Nicholas Kristof is the dipshit who wrote it.
Our policy seems driven less by cost considerations than by indifference, even cruelty.
Nicholas Kristof and the exact answer to his question had a falling out and have refused to acknowledge each other since, even when sitting in the same room. The answer says it has attempted reconciliation multiple times but to no avail.
But that's the point they're making, no? I just read the article. They're implying the cost argument is silly because the US can afford it, and will also make money on part of it. Then they close the paragraph by stressing that the US healthcare system isn't based on a cost-benefit analysis as some think.
Depends on the cost-benefit analysis you're doing. From a societal perspective of course it's best to have free universal healthcare, but from the perspective of an insurance CEO it sure isn't. And it's the latter group influencing policy
Also on the front page of the NYT very close to that article is this - archive.today • Opinion | They Live in Constant Pain, but Their Doctors Won’t Help Them - The New York Times.
Very funny to see these types of articles vanish from the NY Times any time a politician (hello
Show) has universal healthcare on their platform. When it's Joe Brandon or Cheeto Man running for office it's safe to write about these again since they know nothing will be done about it
This very much seems like a misreading/unclear writing. The writer seems to agree with you. The implied wording I read: "But it's hard to understand [the argument that opponents to universal care make, because their assertion is implausible:] how just every.."
Unless I'm misreading and you're arguing that the US can't afford universal care?
The writer seems to agree with you.
I'm really surprised people don't understand that this is simply lib handwringing. He's saying "This is awful! Something should be done!" It's yet another example - in this case a NYT columnist - of a lib seeming to be reasonable. This is the lib stock in trade. He's not actually advocating for universal healthcare. Maybe in the article he actually advocates for something but I'm not going read the 1,000s of words because I doubt he said much of anything at all.
Is it any more hand-wringy than us Chapos complaining in a more ironic fashion on a negligibly small Reddit clone?
The author is saying the same thing you are, that cost-based rejection of universal healthcare is nonsensical. What they advocate for is quite clear: universal healthcare in the US.
The slightly objectionable aspect of this article is that it’s another framing of the issue as passive “access” to healthcare that merely needs to be granted, without resolving the rampant structural issues with regulatory capture, insurance, etc which makes healthcare so expensive in the first place. Means of payment is only half of the problem, and not really the causal half.
There is a massive difference between us and a nationally syndicated newspaper.
When election time comes, either they or their editors will get right back on the 'but who will pay for it?' bandwagon.
I can get on board with criticizing NYT editors if that trend can be shown. Not seeing a problem with this one particular op-ed author or this paragraph in isolation. Unless the author has actually argued against this point in the past then why are we calling out the author, by name, as the problem? I don’t like liberal hand-wringing either but we need not flatten all non-socialists into a monolith. It’s lazy and boring.
This is not a marxist analysis, but the health care industry just seems like a rentier sector. I'm guessing it's a big reason why everything is expensive, because the health care cost of the workers has to be priced into everything.
