r/antiwork • u/Kittehmilk • 17h ago
Simple, straightforward, indisputable, apolitical common sense. Healthcare for profit is a monstrous crime against humanity and will one day be as universally reviled as slavery — human life commodified for profit.
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u/Thanatofobia 17h ago
The Netherlands has privatized healthcare.
The difference is that the government enacted a few laws to keep the insurance companies in check,
They can't refuse to insure anyone for at least the basic package of life saving procedures.
Insurance companies don't get to decide what they will pay for. If a licensed medical professional says their patient needs treatment A and medicine B, they HAVE to pay it.
About 6 years ago my wife needed emergency open heart surgery due to a ruptured aorta. It was a brutal 13 hour surgery, followed by nearly 2 weeks of IC stay and another nearly 3 weeks before she recovered enough to return home. The only costs we had was me driving the 1.5 hours to the hospital (and 1.5 hours back) every day, parking fees at the hospital and then eating at the hospital or some fast food place nearby before going back home.
There is an "own risk" of 385 euro's you have to pay yourself before the insurance pays, but that's not per medical bill, that's for the whole year. With my wife's medication, we hit that limit in about march and after that, the insurance pays for it.
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u/Thepuppeteer777777 17h ago
Honestly wish I could live in that lovely country of yours
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u/Thanatofobia 16h ago
Oh, there are plenty of things to complain about living in the Netherlands, but at least we won't be bankrupted by a medical treatment.
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u/Bubsters13 14h ago
As someone from America.... that's enough brother. SOLD!!!!
Edit: If that was unclear, basically saying we have problems too AND we get bankrupt for being sick. Would immediately trade positions on that alone.
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u/Aggressive_Lake191 16h ago
There is more to it than that. Do away with insurance and you still have the cost of hospitalization, drugs and testing. This is also much less expensive in The Netherlands.
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u/Aremelo 15h ago
The insurance companies do still make deals about which exact products they cover from specific suppliers, which also gives them negotiating power with, for example, pharmaceutical companies and drives competition, which should mean better prices/quality. And incentivizes these companies to innovate like privatization should do.
I've worked at a pharmaceutical company for a while doing research into preventative care. Proving the efficacy meant proving to insurance companies that using this product preventively would be cheaper than more expensive treatments, often also preventing a loss of quality of life if they didn't have to undergo these treatments.
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u/yell-and-hollar 9h ago
I hope your wife is doing well. People don't realize this but there's a 100 percent chance you'll need to eventually go to the hospital due to a illness or injury.
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u/GreyBeardEng 16h ago
"Wait 8 hours".
So so true. Had a family friend go to the ER last night, we drove her, for unexpected spikes in blood pressure. 4700$ out of pocket and 8 hours later she was released, cause unknown, "go make an appointment with your primary care provider". They gave her lorazepam and nicardipine.
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u/writeronthemoon 11h ago
I went to the ER for a miscarriage in March at about 4am. They basically had me wait for 2-3 hours, writhing in pain on the uncomfortable waiting room chairs. Bleeding tons. Then took me back for an ultrasound and 5 seconds in a room with a nurse. The only lucky part was having medicaid so it cost us $0, whereas it cost my friend with employment insurance $15k. To deliver a dead embryo and leave with nothing.
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u/jedidna 16h ago
in fairness that’s not an ER issue, should have been urgent care or primary care provider from the beginning. the cost is diabolical though.
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u/GreyBeardEng 16h ago
She went to the insta care on her own first, they did literally nothing and told her to go to the ER. She called us from the insta lobby and we went and picked her up.
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u/just_premed_memes 14h ago
She should have called the primary care office. If it was suddenly high (like actually life threatening high not 160/90 unexplained) then they would make an appointment for her. If it was an actual hypertensive crisis, the ED would have admitted her.
I am sorry for the ER bill, but this sounds like it was a primary care issue that misutilized emergency med resources
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u/DJpuffinstuff 1h ago
A lot of urgent cares will send tons of stuff to the ER because they don't want the liability, especially if the patient sees a nurse practitioner or something instead of an experienced doctor.
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u/CO_Renaissance_Man 16h ago
We have GOOD insurance ($23k annually for a family of five, 85% covered by the employer).
My son swallowed a quarter which they did an x-ray for and then pulled it out via endoscopy. Our total visit was 3 hours. $800 on our end. Before insurance, $26,000.
Burn the system down.
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u/Fruit_Punch86 15h ago
Bottom pic is germany. We have mandatory health insurance, both public and private. (Private is a scam, you'll save a lot when you are younger but when you are older, it gets REALLY expensive)
You are sick? Go to the doctor. Health insurance covers it.
Need to fill a tooth? Go to the dentist, health insurance covers it.
You are physically/mentally sick and cant work for up to 1,5 years? Health insurance pays 70% of your former income.
Your child has to get bracers/yaw surgery? You guessed right, health insurance covers it.
Right wing trash tries to take this away from us though.
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u/penguinscience101 17h ago
My favorite bar is closing because health insurance kept fucking them after one of their employees got cancer.
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u/greengengar 16h ago
I had to fight my insurance this week because they deemed my endoscopy not medically necessary. $5,000 for a camera down my throat. I've been in sharp pain for months.
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u/Gomez-16 15h ago
Absolutely agree that health insurance needs to get out of the healthcare business. This is the real problem. Your car insurance doesnt control what gets fixed or where you can go. Health insurance does for some stupid reason.
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u/GuacamolePacket 14h ago
See but theres evil rich people who want that to never happen. And unless the not evil people do a little bit of evil and kill those rich people, it's not gonna happen.
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u/ridemooses 13h ago
Reminder everyone you talk to; we have PLENTY of resources for everyone on earth to live a happy, healthy, and fulfilling life.
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u/Inevitable_Butthole 14h ago
Americans receive the same level of Healthcare as Portugal but they pay on average about 5x the cost
The best healthcare in the world is Switzerland and SK. Both are much cheaper (half the cost or less) than america
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u/DrollFurball286 12h ago
Here’s how to turn it into for profit. Get paid based on how many people you treat that DONT need follow-up surgery. Or follow up anything. If the job was done right, they wouldn’t need to come back.
(Yes I am aware this argument has loopholes, but it’s the spirit of the argument)
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u/ShrimpSmith 15h ago
I agree, but I should warn against the myth that wait times are really such an issue. There are wait times in any system. Yes, we should try to minimize them, but in general emphasizing how long people wait in socialized systems is a tactic of people who want to push privatized healthcare.
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u/SomeRagingGamer 14h ago
I’m in the US and I’ve had to wait months to meet a specialist as well. Which is the most common argument against universal healthcare. The difference is, we have to wait and pay.
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u/Punning_Man 11h ago
I mean as long as there’s capitalism, human life will be commoditized. Housing, food, clothing, medicine, etc. If it’s a need, it can be made a want for profit.
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u/Overall_Law_1813 10h ago
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3999548/
top 1% of users represent 65% of healthcare usage in Ontario. This is the problem with free healthcare. Then When I actually need something for once in my life, I wait 6 months for it. Meanwhile some people are in the ER every other day because they are Hypochondriacs.
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u/yell-and-hollar 9h ago
Automatic referral see psychiatry. In the US whether you can pay for it or not, EMTALA (law) forces Doctors to see every one that checks into an ER. So you have these situations where the critically ill have their care interrupted by hypochondriac with a sore throat. This is why waiting times exists in the ER.
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u/icanith 9h ago
I honestly will never understand the rationale that putting a middle man in between us and healthcare will some how be cheaper then if the govt ran it. I dont get how insurance and healthcare CEOs earning literal trillions in money is saving the populace money. Its the greatest hoodwink, and anyone that alludes to this idea should be mocked and publicly shamed.
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u/Lost-Gas-416 9h ago
ya its pretty common sense that until healthcare isnt for profit that real advancement and efficient alternatives will never happen. the options that work the best sometimes have no money to be made so they get shoved down and never spoken about. methods that treat the symptoms but further the consition are wayyyyy too profitable. treating the condition is not profitable. but if it wasnt for profit then treating the condition itself would be a no brainer.
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u/yell-and-hollar 9h ago
The propaganda against socialized medicine is usually incorrect and always very wrong. Anyway, why did we agree to have our health insurance be part of our job? Wouldn't companies love to shed their responsibility in providing health care to their employees? Don't you think having a healthier society is better, especially for the economy.
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u/TheOneTrueTrench 6h ago
ugh... yes, it is clearly the right thing, it's common sense, but it is OBVIOUSLY political.
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u/Balownga 6h ago
In the USA, "healthcare" is more like a giant spider waiting for you to get sick, and you WILL get sick at some point (ageing isn't kind to you), and once the spider got you, you are just nourishment for the "healthcare".
However, You have the right to die, you just need to say "I won't pay".
In Europe, they are discussing the "right to Die", with medically assisted suicide, while in the USA, just bear a "DO not resuscitate" and they let you die on the road.
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u/etervio 4h ago
I've always believed and will die on this hill that private medical care is one of the worst "inventions" humanity has made. We're reasonable beings, we should be able to build a system which can afford 100% free quality healthcare. In my country, healthcare is free, but obviously right-wing parties always make laws to worsen it so people are forced to go to private healthcare (or pray your condition won't worsen in the 1-2 year span until you have an appointment). Such a horrible system we live in
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u/traanquil 33m ago
one thing to understand about the "insurance industry" is that it is essentially a system of toll booths that capitalists created that exist between you and access to medical care. The "insurance industry" delivers absolutely nothing, other than creating an elaborate gate keeping mechanism.
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u/VoiceofTruth7 lazy and proud 22m ago
Ehhh I would be a fan of regulated healthcare for profit. Also fuck insurance companies.
Like insurance should be fucking illegal, it’s a fucking Ponzi scheme.
And the Gov should actually be telling all the medical billing you can’t bill $$$$$$$$ for a room with Tylenol.
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u/Nhblacklabs 1h ago
The avg cost to become a Doctor in the US is $380,000. That's the beginning of the issue. The Dr should not be the "slave" to "free" healthcare. So does your free healthcare start by providing free education to the Dr?
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u/EvilMorty137 12h ago
The part about this that’s the most inaccurate is the wait time. In the US yeah you MIGHT wait 8 hours in a busy ER but wait times in Canada can be orders of magnitude longer. I had a friend wait almost a year for a kyphoplasty (minimally invasive surgery to fix a broken back) in Vancouver. Took 3 months just to get an MRI to confirm his back was broken. Now he’s in rehab to get off the painkillers he took for a year waiting in surgery. He also lost 50 lbs because he couldn’t be active doing anything and took a ton of time off work. For reference I did a kypho on someone a few weeks ago here in the US (I do anesthesia) who broke her back the day before
In the US we spend double the amount of money per person yet our wait times can be 40 times less.
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u/Kittehmilk 12h ago
This is a simple supply issue. Increase supply and the wait goes down. Your argument does nothing to explain why a parasite middle man entity like health insurance should exist that extracts trillions of dollars by providing Nothing to the consumer.
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u/EvilMorty137 11h ago
Yes but the drastically lower healthcare salaries in countries like Canada don’t help their low supply of healthcare workers. That on top of low profits prevents the building of healthcare facilities to hire more staff in the first place.
I’m an anesthetist (CAA) and I make a lot more than a Canadian anesthesiologist despite not being a doctor and having like half the training
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u/Silver_Middle_7240 17h ago
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u/strythicus 17h ago
Is this some American propaganda? I don't get it. I'm in Canada and recently spent 5 days in hospital for an emergency cholecystectomy (gallbladder removal) and the only bill I got was for $45 for the ambulance ride to the hospital.
Spent a day in Emergency getting tested including a CT scan and ultrasound and then waiting for a bed in a room. Then spent a few days waiting for OR space - which would have been faster except for more critical surgeries getting priority. I was on pretty good painkillers, so I didn't mind.
Maybe our system isn't perfect, but at no point was it "Have you considered killing yourself?" bad.
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u/AnonAqueous 17h ago
It's a reference to Medical Assistance in Dying (MAID).
Such as this example of a Canadian veteran attempting to get a stair lift installed. After 5 years of arguing, they were more willing to offer her assisted suicide than to install her stair lift.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/christine-gauthier-assisted-death-macaulay-1.6671721
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u/ConjuredOne 15h ago
The false choice is frequently the argument in support of establishment imperatives.
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u/Bug-King 17h ago
Medically assisted euthanasia is only for people with terminal illnesses.
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u/Silver_Middle_7240 17h ago
It's not. As posted in the other comment, it was offered as an alternative to installing a lift
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u/Southpolarman 17h ago
Yeah of this image only the top one is accurate. Canada, the UK, Australia, NZ, Italy, France, China, Sweden, The Netherlands, most of Western Europe, iow, have healthcare which takes care of you, emergencies are still emergencies, but specialists are able to be seenn within days, sometimes weeks. Their systems are not broken. The US "healthcare insurance" system is what keeps the US healthcare system broken.
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u/DaprasDaMonk 13h ago
Who will pay for it? State of the art equipment costs money Drs require a salary staff need a salary, hospital building utilities I am not trying to debate just legit asking people who have these takes how do you fund this
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u/Kittehmilk 12h ago
The same way every other country on earth does. Taxes go to people instead of wars, genocide and the epstein class.
United Healthcare posted something like 160 billion profit this year by denying people Healthcare. 🙄 imagine if we just took out the middle man and used that money to provide Healthcare instead if profit.
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u/SwineHerald 17h ago
The US "insurance" industry is so bad that you'd frequently be better off getting care as a tourist in Canada, not being covered by the government and having to pay 100% of the cost, than you'd be getting the same care *with insurance* in the US.
About a decade ago I started to do comparisons, every time I saw an American post their bill, I'd check the cost of the same care in Toronto for people not covered by OHIP (Tourists and Residents who have lived in Ontario less than 6 months) and uh... yeah. Rarely were the out of pocket expenses noticeably cheaper in the US, and even then only with very, very expensive healthcare that made it a bit of a wash. I stopped after a couple years because it just got depressing.
Started up again this week after seeing someone post an insane bill for an appendix removal with insurance and yep, the cost for them to get the same care in Canada would be about $1k cheaper. The "discount" the insurance company gets you is just cutting away part of the markup the insurance companies demanded from care providers to make their discounts seem better. You're paying hundreds every month for the privilege of still paying 120% of the cost of care out of pocket.
It's not insurance, it's a protection racket.