AMUSING, INTERESTING, OUTRAGEOUS, or PROFOUND

And the outcomes would be better.

And that doesn't even count the extra that people are paying for private insurance. How much the government spends per capita (of the whole country) on healthcare is double what other first world countries pay even though in the USA it only covers a third of US citizens.

Won't anyone think of the poor billionaire shareholders??

And it's also bad science and bad philosophy.

Insurance works on probabilities. They pick the most likely outcome based on old population studies (not current ones - so they lag behind epidemics). This means that if you have a pet alligator, and it bit off your toe, insurance would disbelieve you and would say the accident was most likely from a vehicle or tool, and then wouldn't treat you for salmonella or other concerns from an alligator bite because that's unlikely to occur in the general population. Even though that's literally what happened here.

So the way they practice medicine is stupid and bad. It should also be illegal, because to practice medicine you're by law suppose to have a doctor patient relationship. I've never met the doctors at my insurance company. So how can they prescribe (including deny) treatment for me?

Further, I have privacy concerns with insurance companies as well. I don't want them to have all my medical information. I don't want them to code my information in a way that benefits their insurance system but isn't accurate to my actual diagnosis.

I want to go into a doctor and actually be treated by that fucking doctor.

Remember when they said socialized healthcare stops you from seeing the doctor you want? Well our current system, in all its justice, let's me see the doctor I want, pay her, and then I can't get the treatments she recommends because they aren't approved by an anonymous third doctor at my insurance I didnt choose and never met. Lol. Fml.

The succinct way to describe it is that every dollar earned in profit by a health insurance company is a dollar that was spent on health care for which no healthcare was delivered. Their profits are literally just inefficiency in the system, and they're directly incentivized to maximize that inefficiency.

And insurance companies add nothing to healthcare. They contribute nothing.

They give me a pile of paperwork and an illusion of choice. What more could I ask for?

I'm currently fighting a bill because insurance doesn't like who gave the diagnosis. The diagnosis isn't wrong, it's actively being treated, they just think the wrong doctor gave it. Dealing with insurance is a huge pain in the ass for no reason except to enrich the insurance companies. They add no value to society.

Don’t try to explain public roads, bridges, dams, water & sewerage, police, fire brigades or the military to her.. she might just have an aneurysm.

"so, mom, you'd rather i die than receive affordable health care?"

Insurance IS socialism. By definition. The only difference is who holds the money from the group to pay out claims. In one, it's the government which has an incentive to keep costs low across the board. The other it is a private company trying to make as much profit as possible.

A huge reason that I took the job I have now is because they let me start my health insurance plan asap. It was supposed to be after 3 months but I just asked nice and they didn't hesitate to agree even without my whole spcheil. I have a wife and a son, at the time my wife was still going through some post pregnancy health issues and my son was going through some stuff that required regular visits. I turned down some cushy jobs solely because they wanted me to wait 3-6 months to be insured, which I get from a business perspective, but what the actual fuck? It took me a while to switch jobs for that reason alone. I guess it's a good indicator of a company that has common sense/common decency.

Really USA, how does anyone pretend this is OK?

We pretend a LOT of things are OK.

• School shootings comes to mind.
• laws around what women can do with their own bodies.
• Sacrifice of the environment for industry, all in the name of "jobs".
• Starvation.
• Politicians and presidents doing obviously illegal stuff and citizens unable to do anything about it.
• American military killing with abandon all over the world.
• Police brutality and systematic violations of our rights, with little to no accountability.
• Our standards for clean food being less than everyone elses.
• Religious supremacy being tolerated, even encouraged. (Fuck your moments of silence, fuck your thoughts and prayers, fuck your pledges of allegience too while we're at it)
• controlled media.
• Book banning.
• the "war" on drugs when other methods would have been much more effective.
• whistleblower protections dismantled.
• violence against protesters, and the existence of "protest zones" which disallows protests entirely in most areas.
• continual threats of violence and domestic terrorism by the political right, never with any accountability.
• oppression of anyone who says they are anti-fascist (antifa).
• a political system complteely captured by bribery and foreign interests, with ~1% correlation to what citizens want. There is no representation in "representitive democracy" here. Its all a big joke. We're barely even a "republic" anymore.

And its not all republicans doing it-- although much more them than the dems-- although the dems are sliding really far rightward pretty quickly and its hard to see how it ever will be allowed to go back left.

Its not OK and we need to nationalize healthcare now. But much of that above graph is also associated with the obesity epedemic and the nutritional collapse (or caloric inflation) of the western diet. Government definitely has a role in that, but its much trickier than obliterating the medical insurance industry (which of course is also tricky).

And the concept of tying it to employment is not only idiotic and nonsensical, but actually pretty devious.

May I ask what the money paid for exactly? Here in Spain it's only meds that we would pay for (and not even if you're low income and entitled to government money), everything else is 100 % free

TL;DR: AU isn’t a good model to base change off. Expensive and scammy.

Not sure what a PCP is, but before I left AU earlier this year, my GP visits were ~AU$100 with a $40 rebate. Private healthcare cannot cover the $60 gap by law, along with a host of other specialists and scans. It felt like a massive scam to have private health. Yes there are free clinics you can go to (“Bulk Billing”), but in my experience because they were always overworked and understaffed, the standard of care wasn’t as good. Plus it was hard to see the same doctor regularly, so you waste more of everyone’s time going over your medical history.

Compare that to Germany, I decided to go with public health here, which comes directly out of my paycheque. It’s expensive, but I don’t see that money and I can go to basically any (English speaking) doctor here, pay nothing for the appointment, and prescriptions are 5 or 10€ (only had one so far, can’t remember the exact cost). Standard of care feels much more in line with the private care of AU. I know there are some scans and blood tests I may need to pay for, but nothing feels scammy so far.

We would save about 45% of what we pay now. We could increase the military budget. Universal healthcare literally pays for itself.