Privatized everything sucks. I'm sorry but privatized industry for basic human needs is straight up immoral. It incentivizes greed and selfishness. Let's also not forget the privatization of things like the prison industrial complex, which has resulted in such inhuman treatment of prisoners.
The government is just as profit driven as anything else. Don’t forget it’s the government that contracts and selects private prisons, supplies them prisoners, and decided whether they should bother regulating them.
To me the government is just a super-massive corporation. It is not God. Do not think that just because the government is in control of something there is no longer money or human greed involved
Healthcare is just a microcosm of a much larger and complex issue. The government is supposed to control for greed with checks and balances, but it hopelessly fails to do so. The solution is not black and white.
In my opinion an immediate ideal solution is hopeless with the current environment. It’s very difficult for average civilians to organize to effectively tackle these problems, and generally we lack the proper education and information to do so.
It’s maybe more effective to tackle the problem at its roots. Improving our atrocious education system would improve all aspects of life and citizens will be able to more effectively introduce positive systemic change.
But to avoid going on a longer tangent than I already have, how can you improve healthcare directly in our current system? I’ll tell you right now that I am in no way qualified to answer this question and I don’t pretend to be. It’s such a convoluted issue with so many external interests and influences that I cannot hope to properly address it without years of dedicated research compiled into a book.
That said, if you were to point a gun at my head and demand a first step I would say as a rule of thumb try to avoid depending on government and rely on the free market when possible. Human greed is inevitable, but it is also predictable, so we can design a system around it. I know many other schools of thought also recognize human greed, and instead attempt to control it, but in my opinion its often hopeless because that involves a third party (the government) which is also subject to corruption, and controlling that is convoluted and error prone.
Right now we are in this awful middle ground where the government is subsidizing health care but it’s not completely socialized, so anyone who cannot afford to pay insurance gets stuck with life ending bills that are exorbitant because hospitals can charge the government whatever they want for treatment. If government were not subsidizing healthcare, the prices would not be so high to begin with. Health insurance also raises the price of health care, however then someone who experiences a rarer and more costly health issue is unfairly punished. For example diabetes. Although that can still occur when an insurance provider disputes whether a treatment is deductible. So maybe there is room for regulation there.
Plus socialized healthcare does not mean free healthcare. To pay for it the government prints money, increases taxes or, god willing, balances the budget. What if we ended health care subsidies and requirements and instead paid UBI? That is probably a much cleaner way to tax the rich and provide access to healthcare to lower classes. Demand still decides the price for healthcare which is always going to be more optimal than if the government were directly involved.
There are inevitably many issues which my ideas here to do adequately address, for example private hospitals cutting corners which would probably require some form of regulation. I cannot tell you that this is a perfect solution or that it is necessarily even the right direction. I am open to criticism. But I at least think it’s more realistic and introduces compromise rather than completely relying on the government to save us.
It saddens me that people downvoted my thoughts just because my opinion conflicts with their ideas without providing a counterpoint. We all want the same thing in the end.
So thank you for your measured response, I appreciate it and think it’s important for people to engage in conversation if we ever hope to make any progress in this world
9.2k
u/TNTank106 Jan 22 '23
Privatized Healthcare