Healthhcare is a scam?

This is just not correct. We spend more because we do not take care of ourselves. It is amazing the service we can provide considering the overall health of our country.

 

Agree with the basic premise here, but I'd argue Medicare is more "quasi-socialist" than "quasi-fascist". Wrong end of the spectrum.

Big issue here is that the insurance companies are (for the most part) run by lawyers instead of doctors. The entire industry is run by Big Pharma and doctors have an unbelievable "cost of doing business" to mitigate being sued into oblivion for malpractice.

 

You clearly are not able to articulate the point being made. Our healthcare system is controlled by the corporations and the government. The government gave them the biggest tool possible to use with Medicare. But if you can’t see that a few corporations are able to use Medicare to control so many things in healthcare…we will just have to disagree on the subject.

 

Healthcare became a scam when insurance companies began covering everything. It also became a scam when the government began mandating what insurance had to cover.

 

I could certainly see that argument as well. Especially when it comes to Medicare directly.

But the fact the insurers are who everyone has to work with and Medicare at this point dictates how the rest of the country also has to deal with providers/insurers/pharma…I see
Medicare as the largest tool the corporate healthcare companies have in order to control the system as a whole. But I do agree that directly Medicare on its own is more quasi socialist.

 

How did it 'lay the groundwork' when if you are under 65, the system for you is nothing like Medicare? And you still havent explained what's 'quasi-fascist' about it.

 

Pertinent

The United States and New Zealand are the only countries where drug makers are allowed to market prescription drugs directly to consumers. The U.S. consumer drug advertising boom on television began in 1997, when the FDA relaxed its guidelines relating to broadcast media.

 

Don’t confuse my ability to articulate with your inability to comprehend.

 

My German friends think all the drug commercials here are hilarious.

 

In America they decided to link a private healthcare system with employment and employers (usually as some kind of benefit in lieu of pay), and that has nothing to do with Medicare which covers people who mostly aren't employed and are at retirement age. Just bizarre to blame Medicare for that.

 

Easy…you provide a large group of people. People more likely to use providers. Subsidize their premiums. And let the insurers handle it with every possible plan you can think of.

 

I never understood why pharmaceuticals or lawyers are allowed to advertise.

 

SARCASM!!

 

I am not. Your ability to comprehend also is lacking. Well actually I think you are comprehending and deflecting now.

 

That's generally how any insurance scheme functions, you need a large group of people for it to work. What's "fascist" about that? In the case of Medicare you are basically not able to make a claim until 65 while paying premiums for decades prior.

 

Need to sell that Covid shot…

 

Among advanced industrialized countries the US ranks well past 30th in life expectancy at birth. We rank among the top three in age-adjusted life expectancy at age 65. You think that the quasi-fascist Medicare program may be a factor considering that somewhere around 97-98 percent of Americans over the age of 65 are covered by the program?
Edit: The US now ranks around in 20th in adjusted-life expectancy at 65. Just a guess but the drop may be attributable to the impact of the Covid pandemic on the elderly population in 2020 and early 2021.
Life Expectancy by Country and in the World (2022) - Worldometer
Health status - Life expectancy at 65 - OECD Data

 

You mean where all the side effects and CYA are worse than the actual condition it's supposed to address?

 

Of course one of the drivers for “minimum” coverage and rules around pre/existing conditions, was because of insurance companies with some frequency weaseling out of covering procedures (denying valid claims) or dropping coverage as soon as the covered individual has a major claim (for cancer or whatnot). So even if they cover them initially, dropping coverage is basically leaving them high and dry on future healthcare expenses. Good luck as an individual trying to get coverage back suing ABC insurance behemoth.

The reason Medicare exists is because nobody in the free market would provide “insurance” to a 75 year old. Yet these people invariably need care at the end, sometimes for many years.

The individual was having a hard time vs. insurance industry long before the Medicare or the ACA. If the “insurance industry is a scam” the flaw in these programs is that it allows the insurance industry to co-exist as a profit siphoning entity between patients and doctors, rather than abolish it entirely. Of course the reason this doesn’t happen is because in some quarters: insurance industry = CaPiTaLiSm whereas single payer is SoCiAlIsM.

 

Can't remember the drug, but it was for something relatively benign. And one of the side effects listed on the commercial was rectal bleeding. That made me chuckle.