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0 pointscyberax2y ago0 comments

> Why with single payer would there not still be instances of treatment being denied?

The most common failure mode for single-payer is scarcity. You won't be denied, but you'll have to wait many months for an appointment.

> Would this not be replaced with faceless automata in government?

They are controlled by politicians, who are directly responsible to their electorate. Brexit is a good example, using money sent to EU for NHS was one of the more influential ads. Of course, the outcome turned out to be... different.

With the current insurance system, you don't have ANY levers. You can't usually change your insurance company because it's provided by your employer. And even if you want to buy medical insurance yourself via the ACA, you can switch it only once a year. With no way to tell in advance if your new company is going to cover your treatment.

You also can't even sue your insurance company if it denies you the treatment because _all_ insurance companies require binding arbitration. And arbitrators basically always side with the insurance company, because your contract says that the insurance company is always right. That's how UnitedHealthcare can get away with just randomly denying treatment.

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colechristensen2y ago

>They are controlled by politicians, who are directly responsible to their electorate. Brexit is a good example, using money sent to EU for NHS was one of the more influential ads. Of course, the outcome turned out to be... different.

Calling out Brexit is an... interesting way to argue here.

If you're proposing my options for heath care are going to be taken away and given to the single option controlled by the electorate who are liable to do things like Brexit... no thank you, I'll take marketplace competition where I can "vote out" the idiots by making a different choice for myself.

People here are like "isn't it awful that personal medical choices are being made by politicians and popular vote" with respect to abortion, gender-affirming care, etc... and those same folks are damn near excited to give away all of their health choices to a government entity.

Do you want your health care options to be dictated by an executive order the first day a new president enters office?

cyberaxOP2y ago

> Calling out Brexit is an... interesting way to argue here.

Why? It's an example of directly affecting healthcare via political pressure.

> If you're proposing my options for heath care are going to be taken away and given to the single option controlled by the electorate who are liable to do things like Brexit... no thank you

That's the thing, it can also be fixed by the electorate.

> I'll take marketplace competition where I can "vote out" the idiots by making a different choice for myself.

Except you can't. Go on, read your insurance contract if you don't believe me. You're at the total whim of death panels, who can just tell you to go and die.

AnthonyMouse2y ago

> That's the thing, it can also be fixed by the electorate.

In theory it can but in practice it usually isn't, especially for things like this. It's all too easy for some bureaucratic rule to be killing people who have e.g. a particular type of cancer, which makes that 0.5% of people care about it very much, but it takes 51% of people caring about it to change the law.

Meanwhile some other rules are each killing some other 0.5% of people and when you add them all up it's a large-scale disaster but it's also many independent problems. The details matter but the electorate doesn't have the bandwidth to even understand, much less solve everybody's different problems.

You want as much as possible for people to be able to affect their own circumstances rather than relying on the bureaucracy to care about them.

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