I will say though that the presence of private healthcare in the UK does make me very uncomfortable, especially with how much the NHS is struggling for money
Comment on "No precedent in American history!" NYT would have defended child labor.
Womble@piefed.world 7 hours ago
As well as this being stupid for the reasons given, its also just flat out wrong. There is no reason why you couldn’t have additional healthcare insurance to act as a top-up/faster non-essential care/nicer facilities when you are in hospital. That’s how it works in the UK, even with completely nationalized, free at the point of use healthcare there is still room for private insurance, it just has to earn its place rather than being a complete leach.
KryptonNerd@slrpnk.net 5 hours ago
MonkeMischief@lemmy.today 3 hours ago
It kinda feels like our postal service in the U.S.
They defund it, then complain about it, then start ranting that it “Doesn’t even make a profit” even though the whole point is that it’s supposed to be an affordable and accessible mail service.
They’re even doing the same thing with schools. The entire conservo-righty playbook anymore is to get rid of our public services so they and their rich buddies have more to gain at our expense.
HubertManne@piefed.social 3 hours ago
kinda funny with post because if it was done totally privately the more rural and remote you get the higher the cost would be.
Th4tGuyII@fedia.io 7 hours ago
Exactly this. Universal healthcare still leaves room for private facilities and insurance, it just forces a minimum standard on the market that they clearly don't want in the US
im_fine_sandy@nord.pub 5 hours ago
Yep. Same in Australia.
I think 20 years ago an American would have told you they have the freedom to choose the level of cover they want, starting from none at all.
Now things have deteriorated through collusion or corruption or price fixing or whatever.
They’ve made so much money they have too much influence to do away with them.
Abyssian@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
They’ve made so much money they have too much influence to do away with them.
That one guy on the news found a way. I imagine it wouldn’t even take a thousand of us following that lead before things began to change.
grrgyle@slrpnk.net 3 hours ago
Probably wouldn’t even take 10. I say 5. Things already started shifting with the 1.
SalamenceFury@piefed.social 5 hours ago
Yep. Brazil has both free healthcare and private insurance, and most of the time private is better, but only because they’re directly competing with something that costs nothing. They gotta keep their prices reasonable to be attractive.
helvetpuli@sopuli.xyz 6 hours ago
Being a complete leech is very profitable.
ColeSloth@discuss.tchncs.de 28 minutes ago
Because in the corrupt US market that would devolve into you either having private insurance, or expect to wait 3 years to get anything done and expect to get mrsa when you do.
The free option would be utter trash, to the point where it would be nearly unusable.
The private sector has actually been nudging things that way for quite a few years now up in Canada.
Medical care shouldn’t be a class system. Flat out.