Do you understand that there are many unconnected for-profit and non-profit medical systems all over the world? Including areas of low to no enforcement due to lack proper government and they are not doing anything different?
The problem is not for-profit healthcare, but how it is implemented in the US. Lots of countries have for-profit healthcare without the users of that healthcare every worrying about recovering financially.
The USA system is particularly broken. Just because healthcare is private doesn't mean it needs to be ruinously expensive, most other countries manage.
Being largely for-profit is part of the problem with healthcare in the United States, but plenty of other countries have privatized healthcare that works, Japan being the first that comes to mind.
The difference being that, in the US, the long-term dysfunction of our political system has allowed the regulatory framework for healthcare to be built to service its own industry, rather than the needs of individual citizens or society at large.
As one example, regional hospitals used to band together in groups to bargain collectively when purchasing supplies. This arrangement was formalized, legislated, and then warped, so that rather than the hospitals controlling the organization, it was instead controlled by the suppliers, driving the cost to the patient up, rather than down.
There is no easy solution here, without first fixing our broken political system, and I see no evidence of that happening.
I don't know of any healthcare system where what you're describing is the case outside of outliers like North Korea. Even in the UK with NHS, there's a whole system of private insurance and private hospitals too.
I'm referring to the separate, private medical industry in Mexico, not the horrible state-managed medical system. But you're right; medical systems with heavy government involvement are usually bad.
Not having advanced medical equipment or doctors is one way to have a health system that doesn't work. Not hiring a programmer to write you a script to connect two systems during the worst unemployment event in almost a hundred years is another one. As are so many of the other reasons here. We are finding out that our healthcare system really isn't up to par not only because we don't have equipment, but because due to lack of regulations that benefit profit seeking, the system barely works. If only we had some sort of over arching entity that could force all these disparate systems to work together based on a set of rules ... you know, a government and specifically a government that works not one that's constantly being dismantled by idiots who think the corona virus is a hoax. In the end, the crisis always boils down to not having an effective, functioning government and leadership. This would be unacceptable in many places, but the US has extremely low standards in general so it's business as usual.
Healthcare systems are not uniform. Canada or the UK's system is quite different from other systems. For example the Netherlands has a hybrid system that utilizes a competitive, private, for-profit insurance market (with subsidies from the government). I think a lot of first-world countries have systems like that. (they aren't publicly managed, single-payer systems) And given the rhetoric on this issue I was very surprised to learn that.
I agree that the US system is in need of major reform, but prices, competition and markets can be an important part of a healthcare system for price constraints, innovation, mitigating corruption, etc.
As an example, consider food stamps, which helps people get food, but does so via the private market. The program would be a lot worse off if the Government decided to open grocery stores or tried to run the whole supply chain.
Perhaps a similar line of reasoning applies to healthcare?
That's an overly simplistic hot take. You have to look at the interests involved.
Sure, in some other countries, for-profit health insurance is illegal.
There are many more for-profit hospitals in the US than there were 40 years ago. Many not-for-profits sold out to for-profit companies. I believe John Oliver or VICE did a piece on this years ago.
Then there are the doctors. Only in the US is being a doctor insanely lucrative. Not all US doctors are out to financially abuse patients, but there are enough who are complicit in the hospital and outpatient practice system who enable mass exploitation.
Single-payer wouldn't end this. Medicare for all wouldn't even be close to fixing the problem. Most of Medicare is administered by for-profit health insurance companies. Medicare pays, but doesn't cover 100%. It still requires paying for one of a laundry list of letters Medicare supplemental and prescription plans. Also, the US doesn't have a functional mental healthcare system. And that's not covered either. Dental and vision also aren't covered.
National health care systems are incredibly common outside the US, and they're often in countries with sliding scale income tax so it impacts the poorer much less than those well off. A lot of countries have hybrid systems where there is partial privatisation, but it's rare to see private insurance necessary for required treatments.
I don't mean for this to be antagonistic so please don't take it that way, but it seems so many outside the US see the US as almost a form of extreme capitalism, where an almost dogmatic belief in the ideal has resulted in sub-optimal infrastructure and services.
The system in the US is exactly as crazy as it seems. It generates lots of profits and lots of financial hardship for patients. There is just about zero political will for any political party to fix the situation and we all expect it to continue to get worse.
They weren’t referenced in contrast to the US system. They were referenced as countries without single-payer healthcare that still manage universal healthcare. It’s neither vague or incoherent to point out how many different ways exist to solve a problem, only someone with an agenda could think so.
There is so much wrong with the US healthcare system, from physical therapy centers, ambulance companies and prosthetists, to hospitals and surgery centers, to doctors, to insurance companies, to drug companies, to laws, patents, and the US government. Maybe you don't know the system well?
US healthcare is terrible because of system effects, not the profit motive. Most hospitals are run as non-profits and yet their spending is INSANELY out of control.
yeah. Outside America, where the rest of us have worked out that healthcare isn't a profit thing and that it should be provided by the state, this isn't a problem that needs solving.
I've never seen a plausible explanation of why a health care system would work for 60 million (UK) but not for 300 million (US).
Bodies are mostly the same, they break down in mostly the same ways. There isn't a lot of mystery in providing care, either. Nor a lot of mystery in how you'd fund it.
We just aren't doing any of that, cause our politicians are bought so very, very cheaply, and enough people are enriching themselves in small ways through small grifts that changing the system would impact a lot of people who are just well-off enough to be listened to.
Aren't you assuming that the healthcare system operates for the good of the patients? From my point of view, that doesn't seem to be the case in the U.S.
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