Many countries have universalized healthcare systems/insurance, what stops them from extending insurance coverage more to other industries like housing, automobile, life, etc.
It's well known that universal healthcare insurance works pretty well and is affordable, first world countries employ such a system and have higher-quality healthcare overall while spending less on it than the US.
Could universal insurance coverage for things such as cars, houses/property, etc. actually work? Could a simple state tax and reimbursement scheme provide the service efficiently?
Generally, nationalization and public operation for many industries does not work, but like healthcare insurance, general insurance including disaster, car, etc. is a unique and special commodities which make it very well suited to centralization. These include the inelastic demand for the service and the need for drastically varying payments or reimbursements depending on specific circumstances.
Benjamin Bell
It's also wrong to say that Nationalization of Insurance is a revolutionary idea. Do the welfare state and a social safety/services net which includes unemployment benefits, healthcare services paid for with taxes, and many other elements which constitute the modern states of first-world countries not count as similar programs to a general-purpose national insurance policy?
Lucas Gray
You don't need insurance to provide healthcare. Insurance is a middleman to make money.
Asher Ross
Some states pursue close to this type of public policy, with Norway being the closest, a state which is one of the healthiest in the whole world with the highest HDI and possibly quality of life. There is no reason that such a system should not be emulated in other similar and capable states.
Colton Collins
Insurance is necessary for very expensive procedures such as cancer treatment, MRI screenings, and many other technically sophisticated operations vital to the modern medical industry. For small-scale healthcare private spending suffices just fine but for anything larger than 2-3 months' wages of the average worker the state must realize that a persons' financial well-being is at stake which affects the health of the nation as a whole and take action to stop it. Private healthcare should not be banned in the additional presence of a public provider, it can work as a perfect complement to it. If you want to see national healthcare systems which actually use this principle intelligently to operate with both quality and low-cost with efficiency, check out Japan or Singapore.
Tell me about communist healthcare in Norway you pinko retard. How are the wait times?
Brayden Bailey
It is often pointed out that a major problem unique to America among advanced Western countries considered to be first world is that many people go bankrupt to being unable to pay their accrued medical debts. This is indeed a huge problem, but why is this problem not considered more generally, to the problem of bankruptcy, or insurance bankruptcy, which applies to other Western developed countries just as much as it does to America.
If it is considered shameful, wrong, and backward for America to allow so many of its citizens to go bankrupt for medical costs, then why is the same logic not applied to all countries which still make use of private insurance systems and allow their citizens to go bankrupt due to their insurance not reimbursing them properly for the damages they have suffered?
Jason Garcia
TELL ME ABOUT WAIT TIMES YOU COMMUNIST DICKSUCK DO YOU WANT TO DIE IN A HOSPITAL FOR WAITING FOR COMMIE MEDICINE?
Easton Hall
Who has the shortest wait times? Who has to wait more than two months to see a specialist?
Commie medicine or capitalist medicine?
Nolan Jackson
According to the WHO:
"The U.S. health system spends a higher portion of its gross domestic product than any other country but ranks 37 out of 191 countries according to its performance"
"The United Kingdom, which spends just six percent of GDP on health services, ranks 18th. Several small countries – San Marino, Andorra, Malta and Singapore are rated close behind second- placed Italy."
The problem of waiting times does not nearly account for the rest of the problems caused by the massive costs and unaffordability of the US healthcare system, especially when even the wait times argument has not correlated to better quality of health care outcomes.
Cameron Wilson
you don't wait for a specialist you can't afford.
Xavier Johnson
>hips to thighs
oh no
William Lewis
It is well known that waiting times in those countries are representative of the average and that healthcare professionals ensure that people can see specialists immediately or on time or schedule when they need to or their situation is dire. The fact that people whose medical situation's are not desperate or life-threatening are lumped together with those who's are is nothing but manipulation in order to make foreign healthcare systems appear worse and to find at least some saving grace behind the US healthcare system when it forces over 600,000 people a year into bankruptcy.
Your misuse of the word and concept of communism/capitalism is common among Americans. I am not saying that we should remove private ownership of property or the means of production at all. Also, your use of communist as a derogatory implies that you believe that a capitalist system would be more efficient and provide goods at a lower cost, but healthcare by its very nature has to be heavily regulated and cannot be fully market-oriented.
We see this in America in a system which takes the worst of both world's, socialist central planning and heavy subsidies plus complete privatization of profits and insurance, which leads to one of the most expensive and worst overall healthcare systems in the world among developed countries.
Jeremiah Kelly
Build more hospitals and educate more doctors and nurses
Mason Morris
Are there flaws to any system of universal insurance coverage? Absolutely. For example, universal disaster insurance would incentivize people to build there homes in risk-prone areas which are at a high likelihood of experiencing earthquakes, floods, and other natural disasters. Naturally, we have to work with the markets and not destroy or replace them, and allow appraisal and speculation to take place and value the land accordingly to avoid a misallocation of funds. For example, a county or region which is particularly susceptible to earthquakes may have to pay a special added earthquake fee in order to cover for insurance, but at the same time, if it were not at all susceptible to say, tornadoes, then they would not have to pay any such special tornado tax, whereas a region susceptible to tornadoes but not earthquakes would face the inverse scenario.
Grayson Allen
nothing you freee you ctr fagit they even have to pay you to post stupid shit
Isaiah Young
Forgot pic.
Elijah Lopez
"is
Elijah Bell
Nothing is free, of course. However, I would argue that that's a much stronger argument in favor of partial nationalization and collective operation of many industries than it is one against it. With proper planning and rationing, we could ensure that the people who actually need healthcare could afford it.
Additionally, this may final provide some incentive for US doctors to start deferring or throttling care to patients whose actions or lifestyle choices are personally harmful and as a result directly negatively impact the collective health of the healthcare system of the nation as a whole.
Patients may be forced to lose weight or meet temporal weight loss guidelines or criteria in order to maintain full physician or medical access, as not doing so results in being overweight and unhealthy and ends up being a massive burden to the system in tota;. This should be encouraged as it could finally be something which could decisively counteract the obesity and sedentarianism epidemic sweeping America and making us the unhealthiest nation on the planet.
Matthew Lee
'Nother pic
Carson Phillips
im not reading this gay shit ctr
Jaxson Gonzalez
The advancement of technology provides another positive impetus for us to embrace general purpose universal insurance as a net good. Certain AI systems now are capable of both analyzing complex information in many different data types and also in analyzing current-state information and building relatively accurate state models and complex systems from them.
This means that machines such as Watson can effectively be used to screen for medical indicators of risk, health, etc. with far more precision and depth than a human ever could and then provide a report on a perfectlhy personalized and specialized insurance plan to cover them cheaply, all for much less expense than a human or team of humans could.
Other technologies such as self-driving cars could negate the need for insurance in some domains nearly entirely by making them so safe and disaster-proof, meaning that it is time for us to revise the concept of insurance under a single general umbrella. The massive load of insurance speculation and actuarial work which will be offloaded to machines means that insurance companies will do nothing but amass massive amounts of money while employing less and less people, so nationalizing universal insurance now would be a great way to avoid this negative outcome.
Zachary Russell
Incidents of Watson outperforming human doctors in many cases of diagnosis have already been observed, here's just a small sample of them, along with an example of a Japanese company firing 34 insurance claimant staff in favor of Watson and AI machines.
Perhaps one of the most convincing arguments in favor of General Universal Insurance is the economic stability that it would bring. In much the same way that central banks can quell speculation and oftentimes prevent overheating and cooling of the economy and avoid too-fast growth or collapses, an effective General Universal Insurance system would insure that most people could actually be relatively free from worry about going completely bankrupt at any time. This would actually encourage a stable economy with no massive downturn trends in general spending and would ensure a level of economic certainty which would be very healthy for national markets, safety, and institutional health.
Tyler Lopez
So far nobody has actually presented a reasonable argument against the concept of General Universal Insurance, which makes sense, as a concept it seems to be what should be the working end goal of a developed first-world state.
Jaxon Collins
Several of my extended family members have had cancer and they all had to travel to the US because the wait times here are deadly. Norwegian healthcare is absolutely atrocious in many aspects, the only reason we are """healthy""" is because of our adoration of nature. Norwegian adoration of nature is a vital ingredient in the country's national identity. Over half of the population have ready access to a cabin, the schools arrange obligatory ski and hiking days among other things.
Xavier Miller
One of the more immediate, helpful, and tangible benefits of General Universal Insurance would be the amount of time it freed up for the average person. Instead of a complicated system of taxes and means-tested welfare benefits, we could get rid of it all with a simple system of universal insurance fees and payoffs. Paying taxes could be simplified greatly, along with the needed expense and time spent dealing with accountants. In order to prevent abuse of the system all that would be needed is perhaps a scannable national ID or the like which would only grant citizens access to Universal Insurance.
Not only this, but imagine the bulk amount of time saved to pursue other, more useful or fun activities just by not needing to worry about many disasters which would sink you and involve you spending the equivalent of days dealing with insurance agents or the like. Truly, General Universal Insurance would be a system which would save individuals an amount of time on par with something as revolutionary as a self-driving car.
Camden Brooks
Yes, in many instances the US' unique healthcare system and its resulting qualities are vitally important. However, I am not talking about dismantling the entirety of the US' medical system as is. Rather, I believe that general practice hospitals, healthcare, and medical insurance should be provided for by a Universal Insurance system as I've described before in the thread. Private medical care should still be allowed to be pursued by those who want to, and often the highest paid doctors in the most urgently needed fields will gravitate to these centers. In your instance, in which peoples' lives were at stake and they needed to travel abroad, I do not believe that any hospital which takes foreign patients for urgently needed care should be shut down or compromised whatsoever, definitely in cases like yours.
Mason Howard
Up until now, I've only made points about what actions Universal Insurance would entail in the positive. However, for such a system to work optimally, there would also have to be many negative options taken, including curtailments of freedom.
In order to minimize healthcare costs and ensure as healthy and happy a society as possible, it will be necessary to limit, curtail, or possibly ban certain substances and activities. Chief among these is the diet of the nations' people. It is unwise at this point to allow any substantial consumption of trans fats, High Fructose Corn Syrup, or any of a multitude of other food products which have proven over and over again to have extremely deleterious health effects on those who consume them.
Additionally, this extends to food production as well, where farmers who produce crops used to produce such unhealthy products must instead be incentivized to change their food output instead to foods such as cabbage, carrots, leafy greens, potatoes, or any other healthy foodstuffs. Ideally, the national diet should be heavily dependent first and foremost upon vegetables, legumes, tubers, and cereals firstly, followed by fruits, with healthily raised grass-fed or hunted meat comprising the final, but smallest portion.
Camden Jackson
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Parker Jenkins
Lol, so fucking dumb. No, capitalism is best.
Parker Torres
Clueless. Privatization of profits and operations means it runs far more efficient. Profits cause 5% inefficiency, government is far more wasteful than 5%. I audited and compiled financial statements of governmental entities as a CPA, they waste more like 50%+.
Hunter Howard
Other restrictions must also apply to any substance or activity which exerts externalities or effects which hurt the nations' collective well-being. This means that smoking must be heavily restricted and regulated, as it incurs costs on those around the people who smoke, and not just the smoker, in the form of increased pollution, smell, and aesthetic dirtying of the local environment. As Universal Insurance would provide healthcare it must be noted that smoking and many drugs in general must be viewed as inherently combative with it, since they increase the use and cost of healthcare by directly causing many health problems which users would not suffer from if only they abstained from their use of a particular drug. However, Universal Insurance can also provide means and methods through insurance for addicted or drug-using citizens to be treated or cured of addiction at least temporarily. Even if this incurs an initial cost, there is a net savings since such a person will cost the healthcare system much less overall.
Eli Foster
Much collective, no individual rights or personal responsibility. I'll decide what you eat, how often you exercise, how much you drink, and how much you sleep, since your health is now my responsibility, not yours. Fucking communists.
Nathaniel Edwards
How about I earn my money, keep my money, decide how I want to live my life, buy the insurance plan I want, get charged based upon my risk factors, and be personally responsible for my health and life. Crazy talk, right?
William Ramirez
And I thought it was bad when my health insurance premiums increased $12,000 over the past few years due to Obamacare. I can't wait to have to pay another $35,000 in taxes to cover these dumb fucks.
Cameron Anderson
The case is not universal, despite having a more privatized healthcare system than almost all other Western first world countries, the US spends much, much more per capita on healthcare. There are also gross and incompetent incidences of inefficiency done for profit which likely would not occur whatsoever in a universal system like what say, France or Germany have. These include doctors having patients do X-Ray or MRI scans for injuries or conditions which they almost certainly know have no complications which such a procedure could additionally identify, simply because the insurer will provide for such a procedure. This does nothing but massively drive up insurance costs further.
Isaac James
Outrageous proposal.
Gavin Lewis
There are numerous reasons healthcare doesn't function like a normal market, or like any other market for that matter. You should look into Kenneth Arrow's work on the topic of healthcare.
I fully support and believe in 'universal healthcare'. Commercialising healthcare is morally repugnant and dangerous. I want my doctor to be concerned about my well being, and nothing else. I don't want my doctors primary concern being his 20% commission for convincing me to get an unnecessary expensive minor procedure. Circumcision is a good example of this. The only reason circumcision is still prevelant in america is because you have a private healthcare system. It's a great money spinner for the hospitals. If you had social healthcare, it would have stopped decades ago.
Connor Foster
>what stops every country from being socialist
hmmmm
Angel Martinez
Essentially, numerous complications and inherent conditions within the healthcare industry mean that the most efficient market situation or equilibrium is a single-payer general public system with an alternative private market which could promise better quality, waiting times, specialists, etc. for anybody who could personally afford all of it.
Considering that this works, and has been shown to at least in some countries, even better so than in the US, we really should look into the possibility that certain other industries are somewhat similar to healthcare in some aspects or characteristics, so that we could hopefully implement a similarly styled system in order to have better economic efficiency and justice for everybody.
Ryder Butler
>krugman
Liam Gray
Agreed.
Yes, I would argue that that this is actually a point in our favor, if we can get more people to realize just exactly what a National Socialist-esque state like what I'm proposing could entail/mean and actually provide for its citizens in terms of quality of life if we never had to deal with the negative elements of society than they would be much more likely to support it.
Juan Anderson
He's not always right and can occasionally make extremely stupid arguments for someone as smart as he is, but just read through the arguments he makes in this, they aren't even particularly ideologically related and aren't memes or anything, he's mostly right.
Alexander Phillips
> No individual rights or personal responsibility
I never said this and you have to know that you're overexaggerating things. Beyond this, I believe it is extremely important to note that while the individual is important and should be noble and pursue his own path to greatness, the collective matters more because it is what determines the environment for the individual in the first place. A horrible collective will create an awful environment which does not foster good individuals who are productive, athletic, capable, intelligent, or good in any way.
Even with this in mind, there are numerous areas in which we find no actual individual benefit to be gained even from being free. Does being free to do heroin improve us in anyway? No, because using that freedom ruins and destroys us.
We must allow personal freedom of course, but it must be limited so that it cannot hurt other individuals, and we must direct our goals of personal freedom in such a way and direction that they push us as a society in a positive direction, where we will be healthier, happier, suffer less crime, and be more able to spend leisure time with our families and loved ones without having to worry about every little thing in life all of the time.
An example of a good personal freedom is initiative and enterprise, a person may be competing with others in the market, and be risking himself, but he is not directly incurring costs on the system of our nation or society, in fact he is producing so that our nation may continue to sustain itself. So long as we keep these freedoms like this we will be fine.
Jose Williams
...
Luke Green
Generally speaking, Medicare is more effective and efficient at providing healthcare than private insurance providers.
Universal Insurance is also a viable, and I would argue, more reasonable solution to the coming problems facing industrialized economies from automation than Basic Income is. The main problem with basic income is that we know that most people aren't actually competent of managing their own money competently. If just given a lump sum of liquid capital, many of them will grossly misuse it and possibly die. Many people will be in favor of this, but I would propose that it's much more reasonable to instead have their payments distributed among insurance services as Universal Insurance would stipulate.
Ryan Brooks
At the point that all members within a nation become fully universally insured at no negative cost relative to production, there will finally be a blossoming of human potential and societal health. We will likely be able to move away from extremely crowded urban areas generally necessary for economic growth and settle in more natural and pristine areas, with immediate nature access, we will be able to support happier families with more leisure time, and we will be able to pursue art, religious and philosophical enlightenment, science, mathematics, or whatever we wish to with our families happily, only needing to possibly do 10-20 hours of work a week, gathering food, possibly harvesting honey, growing vegetables, and returning to nature while also having access to technology to enable us to lead lives where we find meaning in important intellectual achievement and struggle and from being in small, interconnected communities of people who love us.
