Comment by austin-cheney

Comment by austin-cheney 10 months ago

All aspects of health care and health insurance in the US is inefficient by design to employ more people. The solution to that inefficiency is to eliminate many jobs. This is commonly known.

The problem though is that health care, while very expensive and not universally available in the US, is very good. It is not clear if destroying the large number of jobs to sufficiently make the health industry more cost effective will impact the quality of care and it will be economically disruptive. The primary reason why people are sheepish to solve that problem is that it’s politically toxic with no immediate profit incentive.

LUmBULtERA 10 months ago

This implies that for-profit companies and not-for-profit hospitals would not lay off employees if they could. What support do you have for that?

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huevosabio 10 months ago

Orgs that are existential competition (government, hospitals, unis, Google) tend to fatten their bureaucracies. It becomes a goal in itself.
Many can't show super high profit by design (government, unis, non profits) or due to anti trust fear (Google) so it makes sense to just hire more.

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muzani 10 months ago

I noticed everywhere where jobs are eliminated, plenty of new jobs are created somewhere else. It's somewhat similar to a cyst.

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Am4TIfIsER0ppos 10 months ago

> inefficient by design to employ more people

Except doctors who form a cabal with governments everywhere to limit numbers.

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codingdave 10 months ago

Health care cannot be described as "very good" while it is not accessible to all. While we have a few excellent clinics available to either the wealthy or the people local to those clinics, there are other people get little health care at all. Our life expectancies are lower than other developed nations, while our infant mortality is higher. We have new drugs coming out that could save lives, but are being bought up by wealthy people instead of going to low-income people who actually need it. We have skilled doctors too burdened by the system to operate at their best. We have people flinging disinformation about health which results in incorrect beliefs and societal conflict. We are a freaking dumpster fire when it comes to health care.

And the insurance industry collects money through it all.

So yes, it is political and money-driven. But it is not about jobs. And it is not "very good."

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eadmund 10 months ago

> Health care cannot be described as "very good" while it is not accessible to all.
It may not be universally very good, but it can certainly be very good in particular instances.
One can also compare health care systems by quantiles or medians.
Yes, we have lower life expectancy and higher infant mortality than other nations, but we also have an underclass which may larger, more violent and poorer than those in other countries (I write ‘may be’ because I do not know for a fact). That’s definitely a huge problem which should be addressed, but it isn’t a health care problem despite its effect on health.

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