We’ve got to cut the balls off this for-profit health system. We should stop paying for insurance AND stop paying our medical bills. What do you think?
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I like your spirit; however, it’s a little naive. Let’s say you did what you suggested and then was diagnosed with cancer, your two options would be to die or die. Because it’s not a short term emergency, the ER is not an option and no doctor is going to see you without insurance.
Welcome to the best insurance in the world in the greatest country in the world.
We must be willing to achieve this end by any legal means necessary. Those fighters in the civil rights movement were successful because they were relentless AND willing to sacrifice their lives for the lives of others. They willingly chose to be beat to achieve equality. Thats courage. You can’t win without that level of courage. Of course, I don’t mean committing acts of violence or doing anything illegal.
Nonetheless we’re going to have be willing to sacrifice something to get what we want. If you think you’re going to get Medicare for all without that level of courage you’re the one whose naive.
What is your alternative?
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People often never pay their bills now. The only protest seems to be a trip to bankruptcy court.
Medical debt is spiraling upward in part due to the fact debt has a cyclic deferment due to the debt commonly bankrupting the patient that hold such debt. That means the medical institutions half to defray that cost by writing down the debt. That means they must inflate prices to cover this increase of overhead. This price growth cycle has periods of acceleration that promote feedback loops within regional providers.
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I agree with the hat it’s not a solution. Not realistic.
You’re saying we can pass medicare for all AND keep funding the for-profit medical industrial complex at the same time? How? MFA and the current system are mutually exclusive. We won’t be able to pass MFA unless the current system crashes. If you have another way to pass MFA that I’m not considering, then let me know. I’m open to new suggestions.
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We talk a good game but when it comes time to sacrifice something, it gets pretty quiet.
I think the quietness has to do with a hostile framing fixation. So explain why the crash is mandated?
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We can’t feed the beast with money and expect it to die at the same time. The only way to get this done is if congress feels they have no other alternative. We have to crash the system.
This is not the best country in the world. We are a nation of brainwashed economic slaves. We can’t even crack the top 10 in life expectancy.
Crashing a system is almost always the worst way to handle it. The far better option is to create an ancillary system that is designed to influence and assimilate. This system could be designed to emulate the procedural path of government and augment its functionality.
The surveillance state has gone wild in all sectors except government accountability, that seems a bit unjust. They pretend to support the panopticon model, but they forget that means ubiquity.
I’m in agreement with enduser, the system would begin to cannibalize the most vulnerable patients. My aunt took Revlimid until her passing, I remember the monthly cost being over 17k; covered entirely by insurance. She and other cancer patients would be the first to be denied coverage.
However that does not mean we’re powerless to do anything. We must first create the conditions to win before going all in. This means we’d need to look for states that are likely to create MFA similar programs and support them through enactment. It also requires that we primary from the bottom to the top in order to create the clearest path for success.
I know this answer isn’t going to create immediate results. It could take years, a decade or more. But all movements have a long road to victory; nothing is the quick, tidy infotainment story that we’re often told.
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I appreciate your comment. With all possible respect, I think we should make sure we have an appreciation for the size of the task.
Here’s what you’re not considering:
First lets talk about the political reality. The states wouldn’t be able to pass the massive tax increase required to pay for the program so it would largely be dependent on federal funds. Congress, in this current environment, is not going to fund more socialized medicine. You’ need to have 60 senators, 218 congressman, a President, and majority of the affected state legislatures and their governors as well. It could take 100 years to get that kind of progress and dammit I’m not waiting that long.
Second, there’s the economic stakeholders: the end result of MFA will mean 18% of GDP will go bye bye. You think those stockholders, doctors, nurses, hospital organizations, medical device suppliers aren’t going to mount an opposition akin to a civil war? They are going to fight with everything in their arsenal.
We need to be realistic about this and start acting like we’re in a war here. We can’t expect the enemy to lay down and die. That isn’t realistic.
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