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Healthcare is a misnomer

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bricklayer

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Healthcare is comprised of diet, exercise and rest. Calling medical care 'healthcare' leaves people to believe that they have healthcare when they very well may not. Even worse, many people equate having medical insurance with having healthcare; when in fact, many people sacrifice diet, exercise and rest (healthcare) to do what they need to do to maintain medical insurance.

Most of the medical care meted out, in the US, is required directly because of a lack of healthcare on the patient's part. Consequently, most of the cost of medical insurance goes to paying for other people's lack of healthcare. Healthcare cannot be hired out like medical care can be. You can't hire someone else to do your healthcare for you the way you can hire someone else to do your medical care for you. No one else can do your healthcare for you but you. If you do not have a healthy balance of diet, exercise and rest, you do not have healthcare no matter what gold plated medical insurance plan you may have.

Think of healthcare in terms of your teeth. If your only dental care took place when you went to the dentist, would you still consider yourself to have good dental care because you have dental insurance?

Medical care is not healthcare. Medical insurance is not healthcare. I personally know people who have sacrificed diet, exercise and rest to do what they needed to do to maintain medical insurance. They literally traded their healthcare for medical insurance, and when the inevitable decline in their health came to pass, they thought themselves prescient for having made the sacrifice.

If you do not have your health, you have nothing. If you do not have healthcare (diet, exercise & rest), you will not have your health for long no matter what medical insurance or medical care you have.

Start by saying what you mean. Start by stop calling medical care 'healthcare'; and for goodness sakes, stop equating medical insurance with healthcare. Your healthcare is your responsibility; no one can do it for you.
 
bricklayer said:
Most of the medical care meted out, in the US, is required directly because of a lack of healthcare on the patient's part. Consequently, most of the cost of medical insurance goes to paying for other people's lack of healthcare. Healthcare cannot be hired out like medical care can be. You can't hire someone else to do your healthcare for you the way you can hire someone else to do your medical care for you. No one else can do your healthcare for you but you. If you do not have a healthy balance of diet, exercise and rest, you do not have healthcare no matter what gold plated medical insurance plan you may have.
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This is precisely why medicare for all is such a bad idea. Under medicare for all, a fat, overweight slob who never exercises is allowed to impose his medical costs on everyone else. The only fair system is one where everyone pays for their own medical care.
 
aociswundumho said:
This is precisely why medicare for all is such a bad idea. Under medicare for all, a fat, overweight slob who never exercises is allowed to impose his medical costs on everyone else. The only fair system is one where everyone pays for their own medical care.
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Everyone paying for their own medical care IS 'Single Payer.' With Insurance, other people are paying for one person's care as well as their own, so Insurance should go, and each individual person should pay for their own medical care. No need to worry about rich fat overweight slobs who are in the 1%; they are already able to pay for it all but don't - they have insurance too...
 
I love this newspeak. War is peace. The ministry of truth is watching
 
vote out everyone who opposes real first world health care. simple enough.
 
aociswundumho said:
This is precisely why medicare for all is such a bad idea. Under medicare for all, a fat, overweight slob who never exercises is allowed to impose his medical costs on everyone else. The only fair system is one where everyone pays for their own medical care.
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Are you also against paying for a road that you never drive on?

What about paying for a police department you've never had to call?
 
aociswundumho said:
This is precisely why medicare for all is such a bad idea. Under medicare for all, a fat, overweight slob who never exercises is allowed to impose his medical costs on everyone else. The only fair system is one where everyone pays for their own medical care.
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Which would mean that the medical system would not develop such things as heart treatments, knee surgeries etc. Because very few people can pay for such care. Only with insurance can they pay for such care.

I am not going to develop and provide a service.. if it doesn't have a profit margin for me.
 
jaeger19 said:
Which would mean that the medical system would not develop such things as heart treatments, knee surgeries etc.
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No, they will still be developed, but they will only be able to charge what people can pay, just like any other market.
 
aociswundumho said:
No, they will still be developed, but they will only be able to charge what people can pay, just like any other market.
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No.. they would not be developed.

Just like in any other market. I won't develop a product that people are unable to pay enough for me to make a profit.


Why would I develop a product in a free market economy that would cost more to make and service..than people can afford? Please explain your logic...
 
jaeger19 said:
No.. they would not be developed.

Just like in any other market. I won't develop a product that people are unable to pay enough for me to make a profit.


Why would I develop a product in a free market economy that would cost more to make and service..than people can afford? Please explain your logic...
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Consider cataract surgery. There's a hospital chain in India that uses a variable pricing model with an assembly line approach which does 250,000 eye surgeries per year:

At a time when a staggering 13 million Indians (pdf) were blind, Venkataswamy saw an opportunity to supplement the government’s efforts to increase the availability of eye-care services, and potentially eradicate preventable blindness in Tamil Nadu.

“The only capital they had was their personal assets,” Soumitra Pandey, partner and Mumbai office head at The Bridgespan Group, a Boston-based non-profit, told Quartz. Despite the limited resources, their vision for eliminating what they called “needless blindness” was always grand, Pandey added.

Today, what started out as a single space with 11 beds is now a network of 11 hospitals in Tamil Nadu, which have helped cut the state’s rate of cataract blindness by half, according to a recent case study by The Bridgespan Group.

Every year, Aravind performs around 250,000 cataract surgeries, most of them for free or what the hospital chain refers to as “zero price,” in an attempt to treat every patient as a customer, regardless of their ability to pay. This variable pricing model, along with several cost-cutting innovations, has helped create a sustainable business that provides world class eye-care services at a fraction of the cost charged by hospitals in the west, the case study says.

With an assembly line approach, an Indian hospital chain performs 250,000 eye surgeries a year — Quartz India
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That's what capitalism can do if it's allowed to work. The mistake that progressives and conservatives in America make is thinking that it's normal for healthcare providers to ass-rape sick and dying people. It isn't.
 
aociswundumho said:
Consider cataract surgery. There's a hospital chain in India that uses a variable pricing model with an assembly line approach which does 250,000 eye surgeries per year:



That's what capitalism can do if it's allowed to work. The mistake that progressives and conservatives in America make is thinking that it's normal for healthcare providers to ass-rape sick and dying people. It isn't.
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yes that's nice.. So.. how much did that doctor spend to develop his cataract surgery? Oh wait.. it was a well established surgery with very little overhead.. that has already gone through a ton of expensive innovation that only now be provided cheaply (because all that research, development and training was subsidized by all those folks that paid and continue to pay for it).

Again.. why would I develop a product that is going to cost me more to produce and provide.. than people are going to pay me for???

Why would I do it at a tremendous LOSS?.
 
jaeger19 said:
Oh wait.. it was a well established surgery with very little overhead.. that has already gone through a ton of expensive innovation that only now be provided cheaply (because all that research, development and training was subsidized by all those folks that paid and continue to pay for it).
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It's not cheap in the US - but it could be.

jaeger19 said:
Again.. why would I develop a product that is going to cost me more to produce and provide.. than people are going to pay me for??? Why would I do it at a tremendous LOSS?.
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I'm not sure of the point you're trying to make here. Just because you wouldn't do something doesn't mean other people wouldn't. Things get invented and developed no matter what. History is filled with brilliant inventors who died broke, e.g. Tesla, Charles Goodyear, etc.
 
aociswundumho said:
It's not cheap in the US - but it could be.
.
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Probably.. but in all likelihood the cataract surgery probably subsidizes a whole host of other procedures that are not as profitable or that actually lose money.

'
m not sure of the point you're trying to make here. Just because you wouldn't do something doesn't mean other people wouldn't. Things get invented and developed no matter what.
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Its simple.. again.. why would anyone.. keep producing a product.. that cost more to produce and service.. than people were able to pay for?

Right now.. the holy grail of surgeries for neurosurgeons is a functional lumbar disc replacement surgery. So lets say a team develops the surgical device, surgical technique for the surgery.

They spend 2 million dollars for development, and the cost per surgery is 300 thousand between the cost for the device, the training, the xtra surgeon (because you need a vascular surgeon to do the anterior approach) the added liability, anaesthesia. hospital stay.. and so on.

So it costs 300 thousand dollars for one surgery.

The average person can only afford say 20,000.

Why would ANYONE decide to provide this surgery when every time they do the surgery they have to pay 280,000 out of their own pocket?

Please explain.
 
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