like they just support literally anyone who is hated by the left...

Yeah, because Reddit isn't left-wing leaning at all and their submission don't consistently hit the front page every day.

What?

is this article not left leaning?

Would liberal (of which i assume you are using by the literal definition) people not want to hear about this?

I am confused by your joke, sir.

It's sarcasm, Reddit is liberal

Ugh fucking Nixon.

Sad thing is, once such a sweeping law is enacted, it's almost impossible to go back.

Worst and most expensive health care in the 'first world'.

And today 'doctors' live in McMansions and medical malpractice is the 3rd leading cause of death in the country !

Thanks Tricky Dick !

Is there a source for that?

Google is your friend. (well, except when they're spying on you...)

medical malpractice is the 3rd leading cause of death in the country

have you ever used google?

It's amazing to me, so many purveyors of logic and reason on reddit... Yet when I ask for a source the burden of proof is always on ME. Every. Fucking. Time.

Here you go bro: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2016/05/03/researchers-medical-errors-now-third-leading-cause-of-death-in-united-states/

Good looking out.

If you want your head filled with sources provided by other people, turn on CNN.

I just want people to back up the bold claims they make, that's all!

AFAIK CNN (et al) doesn't really give sources... it gives you info, and you just have to trust they're not full of shit.

And giving someone a source isn't just a way to "prove" what you're saying -- it's giving them a means to learn more. It's really a good thing, when we share our sources of information.

Not when the person is just lazy. Im not new to Reddit. 1% of the time an ask for sources is legitimate. The rest of the time the person is just beinv an asshole.

We are not restricted to SARS and Microfiche anymore

What is stopping people from researching it on their own? Go listen to that speech, or read that bill, or watch the actions of the person in a video.

Don't let the news tell you "Trump said xyz, and it is racist" go listen to the speech and determine what he said and how you feel about it.

If you look at another news source, you are just looking at another entities perspective. Review it yourself, apply critical thought and analysis and form your own conclusion.

I wish i could be as confident when telling straight lies. It really is impressive.

Cue the AMA bots....

PHD license to kill. Medical error is the 3rd leading cause of death in America. 5 years of war in Syria has killed 470,000. people. 5 years of medical error has killed 1,250,000 Americans. The number maybe twice as high, because these deaths are not always reported. The numbers do not reflect the people that are made permanetly disabled every year. They have taken away the right to sue Drs. You can, but have to have a Dr from that state testify that malpractice was committed. (Kind of like rape charges in Muslim countries where 4 men have to testify they witnessed the rape.) The government wants the sick, disabled and poor to have access to healthcare. While everyone is arguing over who and how to pay ( Americans pay the highest prices in the world) no one is talking about the lack of quality. The word genocide comes to mind.

im australian living in the USA, I mention the lack of quality every chance I get.

For routine things the waiting time is insane. In australia without an appointment I could see a doctor in under 10 minutes, here it seems that we have to wait 7 business days for an appointment.

and then im inputing 12x as much into the medical system here as I was in australia ( 1,500 per month as opposed to a 1.5% flat tax to cover the medical system ) and back in AU we dont even have co-pays or deductables.

You must schedule your illness in advance. It is insane. I waited a year to see a specialist. The top in my state. She was a teacher at University medical center. She could not even read my labs. My GI dr. read them and worked on the problem. It is really 3rd world country quality. But like you I scream it everywhere and people don't listen or respond. MSM refuses to cover this, so I don't think it is by accident that these things are going on.

The AMA keeps the number of doctors artificially low.

Not true. The bottleneck is in the number of residency positions, which are funded directly by Congress through Medicare. The AMA has been expanding the number of medical schools and lobbying for an increase in residency positions. A couple years ago we crossed the line of having more doctors graduating than positions available.

They keep the supply low by lobbying for absurdly high certification standards. Make no mistake, the goal of the AMA is to maximize Doctors' earning potential. Any efforts to deconstruct the services doctors provide and disrupt their practice at the expense of their salary are a direct threat to the AMA. It stifles innovation and increases medical costs unnecessarily.

But there aren't absurdly high standards. In every state, you have to have completed medical school plus 1 year of internship to get a license. That's it. That's the legal standard and has been for decades. It hasn't changed.

Board certification is not a legal requirement, nor is it the purview of the AMA, it's the ABMS' territory.

Finally, doctors are not the cause of increased medical costs. The idea that doctors make crazy amounts of money is a myth because it neglects to account for student loan debt and lost opportunity cost.

I'll also add that most physicians aren't even members of the AMA because it sucks at lobbying for it's members' interests. It's not an effective lobbying body and just doesn't have the money or political clout to have much effect, so doctors don't see much of a reason to give them money, which only exacerbates the problem.

What I meant is that the requirement that doctors go through the amount of training they do is the problem. It's absurd how much debt they must take on and how many hours they have to put in, and a good portion of the work they do could be done by people with far less education.

You really can't trim it by much though. Medicine is stupid complicated and there's a lot to learn. Plus, there's the question of age and maturity.

You can trim maybe 1 year off college, and maybe 1 year off medical school, so you get med school plus college done in 6 years instead of 8. Residency training is already stupid streamlined though for most fields, and I just don't see any way to learn what you need to in less time there.

Keep in mind that you have other people in this thread complaining how incompetent doctors are and how we should all be sued to death for all our mistakes...are they really going to support us having LESS education?

I do agree we could trim off a year or two, but I don't think that really makes that much difference in the end.

The debt is DEFINITELY absurd. I'd be massively in favor of a single payer health care system that incentivized doctors to take the government insurance by offering full tuition payment in exchange (retroactively).

I'm more concerned with a complete lack of innovation in the healthcare industry. I don't fault doctors for making mistakes, because we're all human, but I do fault them for pretending they know more than they do. Back pain is a great example; from what I can tell, mainstream medical practitioners know fuck all about what causes the vast majority of back pain, but that doesn't stop them from offering services that are no better than all the alternative medicine offerings when compared to placebo.

Diagnosing conditions is something that computers are already doing better than the best doctors, and so the need for doctors to be walking medical encyclopedias are numbered, but you can bet your ass the AMA and higher ed industry will be 20 years behind that curve.

I don't want to make it sound like the AMA is the sole cause of all our healthcare woes, but it's an often overlooked piece of the puzzle that needs to be talked about more. I don't agree with you that single payer will solve the problem because doctor shortages and brain drain is one of the biggest issues facing counties who have single payer today. I think the AMA had to embrace the changing world and figure out how to cater to a larger medical workforce instead of a smaller one, otherwise they risk setting these doctors up for a massive disaster once DocMoBot 3000 comes online.

All true concerns, except for the AMA part. The AMA really controls very little of physician behavior.

I worry about brain drain too, but if we incentivize doctors well, we'd stay. That means reasonable pay and helping significantly with loan debt. And facilitating patient care.

I think chronic back pain is a terrible example, because it's extremely difficult to treat. I agree that doctors aren't good at it, and don't understand it, but no one really does. It just sucks. A better example would be something like diabetes or infectious disease, which we understand VERY well and are pretty good at.

I agree 1000% that the medical community doesn't innovate. Ever. We're AT LEAST 20 years behind the tech curve. I'm a technophile and it frustrates me to no end. None of my young physician colleagues even know what Reddit is. They don't know what Watson is. They don't sub to r/singularity and see the AI masters coming.

I still can't look up what drugs my patient is prescribed, except the ones I prescribe. If they saw their dentist this morning and got antibiotics, I have zero way of knowing that if the patient doesn't tell me...which they don't half the time, because they think it's not important, they forget, or they lie. It's just backwards. Privacy issues abound, which hinders the tech. But proprietary crap is a huge issue because everyone is trying to be the "next big thing" in health care so every tech system is locked down and won't talk to the others. It's stupidly backward.

The best electronic records look like they were designed in the mid 2000's and most of them look like windows 98. The VA system looks like DOS. Not even kidding. It's a joke.

We do need to modernize. Med schools have realized the changing lack of need to be a walking encyclopedia and are focusing more on concept understanding and lookup and data analysis than pure memorization, though not enough IMO.

It's a complex and tough problem though and the AMA doesn't have much to do with it at all unfortunately.

I think he is saying that primary care does not require full MDs and MDs don't require the rediculous pre reqs. Pre Med degrees are overkill.

We have tons of Indian doctors. India doesn't require undergrad to go to med school and they come over here and do just fine.

Primary care doesn't require a full MD anyway, PAs and NPs do just fine, and serious cases can be escalated to an MD. We have fully trained MDs fixing sniffles unnecessarily.

India is 6 years for college plus med school. That's what I said, that I think you could trim off 2 years max, likely one from college and one from med school.

I disagree that primary care doesn't require an MD. I found primary care to be the most challenging field during my med school training, as it requires you to know a lot about a broad array of topics. Cardiology or Pulmonology, where you're only focused on one system, is FAR easier, IMO.

I do agree that we underutilize mid-level providers, and that doctors shouldn't be wasting time seeing sprained wrists or common colds. That being said, although I've worked with some EXCELLENT NP's and PA's, the quality tends to be lower on average than MD's. My PCP has an NP who is horrendous and we hate the rare times when we get stuck with her. I see little mistakes from mid-level providers often (over prescribing antibiotics, not checking labs as they should), but I see big mistakes sometimes too (too high or low doses, wrong meds, not checking Lithium levels for over 2 years, etc). I don't see these basic mistakes from doctors nearly as often. I've never seen a doctor not check a Lithium level, or start someone on 20 mg of Abilify.

There's also the issue that they don't know what they don't know, so there's some overconfidence and the risk of missed zebras. Rare diseases like hemochromatosis, wilson's disease, or even meningitis I've seen go misdiagnosed by mid-level providers.

Again, this isn't to say that I don't love mid-levels, I do. But they do require adequate supervision (I will say that in most of the mistakes I've seen, the covering MD was not providing adequate supervision, IMO). Also, more mid-levels won't solve our primary care shortage, as most mid-levels go into other fields too, that pay better. NP's don't want to do primary care any more than MD's do.

What we need to do is encourage more people to become doctors by making medicine enjoyable again, restoring the doctor patient relationship, and making it financially worth it. One of my best friends, who is probably the smartest person I know and would've been an amazing doctor, decided NOT to go to med school because it just wasn't worth it. She made a few million in the tech sales industry before age 30 and is now retired young. People who are smart enough to be doctors can do other things, and they are. We need to make medicine worth it for these people (and not just financially, but professionally too), or the shortage will only continue to grow. We also need to utilize mid-levels more appropriately, but that alone isn't going to fix anything and might make things worse.

Where are you getting all this info on the AMA? I'm not doubting you... I've just never heard of this before, and I'd like to learn more. (Thanks.)

There's a decent overview of the criticisms of the ACA on Wikipedia, so that's a decent place to start. It's a classic regulatory capture story but it's not talked about that often because a lot of attention is focused on Big Pharma even though it represents a fraction of health care costs. They do a lot of bullying of alternative medicine practitioners while enjoying a monopoly over the medical procedure codes the government has officially adopted (CPT). The cause of our high health care costs in the US are myriad and anyone who claims to have the simple answer should be met with deep skepticism.

Non-Mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Association#Criticisms_and_historical_controversies

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For emergency things the wait time is insane. Once had to take the wife to the hospital for severe pain and trouble breathing. Sat there for 8 hours. By the time we saw someone, the symptoms were over. Happened repeatedly for about a year. Turns out an organ was failing. When it finally did we arrived at the hospital in an ambulance and waited 14 hours just to get a viewing room. 3 more finally see a doctor. Better believe we were charged by the hour.

We are ranked #1 in the world for healthcare spending by a large margin but we are tied with Slovenia at 37th in the rankings for quality....

You don't even know what a PhD is. The initials you wanted are MD. Yes, medical errors happen, but this is because your doctors are human. They happen in every country, in fact. Would you prefer doctors didn't treat illness? No one is forcing you to see one. If you can do it better then do it.

Is this many deaths is acceptable to you? The fact that medical error is the 3rd leading cause of death in America is OK? We are ranked 37th in quality. No one is forcing you to see a doctor? Sometimes you have no choice. Accidents happen, illness etc. No one WANTS to see a doctor. Treatment for an illness should not cause death and that is what these stats represent. Preventable errors. As for the PHD, I know many MDs with PHDs. Besides it just sounds better. lol

Of course it's not "acceptable", but some level of medical error is unavoidable. First off though, your statistic is not a hard and fast number, it's an estimate from one study. It's not verified and could be totally wrong. The authors themselves admit this in the paper. Second, what makes you think all of that medical error is committed by doctors? I'm sure some of it is, but much of it is also going to be further down the chain: a nurse gives the wrong dose, the pharmacy sends the wrong medicine, an aide tries to ambulate a patient without assistance, etc.

Also, how do you define an error? If a new patient comes out n unconscious to the emergency room, alone, and the doctor, trying to save their life, gives them a medicine they're allergic to, is that an error? How is it the doctor's fault? The doctor had no way of knowing the patient had a rare allergy and was giving the most effective, standard treatment for a problem.

The fact remains that although treatment for an illness shouldn't cause death, sometimes it will. Sometimes that's because of error, but sometimes that's just the way things are.

I do think there is a lot of room for improvement in the medical system. I do not think it lies with doctors. Most of the improvement is in medical technology, which is in the dark ages. Things like universal health care records, so doctors can see every patient's entire health history and mess regardless of if that patient has been to this hospital before would solve my hypothetical allergy problem above and save countless lives. Better warning systems to prevent giving wrong doses and wrong meds. The current warnings go off far too often and unnecessarily so doctors and nurses develop a tolerance to them and learn to ignore them. They're useless. We need alerts that go off when it's truly a problem. But the computer systems aren't sophisticated enough to do that.

Then there's the issue of work hours. Many errors are caused by the issue of "residency", where doctors are forced to work crazy hours on little sleep for little pay. A recent attempt at adding work hour rules didn't work, because it "limited" hours to 80 a week, and greatly increased patient handoffs. But unfatigued doctors would definitely make less errors. And it's not like they like being forced to work until their brains fall out. They're forced to. It's indentured servitude.

Your correct. It is the whole system. I know how bad it is because my family have been the victims of the system more than once. I guess I do put more blame on doctors because I see them as head of the system. Having power to stop the errors, not that they are always the cause of them. The system of working people long hours is a problem. More mistakes will be made due to fatigue. I don't have all the answers, but the only way to make them better is to admit and bring light to the fact that there is a problem. This fact is, I feel being suppressed by the media.

Just wanted to note, that 4 witnesses to prove rape shit is a common misconception, propagated further by corrupt legal systems in "Islamic" countries.

This is a fairly decent read on it, but the notable part;

Now, let’s look at the verses of the Quran which mention the production of four witnesses:

“The adulterer and the adulteress — flog each one of them with a hundred stripes” - (An-Nur 24:3).

“…And those who calumniate chaste woman but brings not four witnesses — flog them eighty stripes and do not admit their evidence ever after” – (An-Nur 24:5).

In above-mentioned verses, it has been made very clear that the requirement of four witnesses arises to prove adultery and not rape, and not when the husband is being accused of unfaithfulness, but when the wife is being accused.

Still messed up, but not the stupid "Islam says you need four witnesses" crap that propagandists have been pushing.

This is all a function capitalism. At the root of it is commodification.

We've created a system that turned everything into a commodity, and translated value into currency. This works to ease the medium of exchange and helps create parity, but there are huge pitfalls.

Everything is for sale, and everything sells. Nothing is off limits.

We sell our time to a business, in exchange for an amount of currency determined by them to be the value of it. We use that currency to go to markets and buy other commodities that businesses sell; this keeps the cycle going.

The problem is we've commoditized human rights like health, privacy, freedom/justice, and education. These are intangible things that should be considered priceless, but we've started heading down this road the moment we began trading time for money.

Since when does the business tell you how much your time is worth? They'll tell you how much it's worth to them, but you need to tell them how much your time costs. Otherwise they'll literally pay you whatever they want.

You're right, the value of your time and labour is determined by them. They're the ones purchasing it. That's how markets work.

The job market is not much different from other markets, because the value of your labor & time is a function of supply and demand.

The supply being the number of people in the market who could do your job, and the demand being the desire for potential employers to pay some one a certain amount for that job.

If there are a lot of people willing to do your job (high supply), the demand (or amount employers are willing to pay you) decreases. Hence, your bargaining power when negotiating your salary decreases.

You may view your time to be more valuable than they do, but if you value it more than what they're willing to pay, then they'll find some one else.

Since when does the business tell you how much your time is worth?

By telling you what they're willing to pay.

They'll tell you how much it's worth to them, but you need to tell them how much your time costs. Otherwise they'll literally pay you whatever they want.

I think that's kind of the point. Ultimately, most businesses will pay you as little as they can possibly get away with paying you, while still actually getting what they want. Either you take what they offer, or you don't. But economic coercion means that a whole lot of people are going to take jobs where their time is valued less than they think it's really worth, because they're desperate, and something is better than literally nothing.

So in a way, the company is setting the value. Although on the lower end, ultimately, it's actually the government who sets the value.

Basic economics identifies 4 attributes of a competitive market: large number of buyers and sellers, a homogeneous product, perfect information, and no entry barriers.

Government policies have assisted the healthcare industry in blocking each one of these. Medicare pricing allowed insurers to piggyback on government pricing, thus concentrating "buyers", and Obamacare is concentrating sellers through mergers.

It is impossible to compare procedures, effectiveness or any information on costs, benefits or substitutes because insurers deliberately obscure it (antitrust exemption for insurers) and state and fed regulators are complicit to allowing cost shifting to avoid the state paying for the uninsured. Regulatory hurdles to paraprofessionals, walk in clinics and access to the prescription pad, are entry barriers.

It is therefore amusing to read comments proclaiming the failure of the free market. The free market has not failed to work. It has been blocked at every point by industry, which is deeply embedded in government and health care policy, and every reform effort begins with meetings with the "industry", which has captured the government and legislatures. So the industry redivides the pie and moves the deck chairs. It is a parasite that feeds on the host but must not kill it, because then it too will die.

I'm not proclaiming the failure of the free market. I'm simply stating that there are certain industries that shouldn't be open to the free market. Healthcare is one of them.

Gotcha. I honestly don't believe it should be either because there is inelastic demand, but this industry could work in the free market if basic economic principles were actually adhered to.

One of the reasons I argue in favor of a free market system in this industry is because I don't trust the federal government to operate in our best interest.

Healthcare is not intangible, it's another person's labor. No one has, or should have, a right to another person's labor. That's slavery, not human rights.

Healthcare is tangible. It's a service that provides the management of health, which is intangible.

Hunter S. Thompson gives us insight into Nixon's character.

Nixon sold us out on healthcare, and started the first-ever "war" on an inanimate object - drugs, turning a blind eye to science and going heavy on "Law and Order". Read the HST piece. It's a masterwork.

LBG started the War on Poverty before Nixon started his War on Drugs.

Poverty is a state of being, not an inanimate object.

J?

Lyndon B. Gohnson?

One of those South Korean Presidents. LG.Bee

Ell Bee Gay

Fuck Nixon.

five years of medical error has killed 470,000. people. https://www.ssa.gov/history/pdf/HealthCareEarly1960s.pdf.

Remember when advertising drugs on television was against the law? And drugs were called drugs, instead of "meds"? Pepperidge Farms remembers.

Right, because asshole Nixon declared a war on "Drugs." And you can't have Good Honest Americans associating their own behavior -- the drugs they're taking, both prescription and non-- with the behavior of the Dirty Hippie Scum he was trying to villainize.

Thank you for accommodating my laziness.

That is also when copays, deductibles, and employees paying part of the premiums began.

Do you know when it started being illegal?

Moore's "Sicko" covered this.

Wow. Well this explains a lot

Is there any relevant analysis of what the effect of this was? Pros and cons? What would have happened if it had not passed?

God bless 'MURICA.

Land of the free and home of the brave, indeed.

There was a reason for that. Having a profit motive in healthcare makes it immediately corruptible and suspect.

If we can't enslave them, we can make them pay to live.

That's what Republicans do best, reverse Robin Hood.

Robin Hood stole from the government and gave back to the people.

That Nixon was a real Bernie Sanders.

Christ no. The complete opposite.

I’m sorry I forgot the “/s”...but that is some pretty progressive stuff coming from Nixon. He started the EPA too.

Did you also now that before 1973 doctors knew how to cure cancer but were holding back the technology until Nixon signed this bill. The reason why Nixon had to sign this bill was because of Area 51, which is how the doctors knew how to cure cancer.

Yeah that was a bad move.

you do know there was a democratic house and senate right? Along with a liberal court

It never ceases to amaze how subtle, unnoticed changes cause such a massive shift in how we live our lives

There used to be this thing called "mutual" which were sort of like insurance companies that were setup like credit unions were any profits was shared among the participants. Those were outlawed as well.

They're not completely outlawed, they're called cooperatives and they're protected by freedom of religion. As long as it's under that protection, you're good.

During the initial drafting of this bill, there was a public HMO option allocated to it.

Ted Kennedy at the time convinced other major Democrats to remove the Public option from the bill. They felt that making the bill too good would make it harder for Kennedy to use Healthcare as a platform to run against Nixon in the next election.

Further, Nixon actually agreed to the public option part.

Watergate got in the way, then shit went downhill for everyone. The bill's public option was not explored nor even brought to vote to be added again.

It has been documented through US history that everytime the government has messed with the Healthcare market, they would fuck it up even worse than before. In this case, the major cause of the fuck up was people playing politics instead of doing their jobs.

Regardless of what you think of michael moore, in his sicko film, there's a snippet of video where nixon asked his assistant something like 'what is this hmo is this where companies would make them na of money' then he gave the go ahead for hmo the next day. Fuck nixon

I commented on audio tape above. the thing that enraged me the most about it was Kaiser explained that they make more money by denying treatment to more people. Nixon replied "that sounds good."

These people are psychopaths.

I read something that kennedy authored it? Both sides deserve to go to hell

Yup. Ive been arguiing recently that both sides are the same. Redditors call me an idiot for thinking it.

I came to the same conclusion years ago. Democrats just have a public stance and a private stance. Same with corrupt 3rd world countries as shown in wikileaks 'i am going to condemn you (USA) publicly tomorrow but i do not really mean it. Wink wink.'

Yea, I know I was off on the time frame. Still, in April not much voting had taken place. And the big picture here is WP vehemently attacked Sanders, then flipped the coin when Trump stepped in. Let's not lose sight sight of the premise because I was/am stupid.

Yea, I know I was off on the time frame. Still, in April not much voting had taken place. And the big picture here is WP vehemently attacked Sanders, then flipped the coin when Trump stepped in. Let's not lose sight sight of the premise because I was/am stupid.

only criminals would try to profit offa someone else's misfortunes

A parasitic industry feeding of the misery of others. They also use your love for one another. We have a treatment to save your family member, only if you can pay the ransom. Other wise they die of suffer.

Thats just it why do placebos work including placebo surgeries

They are masters of deception and want us fearful

Possibly. It is also well documented that disease flairs come and go. This may just coincide with a pill or procedure.

why do plecebo surgeries work?

They do not always work. There is a placebo effect, but it does not happen in all cases. Like I said flairs come and go in chronic disease. Just because you ate a peanut butter sandwich and your illness improved does not mean that the sandwich caused it. It could have been the course your illness was going to take regardless.

like the mind workin right?

Don't worry guys Trump is gonna fix it....

The problem with that is you will get terrible healthcare. There is an economic principle that applies to capitalist/oligarch economies that is called "The Tragedy of the Commons". Basically when no one stands to profit, the product or service will stagnate. It comes from common grazing grounds that no one owned in England, it would get ravaged and then because no one could own or charge for others to use it, that area would turn to a muddy swamp in the centers of towns almost immediately. It would grow back over time and happen all over again. The same would be for non-profit healthcare, lower grade service, doctors only charging cash for their services, Insurance companies closing doors giving few options to the public. It sounds like a great idea, but it would flip on us quick, unless the government were to subsidize the industry to where they could still make money and give themselves performance bonuses and then we would be tax more. 1 dime or 10 pennies, either way its the same. The only answer is a semi-socialist/capitalist society where we outlaw lobbying so that our government act in the best interest of the people

Not true. If it was then why are 36 countries ahead of us? America is not the only country that comes up with medical breakthroughs. Non profit does not mean working for free. Salaries and bonuses would be part of expenses. Insurance could sell policies disability policies. Paying salaries, expenses for domestic care, lawn care, etc. when you are not able. All those paper pushers could become health care providers, contributing tot he care of the patient, or supplying the disability services.

i agree with the fact that 36 countries are ahead of us, but for a myriad of reasons. some of the more successful ones are a socio-capitalistic economics, others started their healthcare as nationalized before the oligarchs, publically traded companies and hedge funds took ahold of the industry. Its not 1 specific reason they crush us, but many. To truly overhaul how our systems works would take alot of effort and time because we cant force doctors and providers to be non-profit (the doctors would have to be as well because the rates of insurance companies are set by actuaries that look into the average costs, risks and liabilities and set the rates that way. So controlling the cost of actual services would have to be done somehow. Also, you would have to get rid of medicare/medicaid to sell disability policies (unless you are talking about long term disability insurance like what Aflac pushes)

I agree. Wishful thinking. I just know the best hospitals in US are usually non profit. Mayo clinic comes to mind. The fact that medical error ranking 3rd in cause of death means we are in trouble. These are preventable errors. Not counting the patient was just to sick and procedure did not work, or we did all we could etc. I also know that some states are worse than others. Our state is so bad, we are afraid to get medical care. We have actually gone out of state for care.

VA is not profit and its a nightmare. so you have a few and i can point out a few. JPS - Fort Worth, Texas. Ben Taub - Houston Texas

I don't have the answer. I just know we have a big problem with quality in medical care. Exposing it can only make things better.

actually very few people are motivated by things other than profit(salary), especially those who have people to provide for. There is a ton of study on this, high consumer societies change the level of importance of money for the people within that society because the money is represent of more than just income, it represents self worth, able to provide for loved ones, compete and amass goods, lifestyles, etc.

so 1 example of billions of people, astounding claim. I cant point to 2 million brokers that do it for the $. just raised you 2 mil to your one. Stop using the minority example to back a bull argument. Most humans are INNATELY GREEDY as a survival mechanism, of course there are examples of people who rise about their characteristics. I can also point to a ton of inventors who absolutely did it for the money, hence them owning the patent.

and yet dozens of countries with working healthcare systems have discoveries of new cures just as frequently. They have significantly less BS discoveries of patented 'helps with treatment of' (doesn't cure).

thats because our economic system rewards people (though patents, funding, etc) to treat and not cure. I may have an economics degree but i would for and FDA regulated industry and the system is absolutely rigged this way.

also, you can continue to argue with me about it, but i have an economics degree and would happily show you macro and micro economic studies that proves what im telling you. You seem to be the equivalent of a jailhouse lawyer, basically you have a surface level understanding that you got off the internet which is full of falsehood, hope you dont fart and fall down.

they is a million examples of privatized companies governing themselves for profit and the best interest of their customers. Profitability and customer advocacy are not inverse of one another. In companies that have a long term strategy, typically customer advocacy plays into it. Markets (Insurance, Stocks, Pharma, etc) that have a short term "for today" attitude towards their markets, and a lot of times, its systemic. The reason insurance flipped is because of 80% of the market is owned by hedge funds (including Berkshire Hathaway) now and they are being pushed by those who just want the revenue.

i would agree with all your assertions. The dollar is kept off the market because it helps maintain a false value, the less physical money in the market, the more purchasing power it is. The US will shred physical money to pull this off, and they do it ALL the time. I meant that the physical companies are owned by Hedge Funds, who actual customers are their investors, so they burn ties with one customer of the company they own a majority share of stock in to appease the other with dividends. When insurance companies had 1 person at the head of it and it was privately owned, typically that person would come to a long term strategy to keep multiple generations of a family within their customer base. However, once the decision maker becomes a fund who main function is to create profits for its clientele, then the insurance company is directed to do things like drive in money through price increases across the board, denying claims purposely with no reason. The banks also did this (Wells Fargo with fake accounts, Wachovia and others with ATM fees, and other gouging fees. The banks are here to appease themselves and investors (so put your money at a private bank, credit union or community bank)

yes, in extreme circumstances, but mainly they will be lepered from the industry, which damages their ability to earn an income.

It always comes back to outlawing lobbying, and unlimited donations.

WHY ISNT THIS A RALLYING CRY? WHY ISNT THIS THE MARCH? 8 YEARS, and IVE SEEN A MARCH FOR EVERY FART OF AN ISSUE IMAGINABLE.

because those same lobbyist pay to keep their activities and dark and most people who arent red pilled cant fathom this concept

Maybe you should specify that it relaxed restrictions on health insurers, allowing them to increase their profits, because individual doctors and nurses and companies that make pharmaceuticals have always profited off of health care.

What's the incentive to provide healthcare without profit?

Humanity. Being a decent human being. The industry would benefit by getting rid of those that are all about the $. They have become check collectors, not doctors. Run the test and collect the check. This analysis was told to me by another doctor disgusted with the industry.

Would love to see you study for 24 years and pay put the ass for education for "humanity". Socialism either puts a gun to peoples' heads or has everyone working together and the latter will never happen. In come the guns. You people live in a fairytale land.

If a gun was put to your head, maybe you'd think otherwise.

Yeah that worked great for Stalin

I'd support literally hitler if wealth was legitimately redistributed.

Even that broken ass system is better than the current.

WRONG.

k

If you are in the medical profession, I did not mean to offend you. There are lots of good doctors out there. But there are also lots of bad ones. Anyone that is a Dr should care about patients and police their own. They should never allow a Dr who is incompetent to continue harming patients.

You have to be fist fucking me ಠ_ಠ

My Gilbert dr. read them and take their side.

Our democracy is broken.

Nixon fucked up a whole lotta shit for us all.

Wow

Repeal and replace the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973.

It is great that it was changed, otherwise there would be no advancements in medicine.

So other countries who are non profit and make discoveries all the time. Australia has come up with a possible cure for Alzhiemers by using ultra sound to break up plaques in the drain. A couple of treatments and your done. No pills. has worked on mice and cured them. A cancer cure. Extract from a native fruit injected into tumors . They dry up and fall off in a few days. We are not the only country that makes discoveries.

Are you telling me those researchers made no money off it?

I'm sure they will, but not to the extent that our 'discoveries' (see 58th alternative version of a 'treatment') make. Almost never a cure.

I am sure they do. The discoveries I mentioned have are going through human testing right now. Not sure how their financial aspects work on the discoveries and getting drugs to market. Australia has universal healthcare system and they spend around 10% GDP on health care.

headline is wrong. pre73, there were lots of ways to profit off of health care. e.g. be a doctor.

I'm a primary source on this. I help people navigate the healthcare delivery system, negotiate with providers and dispute fradulent medical bills. Even the Federal Governement admits 97% of medicals contains errors, fraud or both. Below is comment I made in another subreddit while trying to explain the system to people that have no idea what they are discussing.

Let's dispel the notion that there is some sort of magic bullet legislation that will fix our broken system. TrumpCare, ObamaCare, they are both disasters.

When medicare part D was passed, a Senator who I cannot remember at the moment (maybe Baucus) slipped a rider into the bill that made it so medicare could not negotiate with Big Pharma on the price of drugs. So Pharma can charge whatever the hell they want, see epipen.

Obamacare was rammed through congress in a budget conciliatory vote before any of the legislators even read the fucking 1000+ page bill. Nancy Pelosi, "We have to pass it to see what's in it!" Great fucking idea Nancy.

The "Affordable" Care Act is nothing more than an insurance company subsidy bill. Yes, it helped people that have never had coverage before gain access to care, which is great. But, that comes with consequences; all Americans were mandated to buy health insurance, and let me be very clear, health insurance is not equivalent to healthcare. So, many people are stuck with $6000 deductibles and $1000 a month premiums to just to avoid a fucking government penalty.

This TrumpCare bill will be more of the same, crony capitalistic policies that take OUR tax money and pad the profits of private companies. Capitalist dream- privatized profits, socialized losses. Now, BOTH sides of the aisle have royally fucked the healthcare delivery system. All of us need to stop bickering about partisan issues and take responsibility for our own health. The government will not solve your problems.

So, to sum up that rant, the current system is dominated by three cartels; the giant hospital systems like HCA, the giant insurance companies like BCBS, CIGNA, and Aetna, and finally Big Pharma. They all collude together to maintain their profits.

The only difference between these cartels and the one's you might think of in regards to Mexico or Pablo Escobar is that they enforce their market power with bill collectors and lawyers rather than men with guns (though one could argue the DEA fills that role). Many politicians are owned by these powers and have no interest in disrupting the status quo and their feathered nests in DC.

Rant over.

Disclaimer- I know there are genetic disorders that no one can control, I am not dismissing those. I am happy that people finally have access to care, but anyone who knows about basic eeconomics knows that there is always a trade-off.

If you don't pay your taxes they will come to your house with guns and put you in a cage

Exactly.

Thanks for the thanks my friend. I actually work in this industry and have seen first hand what lawmakers think is going on. I'm not sure whether they have no fucking idea what they are doing or malicious intent. Probably a mix of both

Its always so nice to see a more detailed version of what most know is going on to some degree or another.

If only we would gather and rally with strikes and marches knowing all of this, to at least get $ out of politics to decrease these cartel influences. The most brilliant people seem to be online, but there's never any organized rallys or movements.

You need to go back farther into the story to understand the problem, way before 1973. Start looking at life before the AMA and the big insurance companies that were referred to as "the blues".

Where did those entities come from? Did they arise naturally due to free market forces or was there government power and legislative force behind them?

This book would add a lot of useful information to your original post, and you might really enjoy it.

"The Primal prescription" begins with the history I mention above and then continues up through 1973 thereby telling the whole story.

Any time :)

I had read about this and agree it doesn't get enough attention. Thanks for the post!

We used to have public hospitals. Not sure if any young people know what that means.

Spent a little time in both- couldn't tell them apart except that at the non-public hospital my emergency room bill (for a bad allergic reaction) was $130. Which my mom thought was 'extreme'.

Such a complicated issue that I think the only solution that would actually work is to outlaw health insurance entirely. Start from scratch

Amen !!!

That would be because a lack of profit incentive decreases the efficiency, seeing as the person running the hospital sees no change in their personal wealth whether they spend 80hours a week on the hospital or whether they spend 2 hours a week on it and then sit around masturbating to anime the rest of the week. Obviously this is an enormous oversimplification, but the tldr is: No profit, no incentive to improve

Huh? This makes no sense. So doctors, hospitals, drug companies etc... couldn't make money prior to 1973? That's bullshit

My point was that for-profit healthcare was not illegal prior to 1973. Health insurance, maybe, but not all healthcare.

Non profit does not mean you work for free. They all made a good living. The money is just put back into the healthcare system instead of investors pockets that do contribute nothing to healthcare. How many hands does that $ past through before it reaches a Dr or nurse? How much is left after the parasites take their cut ?

Yes. it is a sad, terrifying situation we are in. People are dying and the Corporation has to make their money. Noam Chomsky has spoken at length about the evil nature of our corporate structure. Yes, capitalism is the cornerstone of Western Democracy and all that, but the purpose of government is to ensure that the corporation does not put out unsafe products, harm the environment, abuse their work force, rip off the investors or engage in any financial shenanigans etc etc but when the corporations take over governments, there is nothing to stop their greed.

Nixons organization cjangrd everything..

While I'm all for piling on the GOP for their bungling of issues like health care, and I hate to be that guy, it does seem worth pointing out that the bill was introduced in the Senate by a Democrat: one Edward Kennedy; and that both the Senate and House were under Democrat control at the time.

Also, it appears that the aim of the bill was not specifically to enrich the health insurance industry, but to produce some public good through specific reforms.

How well that played out is certainly up for discussion--look where we are now. But I just don't see how this can be laid specifically at Nixon's feet.

The thing is, if you look at the bill it's not self-evidently bad. I think it's entirely plausible that the Act is merely a well-meaning bill that was the product of the kind of compromise needed to achieve widespread support, rather than any collusive cabal.

I'm not an expert on the subject, but I do think that the problems we're experiencing with our healthcare system are way more complicated than just "HMO bad."

(Full disclosure: my and my wife's health insurance is through Kaiser, and we're both reasonably satisfied with what we get for our money. Granted, neither of us has been critically ill or needed hospitalization, so we can't speak to what that kind of experience with them would be like. But our experience with them handling run of the mill problems has been positive.)

Its both Dems and Repubs.

Both constantly push out more measures that favor wealthy and wealth inequality. Never stop recalling the Harvard study a few years ago confirming US as Oligarchy based on who majority of laws/policies passed benefit.

Ditching the Gold Standard, COINTELPRO, War on Drugs, Watergate, Student Loans, Health Care collapse, Oil Crisis, Unsanctioned assassinations, this cocksucker is not only the worst president but I am mystified when polictians talk about how great he was. He wasn't so bad as VP though.

Oh that Nixon what a silly guy. But in all seriousness he was such an odd president

The version of America that Trump and his supporters supposedly want is an idealized version of the 50s and 60s, right? So, why not kill the drug war and outlaw profiting from healthcare? Nixon did tons of stuff that is still hurting us today.

Health care is a commodity: it should be as profitable as possible, like any other commodity. If not, you don't understand what a service is or how services improve, or how America's understanding of commodities not being a function of public intervention improved every service and product that you enjoy today. You didn't get fucking iPads or i7 CPUs by Apple and Intel having caps on profit margins. But we'll probably throw those incredible feats of technology under the rug as "non-comparables" to health care (even though health care has improved under similar conditions in the realm of health care technology, herp derp). Because, as you know, we are achieving such technological success by not being profit driven and choosing to invest in what the market wan--- oooooh.

And "social responsibility" isn't an argument. We can take a look at the US, Canadian and UK health care systems' crumbling, unjust (work hours, understaffed, etc.) gov't programs to see how that sophist trick is playing out.

And, finally, "how do you prevent monopolies, then???" isn't an argument. As it's already been stated several times in here (see: /u/Redditsoldestaccount), the monopoly is fueled by the gov't. If we valued profits and the actual free market, AKA human nature, the picture wouldn't be muddied with Uncle Sam's generous pubes and nostril hairs donated in the name of "you look cold, here's some of my social responsibility".

How the fuck did so much subtle, pro-gov't-intervention garbage creep onto /r/conspiracy? Angsty Marxist teenagers who haven't reached enlightenment, yet? Sorry, ad hom, but jeez, m8. It's raining bearded socialists in here.

You do realize you cannot, materially, support an operation that doesn't have some form of sustainable profit, yes? That's the part that makes up people's paychecks. (Of course, if you're a monopoly on force, you just take the profit form actual productive entities for your little social engineering projects)

A non-profit still needs a gross margin outside of revenue (donations are a form of profit). You can't "break even" - a "cost" of running needs to be reimbursed by a profit margin, or your losing money and value. Basic economics. It's why businesses go into bankruptcy. You cannot infinitely move debt around. What do you think an hourly labor rate is?

I'm actually not sure what you're even trying to say, at this point. Yes, society does move forward by production. That's how biological beings continue to exist, fundamentally. You exert work (energy) in order to achieve (produce) some kind of sustainability. You aren't even philosophically correct, let alone well-versed in econ' 101, it seems.

Thank you for the shout out. I don't understand why people in /r/conspiracy are advocating for single payer.... Do you want the same federal government that is routinely condemned in this sub to be in charge of your health???? Makes no fucking sense

Kinda have to wonder why the countries on this planet that view healthcare as a right and provide even basic services for their populations tend to have healthier populations with less diabetes, less heart disease (to mention just 2 common ailments in the US), longer life expectancy for their populations and much lower costs...and they don't have to pay for the cost of marketing departments and television advertisements in the pharmaceuticals they consume.

Allowing insurance companies to put a price on a person's life is really F*d up. And uniquely American.

What are you talking about? Health care has a cost, whether your little fancy feelings like it or not. There is a price.

A CAT scan requires labor to make the machinery. Labor to operate. Labor to schedule use of it. We represent labor with money. It costs money to have a CAT scan. Or a knee brace. Or heart surgery.

What you suggest is we give the gov't power to steal money, which is labor, (so it's pseudo-slavery) and develop bureaucracy to run said giant socialist-slavery machine. Name a single bureaucratic element of the gov't that has "reduced costs" for everyone, using the actual definition of reduced prices (cannot contain my laughter that you actually said that a giant gov't program reduces costs--do you have ANY idea of what is happening to costs in Canada or the United States with their ridiculous policies of required admittance? Do you want to take a gander at Venezuela's central planning utopia?).

What you are probably going to do is step around the fact that the gov't is stealing swathes of money so that someone can get in "free" (hence 'reduced prices', except fraudulently represented as free) to check if their morning sneeze was cancer. Oh wait, giant centrally-planned systems like that never get abused, right? To the point where abuse inevitably ends up being forcefully paid for by the tax payer? That's only the tip of the massive, moon-sized glacier that is central planning.

much lower costs

What a joke. You are regurgitating non-factual, non-reality nonsense along with the other socialists in this [month-old] thread.

Yest Clearly, the rest of the world fooled their populations into managing the costs of their own lifelong healthcare decades ago.

But you know. You are right.

You haven't made an argument.

obamacare is literally just another form of subsidization for banks...so.

i want singlepayer not this stupid corporate welfare shit like obamacare.

i'd rather get rid of obamacare because fuck insurance companies

That Nixon guy really fucked you guys over, didn't he? I mean the trifecta I know of now is:

• end of gold standard -- beginning of inflation.
• start of war on drugs -- recently uncovered as a way to keep blacks under control (was posted on this subreddit all over the place a few months ago).
• and now this healthcare crap.

Interesting how this was kept out of limelight for so long. And will continue to do so. The Americans have a unique ability to be completely impervious to self-reflection. Ah well.

Nice that we have an entire industry dedicated to making sure we pay as much as possible for health care. How many of the jobs that need to be financed by the same cash pile that goes to those who actually do the real work are on the chopping block if we ever get our head out of our asses and solve this problem?

Buncha socialist marxist hippies in here.

Why shouldnt a corporation be allowed to make as much money as possible?

Because making money doesn't generally benefit society as a whole

Capitalism certainly did great things for society.

Im being a bit tongue in cheek here but many people (Including the courts) believe that a corporation has an obligation to its shareholders to generate as much money as possible.

laws made by men that benefit some men over other men

it is immoral for someone to die because they simply cannot afford the care, period

They should. Just not in health care.

Why?

Shouldnt doctors make a lot of money?

because health care shouldn't be a market. I would prefer to live in a world where health care is not subject to capitalism. doctors should make money, that makes no claim on whether or not health care should be market based. markets do not always result in the greater good (in fact often result in the opposite), and I value the greater good.

Thats what capitalism does.

Makes money, thats it. No more no less.

the neocon power grab from JFK through to Nixon is really astounding. Still strong AF and reaping all the profit, globally.

This is good stuff, but is it a conspiracy? I mean, if you read the text of the act it's plain what it does.

Nixon did a lot to fuck up Healthcare in the US and any "reform" that doesn't address the core, underlying failings of our healthcare system will be unsuccessful. If Obamacare had a mechanism to undo the fraud, corruption, and abuse then Obamacare would honestly be a great healthcare bill. There are ways to cut the massive costs of our system without fucking over the consumer but that would call for a massive overhaul of the entire system which no one wants to do because healthcare is so damn profitable (Thanks to people like Nixon, of course).

Health maintenance organization Act...

Wow, the audacity.

Yep, I've been saying it for years, for-profit healthcare is the dumbest idea ever. And healthcare reform ain't gonna do poop until we address the real issue - healthcare costs are rising faster than insurance premiums.

There's some things profit just needs to be kept out of.
We've got doctors all over the place who are essentially drug pushers with minimal training in nutrition and disease prevention, because there's no money to be made by keeping people healthy.
We've even got doctors faking diagnosis so that they can perform expensive surgeries, and we've got pharmaceutical companies shelving & disappearing cures because all the money is to be made in treating illness, not curing it. And they dupe millions into getting injected with completely unneeded 'vaccines'.

Fucking Nixon fucked up so much shit in our country.

Goddammit, Nixon. I try and tell people you weren't Satan incarnate like the media tries to portray you, but then I find this out.

Ain't helping your case, Dick!

Good ol tricky Dick. I always forget how horrible he was because I didn't exist. I was born into the Reagan administration. I just threw up in my mouth a little

Okay, but the US has elected a few Presidents since the early 70's, none of them were obliged to continue this or many of the other Acts that former Presidents signed.

Thanks, Nixon and his supporters purportedly want is an inversion of reality.

Just when you thought Nixon wasn't so bad....

Kaiser Permanente...

O.K., but there are genetic disorders that no one responds.

Funny is that when he went to war against /r/trees ?

Here's a view of S. 14 (An Act to amend the Public Health Service Act to provide assistance and encouragement for the establishment and expansion of health maintenance organizations, and for other purposes.) - Surprisingly enough - It was introduced by Sen. Ted Kennedy (D)

Well Nixon is a pretty big piece of shit anyway so

Why not go back further? The government and law and regulations are the problem in the first place.

No one should own anything. That's going to work great. Grow up.

Why is that a bad thing? That in and of itself isn't a bad thing, usually there are other aspects that make it an issue, like corruption and collusion.

Was Nixon really as big of a piece of shit as it seems? I've never heard or read anything good about the guy.

Fuck the Feds

Revoke and replace the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 established private healthcare here, which is great.

It's always about the money.

Wow, credible conspiracy post. Illuminati confirmed.

I help people navigate the healthcare sector stocks surpassed the market?

you make money when people are sick... money not rolling due to damn jogging... time to make people sick!

But I have to be the value of it is a parasite that fees on the personal doctors profit.

There's a reason US healthcare will never be made affordable. It would halt medical profiteering.

i had never heard anything about this. thank you for sharing this information. posts like this are what keep me coming back to this sub, in spite of what it's become.

five years of medical bills.

They are also rated# one in the rankings for quality....

Revoke and replace the Health Maintenance Organization Act of 1973 established private healthcare here, right now.

five years of medical bills.

My point about chronic back pain is that Doctors aren't as forthcoming as you are about how little they understand and have solutions for it, while simultaneously disparaging and lobbying against alternative practitioners like chiropractors. They're perfectly happy selling snake oil so long as it provides them with work and preserves their guru status.

Your other insights are fascinating though and I can see now I may be laying too much at the feet of the AMA. The whole industry is fucked beyond belief, but I really really really hope we don't move to single payer. We're the last industrialized nation where there's still an incentive to invest in medical ventures, and even still it's far less attractive than throwing money into real estate or software startups.

My hope is that the system collapses in such spectacular fashion that we have no choice but to repeal or ignore the regulations that are choking the industry and enjoy a renaissance of innovation that rivals Silicon Valley's.

There's a recording somewhere of him talking about it behind closed doors.

Am guessing OP picked this up from the latest Dan Carlin podcast.

Listen to latest Common Sense podcast.

Are you really trying to claim that those industries are not driven by profits? I'm not really even sure what the point your rambling post is trying to make.

You're blaming the high cost of health care on a move to the move away from non-profit businesses? When has the pursuit of profit ever driven costs up in industry absent some sort of regulatory capture?

You're beyond redemption, comrade. Join the utopia in North Korea.

The claim as stated is false, because it is way too broad to possibly be true. Most healthcare before 1973 was for profit. It appears that there were caps on profit for some businesses, but there was still profit

Fighting Against the Evils of For-Profit Health Care: The Patients’ "Bill of Rights" "Prior to the 197O’s, America’s health care system was wildly overspending and overexpanding. Indemnity insurance and government agencies such as Medicare not only paid for medical costs, but also encouraged further growth. In the 1970’s, health care expenses soared to the point where it became clear that a change in the system was needed, The change came in a form of the Health Maintenance Organization (HM0) Act of 1973, which took its main source of inspiration from the Kaiser Permanente Health Care System (MacArthur, 1997). This provision encouraged the creation of organizations that would provide managed care by completely serving all its members on the capitation basis. The capitation basis mandates that each physician receive a flat fee for each patient visited, regardless of the amount of time he or she spends with said patient (Meckler, 1999). Clearly, it can be seen that such a remuneration policy encourages physicians to spend as little time as possible with people seeking health care. Furthermore, documentation suggests that physicians with certain HMOs are even afforded bonuses at the end of the year if they save money by limiting referrals and costly procedures (Meckler, 1999). Additionally, the HM() Act of 1973, originally designed to subsidize non-profit HMO'.s and combat capitation, has had little initial impact on the system. The government was unwilling to battle the American Medical Association (AMA) in pushing the IIMO reform due to previous failures over Universal Health Care. At this point an unexpected ally of the managed care reform, corporate development, made an appearance.

The corporate world had kept a close eye on the transformation of the health care system since the passage of Medicare and Medicaid, which attracted doctors to elderly and poor patients. This form of public financing was very lucrative to investors, who already owned hospital chains and nursing homes that exploited Medicare and Medicaid for handsome revenues. Ironically, the effort's for cost containment also created opportunities for corporate development. The corporate world decided to jump in and shape the HMO reform rather than be shaped by it. Government, starved for a solution, welcomed this intervention by the for-profit sector and in 1980 President Reagan reformed the original HMC) Act of 1973 to include a fund to subsidize the establishment of for-profit HMOs (Kuttner, 1996). Now it was pressure of creating efficient, business-like management of the health care system that was undermining the traditional professional sovereignty of health care providers. Thus the HMOs, in addition to the for-profit hospitals, came under control of corporate organizations, In 1994, the Universal Health Care Plan, proposed by President Clinton, targeted for-profit health care providers as an integral portion of the medical field in the United States. With this bill, Clinton's goal was to create health alliances, made up of consumers, which would select between different providers and choose the plans they thought offered the best quality and access. These alliances would complement the already growing for-profit managed care sector in creating managed competition, as envisioned by Alain Ethoven (Kuttner, 1996). The government would subsidize the uninsured, and thus the entire country will be insured and have a choice of a provider, Unfortunately, when the Universal Health Care Plan was defeated, the system was left with business-oriented provider and an uneducated consumer.

Given this lack of governmental control the for-profit providers have invented several methods to cutting costs and thereby increasing profits. The physician working under an HMO contract is subject to a review of his or her decisions by the HMO; utilization reviews, gate keepers and financial incentives to withhold care are consistently on the minds of many physicians trying to provide both for their patients and themselves, This is a central conflict within the for-profit health care sector the dispute between the needs of the physician and the needs of the patient. Managed care's traditional goal of educating physicians about cost conscience quality care, to avoid practices such as defensive medicine, has turned into a race for the lowest possible medical loss ratio, and the highest profit. The race for profit inadvertently resulted in lower quality care, as evidenced by the special cases of HMOs. In capitation, the profit is made by providing the least possible care, and nothing is more effective in discouraging a patient's return than a distasteful experience with a provider,

While some argue against this largely negative view of the for-profit health care system, statistics show that HMOs have an alarming rate of patient decrease in health and incorrect diagnosis. One study conducted by Dr. John Ware of the AMA found that, "…elderly and poor chronically ill patients had worse physical health outcomes in HMOs than in FFS (fee for service) systems," (Ware, et. al, 1996). A completely different study run by the American Heart Association stated, "In hospital mortality of myocardial patients is twice as high in HMOs that in FFS systems." (Casale, 1997). These studies, and others like them, indicate a low level of quality in the health care of HMO’s and evidence the need for reform."... Read more: web.stanford.edu - Fighting Against the Evils of For-Profit Health Care: The Patients’ "Bill of Rights" https://web.stanford.edu/class/e297c/poverty_prejudice/soc_sec/fighting.htm

Why we have Medicaid and Medicare...

Were the early 1960s a golden age for health care? ""Many people in the U.S. prior to 1965 had very limited access to medical care," said Ronald Andersen, an emeritus professor of health services and sociology at the UCLA School of Public Health who has studied this data since the 1960s and provided the data to us. "This situation improved considerably after the implementation of Medicare and Medicaid."" politifact.com - Were the early 1960s a golden age for health care? http://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/article/2012/jan/20/was-early-1960s-golden-age-health-care/

classic asshole love that!

Greed is what makes many of the costs go up. I have had the same Rx for years, a low dosage antibiotic that I used to fill for $8 a month (paying full price) at Costco. Obamacare had no cost controls, so now that same fucking Rx is over $700! You are full of shit.

Capitalism is not a conspiracy and is responsible for the greatest improvement in the lot of the common man in all of human history.

You need a better argument than herp-derp to establish why making a profit while providing a service is "assholian wrong".

People make things, you're onto something here!

Gork the caveman wouldn't have invented the wheel or the pulley or the lever or harnessed fire if there was no profit motive after all! He did it for the dividends!

It's seems more to me that people's desire to create things is a basic drive regardless of their social and economic systems.

This is why I don't like the "both parties are the same" rhetoric. There are many ways in which they are beholden to the same interests and many obvious problems with both institutions and specific people from both institutions, it is true indeed, but on this and many other things - including a host of social issues - there are tremendous differences.

Source on the Trump plan?

Yeah! Party on medical stocks! Pay up sick suckers. Die poor sick suckers.

Exactly! I mean guys look at all the other countries doing healthcare the american way! Its going great!...

Meh. Insurance companies had a work around that. What they did was jack up the negotiated price of service with a doctor/provider to make up for it. Ex. Patient A, w/o Obamacare used to pay 100$ for doctor's visit. With her Obamacare, doctor was billing her 400$. She tells doctor just consider her as having no insurance then. Doctor tells her he can't because that's his contract with the insurance company. Point is get the gross to be as big as you can, so that 15% will still be huge.

Obama should have at least put in the public option but he got lobbied by the biggest lobby in DC -- the healthcare industry. He had a super majority. He wasted it. He's worse than a republican because he's a sellout.

Have you seen the bill?

Computers were invented by government scientists.

The internet too.

Would you say he deserves capital punishment?

Robin Hood stole from the government and gave back to the people.

Better thank our publicly owned/publicly funded research institutions for that one too, my friend. The whole idea of capitalism being solely responsible for all the world's breakthroughs is disingenuous and just mentally lazy.

Labor made that stuff, capitalism did nothing and demands the largest share of the rewards.

https://youtu.be/3qpLVTbVHnU?t=37s

This website is unbearable when it comes to this shit. No one gets that you can't get drugs from out of country, no one gets there's no competition among health insurance agencies since they can't criss state borders. Everyone is evil martin shkreli!!!

Okay, then using that same logic, isn't healthcare just the right to life?

Penalties are still bullshit

Please understand, it does not work like that in practice. They know have a disincetive to contain costs so they divest in clinical management and invest more in advertising. The 80/20 (MLR) creates that externality

Checking in from Chile. The CIA-backed coup of 1973 established private healthcare here, which is still on force to this day. A decent family health insurance costs roughly one median wage. And you still have to pay for stuff if something happens to you.

It's basically health for the wealthy. They are literally the only social group who can afford good healthcare.

suicide will probably still be illegal. :/

Most laws making suicide illegal have been repealed, and the ones that remain are hardly ever enforced.

It can still get you committed because you're 'a danger to yourself or others', but it's not a crime.

We're brainwashed as fuck here. Do not underestimate our propaganda.

Many of the complaints I hear about paying for other people's health care is that there is little to no incentive for people to live healthy lives.

It's like paying for the gas of someone who drives a gas guzzling truck who uses it for commuting - there will always be people that use more than they contribute and do so with no regard to the costs shouldered by their neighbors.

tragedy of the commons in play.

Ryan has been against trump from the start, there are so many articles from cnn, politico, and other sources about how he denounced trump uninvited him from certain party events and has been very publicly critical of trump.

that whole Ted Kennedy dying and Scott Brown taking the Senate seat back for the GOP, and how it completely took over the potentially progressive narrative, didn't help either :(

laws made by men that benefit some men over other men

it is immoral for someone to die because they simply cannot afford the care, period

That is just not true, this administration has had the most difficulty getting appointments confirmed of any in recent history. At the moment republicans could force through any nominee they want due to a rule change that took place by democrats under obama, yet the confirmation hearings are still taking longer than most any in the past.

Ryan's only cozied up to Trump because Trump won. Ryan REALLY needs Trump's signature on the legislation his house passes.

I don't expect their relationship to be nice forever.

I do recall he changed his tune to save his ass, just like 90% of never Trumpers in congress.

The thing is, if you look at the bill it's not self-evidently bad. I think it's entirely plausible that the Act is merely a well-meaning bill that was the product of the kind of compromise needed to achieve widespread support, rather than any collusive cabal.

I'm not an expert on the subject, but I do think that the problems we're experiencing with our healthcare system are way more complicated than just "HMO bad."

(Full disclosure: my and my wife's health insurance is through Kaiser, and we're both reasonably satisfied with what we get for our money. Granted, neither of us has been critically ill or needed hospitalization, so we can't speak to what that kind of experience with them would be like. But our experience with them handling run of the mill problems has been positive.)

It's not Trumpcare, it's Ryancare. Even Trump supporters hate this bill.

Doesnt change the fact that Lasik is regulated by the FDA.

And you can buy almost any surgery or treatment with cash. Doesn't mean it isn't regulated, and when you pay personally it is the highest possible cost, more than what any insurers negotiated rates are.

Lol it's like having to pick over shit or vomit, either way it's sick

Explain how an insurance company in California can regulate and enforce regulations for health care in New York?

They cant. They can't even regulate in the their own state because they have no regulatory authority

If you make a claim that's obviously bullshit people should be a bit rude about it. There's not an industry in the country where a 97% failure rate would work.

I code medical bills every day. I don't know every inch of the industry, that's right. But I know enough to know that the insurance companies audit and deny at a high enough percentage that if you're submitting wrong claims that often you aren't actually getting any work done or payments in.

As it turns out the study was done in 1986 on a subset of high risk claims for hospitals. The number makes sense for something from 30 years ago before a huge amount of regulations have changed. It has nothing to do with the ACA or anything going on at this point.

If someone shows up and says 97% of anything is wrong your first reaction should be "no fucking way".

...profits, holding them to 20% for small groups and 15% for large groups.

That's not what your link shows. It's 20% and 15% for all expenses, taxes, commissions, and profits.

Yea man, I appreciate hearing your perspective though

But most Americans seem happy with it because they're scared of the word socialism and have the attitude "why should we have to pay for someone else who is sick?"

Yeah, the US Propaganda Machine has done a fantastic job of making the word "Socialism" and all related concepts to be the dirtiest thing imaginable, and Completely Unamerican to the average citizen. Right behind "communism."

I don't know how many here grew up in the 80s like me, but I'm pretty sure I heard the word "commie" thrown around as an insult about a dozen-dozen times, before i even knew what the word meant.

And y'know... if this country were still living like we were in the 1950s... where an average guy could get a decent job and support and entire family on his own, all without having gone to college, I might agree that "The American Way" is superior to "dirty communism."

But you know what? Someone came along, and grabbed "The American Dream," and tied its hands behind its back, and held its head under a toilet bowl, while inviting all their friends to fucking GANG-RAPE it while it drowned to death.

Who's responsible?

Well, who benefitted? Who's got the money and power today? Those are the people who sold out The American Dream for quick profits, and fucked us all.

/rant

Labor is forced toil due to the custom of inherited property, otherwise we would be free to work the land and enjoy free time to produce all that we need. Unfortunately the unnatural virus of capitalism has enslaved many minds, and through violence those diseased minds have created a system that forces people to work many times what they need to so the parasite class can have ever more than they ever need. Is a mugging victim incentivized to give up their wallet by having a gun shoved in their face?

Non-Mobile link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Medical_Association#Criticisms_and_historical_controversies

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but he wasnt on cospiracye, he just thought he was.

And also, I would say people are often close minded on /r/conspiracy, often just in other ways. Perhaps they become stubbornly convinced about a conspiracy and refuse to see evidence that shows it incorrect.

No one should own anything. That's going to work great. Grow up.

All true concerns, except for the AMA part. The AMA really controls very little of physician behavior.

I worry about brain drain too, but if we incentivize doctors well, we'd stay. That means reasonable pay and helping significantly with loan debt. And facilitating patient care.

I think chronic back pain is a terrible example, because it's extremely difficult to treat. I agree that doctors aren't good at it, and don't understand it, but no one really does. It just sucks. A better example would be something like diabetes or infectious disease, which we understand VERY well and are pretty good at.

I agree 1000% that the medical community doesn't innovate. Ever. We're AT LEAST 20 years behind the tech curve. I'm a technophile and it frustrates me to no end. None of my young physician colleagues even know what Reddit is. They don't know what Watson is. They don't sub to r/singularity and see the AI masters coming.

I still can't look up what drugs my patient is prescribed, except the ones I prescribe. If they saw their dentist this morning and got antibiotics, I have zero way of knowing that if the patient doesn't tell me...which they don't half the time, because they think it's not important, they forget, or they lie. It's just backwards. Privacy issues abound, which hinders the tech. But proprietary crap is a huge issue because everyone is trying to be the "next big thing" in health care so every tech system is locked down and won't talk to the others. It's stupidly backward.

The best electronic records look like they were designed in the mid 2000's and most of them look like windows 98. The VA system looks like DOS. Not even kidding. It's a joke.

We do need to modernize. Med schools have realized the changing lack of need to be a walking encyclopedia and are focusing more on concept understanding and lookup and data analysis than pure memorization, though not enough IMO.

It's a complex and tough problem though and the AMA doesn't have much to do with it at all unfortunately.

They're not completely outlawed, they're called cooperatives and they're protected by freedom of religion. As long as it's under that protection, you're good.

For how much longer will people cling to this false idea?

Jesus, look how much he blinks after lying so horribly

https://youtu.be/3qpLVTbVHnU?t=108

Trumpcare

Possibly. It is also well documented that disease flairs come and go. This may just coincide with a pill or procedure.

Can't tell if trolling or dumb.

socialist supported home

Wrong.

live on socialized healthcare

Wrong.

socialist education on a internet that is provided by socialist monopolies.

All Wrong

No you're wrong.

Americans are very, very stupid and highly manipulated. At this point, I blame my fellow americans more than anyone else.

Trump and the Republican party have eliminated this provision from their Trumpcare bill.

Haha, fuck.