What most other countries are doing: Fund healthcare from tax money.

The middle class will anyway pay for the healthcare of those who can't pay for themselves. In other countries they pay in taxes, in the US they pay for it in their own higher medical bills.

This is a matter of an opinion of course. But most Europeans would opine that the American model is the unreasonable alternative.

People who self selected for free medical care didn't have much better health outcome than others who were not selected, except that they didn't go bankrupt.

So, the group that didn't get paid for didn't go to the ER, while the group that did get paid for went to the ER but didn't have better health outcomes than those that didn't. Surely that says something about the private, for profit institutions that run the ER business.

Then why do people in those same countries purchase additional insurance from the private sector?

> In other countries they pay in taxes, in the US they pay for it in their own higher medical bills.

Surely you have heard of Medicaid and Medicare before. Yes?

Same reason some people upgrade their coach-class airline tickets - they can afford a nicer, more personalized level of service.

There ARE a lot of alternatives to the current system. Canada, France, the Netherlands, and Singapore are good examples to look at--very different systems, all far more cost-effective than ours.

And then, don't allow the for-profit to loan or grant or shift any resources over to the not-for-profit. In fact, ensure they're not owned by the same parent corporation or even the same shareholders.

Keep the logistics consolidated—everything flows through the for-profit's buyer—but then, have the for-profit rent its facilities and machinery, and provide its pre-acquired drugs and materials, to the not-for-profit at market price.

And have the for-profit and not-for-profit hire the same employees and split their shifts; or perhaps, have the for-profit hire them, with the option to volunteer as many hours as they wish to the not-for-profit. (This would lower the expenses of the not-for-profit considerably.)

In other words, leave the not-for-profit "twisting in the wind", where it's still running but nobody's paying for it, so it's just running at more and more of a loss each year. Try to minimize its costs—in fact, have people working for the not-for-profit entirely dedicated to trying to minimize its costs (successful strategies for which can be rolled back into the for-profit.)

But also, treat the not-for-profit as a thing which needs to raise money, rather than just making revenue. A thing like a University, which has entire departments dedicated to getting funding from its alumni. Maybe even work with other not-for-profit hospitals in a Public Advocacy Coalition to build a social norm that if one of these not-for-profit hospitals saved your life, and you went on to great [monetary] success, you should donate to that hospital (and it will, in turn, privilege your family while pretending not to, just like Universities do.)

A fun effect of this is that the not-for-profit will now be a large, visible advocate for cost-minimization in the for-profit's purchasing—since those costs will be passed on to them (so they'll be incentivized to lower them), but they can't just lower them by buying cheaper themselves (because they don't have their own purchasing/facilities management/IT/etc. departments), they'll instead have to figure out how the hospital as a whole can lower costs, in order for them to save any money.

Essentially, this is doing the same thing that creating municipal vote districts along income lines does: the rich voters and the poor voters each get their own voices in how the city should be run, and so the poor voters (through their representative) get the chance to argue against proposals that would benefit the rich voters but hurt them. Right now, hospitals don't have any such representative for their "poor voters."

---

(Yes, I know that a lot of hospitals are already not-for-profits. They're still run on a model that tries to maximize revenue, though, because they need that money. If you split the unprofitable patients out, suddenly the for-profit hospital can lower its prices, while the not-for-profit is forced to lower its costs.)

Consider the aphorism "the squeaky wheel gets the grease." Why is this an aphorism? Because squeaky wheels are annoying. If the people who use the wheels have to hear them squeak, they'll soon oil them. So if you hear a squeaky wheel (for example, on a shopping cart), that's usually because the people with the oil don't ever have to get close enough to hear that squeak.

Proposals like Basic Income, or even welfare, basically translate to "greasing all the wheels on a regular schedule, whether you've heard them squeak or not"—i.e., fixing problems that aren't actually bothering you personally. It's nearly impossible to incentivize anyone to do that.

My proposal here is more in terms of "ensuring when manufacturing wheels that they will squeak as loudly as possible when they've begun failing." You want to solve the shopping-cart case, where the person with the oil isn't the person who has to use the cart. And the best way to do that is to ensure that the customers will be too irritated by the squeaking to actually use the carts; and therefore the carts will go disused; and therefore the customers will complain to the cashiers that there are no carts, and people will buy less than they would with a cart, and revenue will go down, and some stakeholder will notice, and gather information, and figure out that it's that all the carts are squeaking horribly, and so oil them.

Or, in other words, you want the squeak of "people not getting treated because they don't have the money" to be loud enough to actually make it all the way up to the hospital's CFO, where the squeaking will cause cost-cutting; and even further, to the city surrounding the hospital, where the squeaking will cause donating.

In fact, if you oil the carts regularly, you might not realize that your wheels are badly-made and are rusting prematurely; or that your parking lot needs a regular dust-blower-ing; or whatever else. Sensitive components—canaries in coal mines, or people with no money in poor health—show you where your system is weakest. If you eliminate them (by just providing UBI, or even just public healthcare), you eliminate the chance to observe where your system fails. In a country with more money than it knows what to do with, this is probably a sensible approach—it has fewer people suffer over the short term, after all, at the expense of a bloated, bureaucratic medical system. But if you're trying to figure out how to cut those costs, you need the squeaking.

Bawawahahaha. No. Non-profit is just a tax status that allows them not to pay income taxes or property taxes on enormous assets and enormous income.

2) Many shops in UK (especially London), run by Muslim or Seikh owners, have been feeding hungry people for years.

[1] https://read.oecd-ilibrary.org/social-issues-migration-healt...

Perhaps keep 3rd party insurance but ban it as an employment perk, that would incentivize the market to play to the greater public instead of just white collar salaried employees.

People with severe disabilities may not be profitable, but I'd still like them to have the option to live.

So, yes, the government. It may not be monetarily profitable but money shouldn't matter to build a humane society.

"It's crazy that I live in Canada, but now I'm looking at having to sell my house for coverage of my medication."[1]

[1]http://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/a-tale-of-2-f...

> Helen Anderson, provincial lead for systemic therapy for the BC Cancer Agency, said that Ibrance is currently under active review for coverage in B.C.

There are several expensive medications that the Canadian health system has elected not to cover.

Here is another example where if the husband didn't have drug coverage through his employer, he would have been on the hook for the entire cost. Eventually he had to shell out $3,000 per month.[1]

At first, he says, his company insurance covered the price of the drug. But years later – Gary’s employer changed insurers and he was now on the hook to pay more than $3,000 a month.

[1]https://globalnews.ca/news/1654757/canadian-patients-struggl...

No, but if that's the standard, I'm fairly certain we can find a lot more "no insurance, couldn't get treatment at all" stories in the US than we can "Canadian needs unusual, not-yet-approved medication" ones.

> There are several expensive medications that the Canadian health system has elected not to cover.

You'll find the American medical system does the same.

https://www.mercurynews.com/2007/12/21/teen-dies-hours-after...

https://www.today.com/news/man-battles-health-insurer-drug-c...

All medical systems will have rules and timelines for approval of drugs and procedures. Sometimes they'll lead to unfortunate situations.

In the US, though, approval's just the first step. You might then have to scrape together the $6k deductible for your family's bronze plan. You might have to wait until next year to switch insurers to one who covers that particular med.

Covered in Canada? Maybe never. And that's one of the best drugs out there to treat that type of cancer.

I'm not arguing the US system is better than Canada's. Just calling out there are trade offs with single payer systems. If American's think they can move to a single payer system and keep all the bells and whistles they have now, they will be deeply disappointed.

And your 2nd link actually proves my point. The drug in the article is not covered in many Canadian provinces at all. The guy in the article is being denied the drug because it's not approved for his mutation. Most people with the correct mutation do get coverage for that drug (again, a new, state of the art drug).

Sure, but that's true in the US here, too.

No insurance? No med. ERs aren't gonna give you it.

Can't make your $6k bronze plan deductible? No med. Maybe you'll qualify for a patient assistance program from the drug company, maybe not.

> If American's think they can move to a single payer system and keep all the bells and whistles they have now, they will be deeply disappointed.

It's entirely possible to have a supplemental private health insurance system for the experimental or unapproved stuff. You can get private coverage for stuff like IVF in Australia, for example.

A lot of America's bells and whistles are already inaccessible to a large portion of the population.

> And your 2nd link actually proves my point. The drug in the article is not covered in many Canadian provinces at all. The guy in the article is being denied the drug because it's not approved for his mutation. Most people with the correct mutation do get coverage for that drug (again, a new, state of the art drug).

As the article mentions, the insurer approved their sibling with the same mutation for the same medication. Private insurance can be just as capricious as a single-payer's approval system.

Government-funded health care suffers from all the same economic problems that privately financed health care suffers from, and the government is just as corrupt as any private organization, plus there tends to be little incentive for efficiency, so government programs tend to be extremely inefficient and wasteful.

I appreciate (and agree with) your concern for the disabled, but letting the government be in charge is a recipe for making everything worse.

Except the biggest one: the need to maximize the extraction and distribution of profit to shareholders, while funding the cheapest and least amount of care possible without jeopardizing that imperative.

Except we have pretty much the entire developed world's healthcare systems to debunk that claim. They have similar life expectancies, medical outcomes, infant mortality, access to care, wait times, etc. for half the cost.

* 31st for Life Expectancy [1]

* 32nd in infant mortality [2]

* 5th for colorectal cancer survival [3]

* 1st for breast cancer survival [3]

* 19th for cervical cancer survival [3]

* 7th for heart attack mortality [3]

The actual numbers are reasonably close, but the cost is also about 25% more per captia [4] than the second highest-spending country.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_an...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_quality_o...

[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless.

Forgive me while I laugh uncontrollably

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Investor%27s_Business_Daily#Er...

> In July 2009, an editorial in Investor's Business Daily claimed that physicist Stephen Hawking "wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the [British] National Health Service (NHS) would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless." Hawking has always lived in the United Kingdom and receives his medical care from the NHS.

I don't have a view on who should pay for it, but there are only 3 categories of payers in healthcare: 1 government and 2 private (insurance and self-pay). The compensation is funded by one of those sources.

The crippling healthcare costs borne by individuals entirely consist of rent-seeking. It's also important to say that a lot of that money comes back out in salaries for the massive workforce required for the unnecessary administrative overhead, adding to the economy, and of course in non-imported luxury goods purchased by the rent-seekers themselves.

So, what is it that you are actually trying to say?

>Is there a reasonable alternative? I'm not trolling, but letting people die of treatable maladies doesn't seem like the right move.

I answered a tautological statement with a tautological question based on the logic the poster omitted.

Can you tell me who besides the government or the market (ie consumers) will prevent people from 'dying in the streets'? Perhaps by kidnapping another country's doctors and compelling them to provide care...

>I'm not trolling

Free primary and preventative care along with dental and vision, and have a government subsidized insurance program for hospital/long term illness coverage akin to the public university system (along with the in-state discounts).

And allow for a parallel private system to exist for those who want to pay more and get allegedly better treatment.

EDIT: This does appear to be inflation adjusted. Here’s a federal source which is definitely inflation adjusted showing funding increasing in real terms by 27% from 1995-2013. [2]

[1] - http://apps.urban.org/features/education-funding-trends/

[2] - https://nces.ed.gov/programs/digest/d16/tables/dt16_235.10.a...

[0] http://www.in2013dollars.com/1995-dollars-in-2015?amount=100

Many of the country's best schools are public, especially at the college-level.

If the government will not allow treatment and there’s no way to pay and you can’t leave the country, you’re finished.

If insurance will not allow treatment and there’s no way to pay and you can’t leave the country, you’re finished.

Side note: private health insurance, private healthcare facilities, and paying out of your own pocket are all possible in countries with socialized healthcare.

Alfie is going to die. He has no brain. He was being kept "alive" on life support. The hospital want to end this life support because it's in his best intersts to do so - there's no hope of treatment, and keeping him alive is likely to be keeping him in pain. The parents disagreed with this, and so it had to go to court.

This means there is legal representation for the hospital; for the parents; and independent representation for the child. This is because the child is a human and has rights and his best interests need to be kept in mind.

The parents have rejected the findings of the court, and have made many appeals. They've gone to appeal court several times, the supreme court several times, and ECHR[1] a couple of times.

All the courts agree: it's in Alfie's best interests to let him die, rather than rpolong his suffering when there's no hope of treatment.

Also, all the courts agree that Alfie's parents (and latterly his father) have been given terrible legal advice.

This is causing some consternation in US right-wing nutjobs.

Here are some, but not all, of the court hearings. I might have got the ordering wrong.

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/...

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/...

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWCA/...

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC/...

https://www.supremecourt.uk/docs/in-the-matter-of-alfie-evan...

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/eu/cases/ECHR/...

http://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/eu/cases/ECHR/...

An example of the terrible legal advice (from a non-lawyer too!)

---begin

On 12th April 2018 the father went to the hospital with some other people who included a foreign doctor and air ambulance staff. The father had a letter written to him by Mr Pavel Stroilov of the Christian Legal Centre which, we were told, is a campaigning organisation. In the letter Mr Stroilov, who we have been told is not a lawyer, purported to give the father legal advice. He said that it would be lawful for the father to remove Alfie from the hospital and take him to any other place he chose. The previous order made by Hayden J was said not to have circumvented "your parental rights".

The letter, which was disseminated on social media (presumably with the knowledge and consent of Mr Stroilov), stated that:

"as a matter of law it is your right to come to (the) hospital with a team of medical professionals with their own life-support equipment and move Alfie to such other place as you consider is best for him. You do not need any permission from (the) Hospital or the court to do so".

This letter was misleading to the extent of giving the father false advice. We have been told that it had the most regrettable consequences in that it led to a confrontation in which Alfie was involved. The Police had to be called. An application had to be made as a matter of urgency to Hayden J.

The letter gave false advice because the previous decisions made by the courts in this case have directly addressed whether the parents have the right to decide what should happen to Alfie. The clear answer which has been given is that the parents' wishes are not determinative. The court has also expressly decided that removing Alfie from the hospital as the parents wanted was "irreconcilable with (his) best interests" and that his treatment and care "shall" be given by this hospital. To act inconsistently with or contrary to the court's determination and order would be to act without lawful authority. This includes the hospital which would have been acting in breach of the court's order if they had permitted Alfie to be removed from the hospital.

All the doctors (even the Italian doctors) agree: Alfie Evans is going to die, and soon. What they're offering in Italy is exactly the same palliative end-of-life care that he'd get in the UK, but with the addition of a long painful trip.

Alfie Evans has had the benefit of world class medical treatment - in the US he'd have been killed by the insurance company a long time ago. He's also had the benefit of free legal representation to make sure his best interests (because in the UK and Europe the best interests of the child are what's important) are looked after.

Here's a ranty English lawyer: https://twitter.com/BarristerSecret/status/98919501104352870...

I don't even trust the market to create an efficient system.

I trust the market to be adjusted by the wealthy to further enrich themselves.

I also trust the government to be the one organized group of people that can restrain that market, to give the rest of us a chance.

It's a voice backed with $3.7 trillion in total economic value per year (18.x% of the $20 trillion US economy). In terms of size, it would just about be the fourth largest economy on earth, comparable to Germany.

There are millions of very well paid hands in that pot of gold, from doctors & nurses to scientists and pharma sales reps, hospital admin and insurance industry employees. Consider for a moment that US drug costs - the most notorious example of abuse in US healthcare costs - are about 10-11% of the total US healthcare expenditure, and our per capita spending is about 2x what it should be: ie nearly everyone in healthcare is partaking in the plunder. That makes for a very loud voice.