Every single hospital, clinic, dispensary, consult, pharmacy, etc will have multiple-squares-long queues of people who has been letting their problems fester for not being able to pay it.
It will become obvious that the medical infraestructure is deficient.
And of course, libs will froth in rage. Chuds too but who cares about them.
I genuinely think this is a legitimate problem lmao. The amount of people who are putting off medical problems because they can't afford to get them treated is actually a REALLY high number.
The first like... DECADE of free healthcare would just be dealing with an enormous backlog. It's kinda scary.
It doesn't mean it shouldn't be done, but it's definitely a problem that needs thinking about and talking about.
Free healthcare would necessitate an enormous investment into health infrastructure. We would need to double or triple the number of hospitals and health workers. But that would create jobs and help poor people not die, so no one's going to do it.
We should have at least a clinic anywhere that has a post office.
The healthcare sector is already 20% of GDP in the US. A significant chunk of the value it produces is pocketed by the owners of pharma, insurance, and hospitals, and administrative bloat, while understaffing and even layoffs of nurses is commonplace. Doctors are extremely skittish to the point that they buy malpractice insurance in case a patient sues them (and they very well might need to just so they can afford the steep cost of future care needed as a consquence of malpractice), and often only accept certain insurance carriers known as preferred providers. Training up medical professionals is also absurdly expensive because of the long time investment (which is unavoidable) and the meteoric rise in the costs of education, which is the result of university owners seeking an additional source of profit.
We have the funding, it's just being fucking wasted on surplus value extraction by some of the worst rent-seekers in America. Not only would we need to invest in improving healthcare infrastructure but we would have to cut out all the leeches and redundant middlemen from the process, including the ones profiting from the higher education bubble. Nationalizing healthcare means abolishing private health insurance and replacing it with single-payer government insurance, nationalizing all the pharma companies and pharmacies, re-examining malpractice liability law, abolishing and cancelling student debt (which would include medical students), and making all postsecondary (including graduate) education government/tax-funded and free at the point of access for all students to lower the cost to society of educating and training medical professionals. Plus some other additional measures I haven't even thought of. This is a clusterfuck of a problem that could easily cripple a smaller nation-state than the US for generations.
The first like… DECADE of free healthcare would just be dealing with an enormous backlog. It’s kinda scary.
Yes, absolutely
Most Boomers probably won't go for free because they really are that fucking brainwashed to think its evil commie shit.
I mean look at how they acted with masks
Hmmm maybe that can be fixed by giving away coupons you gotta collect to a grand total of not charging you anyways, boomers love them coupons
"I won't get an appointment at my doctor because all these new patients, it's going to be such a long wait I might just die. The real plan is to kill us off for being too old."
I've heard this from my boomer boss everytime M4A is mentioned.
The real plan is to kill us off for being too old
There was a Star Trek episode where a society was presented that had a norm where people committed a peaceful and voluntary suicide when they got to 60 years old. They presented some very compelling arguments honestly.
"it is easier to imagine an end to the world than an end to capitalism" - Frederick Jameson (maybe)
I think you'd still have a couple of generations that wouldn't go or be hesitant to go to a doctor out some residual fear of bankruptcy.
If the states ever does universal healthcare it should come with a campaign to let people know an ambulance won't cost them anything anymore and they can safely call one. Lol.
There's a deutsche welle documentary about poverty in the US, and there is a part of a moving, free ,dental hospital, and it geta crowded woth desperate people
But then how will the plot of movies or TV shows work?
You commies killed breaking bad!
In communist dictatorships they have no breaking bad, no pizzas on roofs, no drug dealing nazis, trully horrendous
They can still make Breaking Bad, it'd just have to be presented as a period piece. Popular readings of the show would probably lean more towards "for-profit healthcare and the war on drugs were the catalysts for the rise of thugs like Heisenberg".
I'm usually one to agree with a take like this, but I think if they did that unironically you would probably see riots in the streets again. I really think universal healthcare is one of those things that once it's implemented it's not going to be given up so easily.
More likely is they wouldn't get rid of an NHS-like system wholesale in a short period, but they would do what they always do with public services and slowly kill it through chronic underfunding until everyone hates it or at least isn't satisfied with it. Just like the USPS, just like public transportation, just like Social Security.
If something like that happens you will see once again how much hate libs have for poor people. Here in latam libs always clump together with the far right, cuz that's what they are.
Bourgie liberals have always been fine with rationing life-saving commodities by price and income in exchange for convenience. For them it's all about making tradeoffs at other people's expense.
I think about this all the time, especially when people complain about long wait times in countries with universal healthcare. Like imagine a scenario where all healthcare is free, and you come across an ER with a line out the door of people waiting for care. People are upset and impatient. You say aha! I have a marvelous idea to solve this problem. Everyone in line give me $100. If you do not have the money in your pocket in cash right now, leave. "But @ChapoBapo! I do not have $100" someone cries "but my leg is broken!" Too bad asshole, get the fuck out. Everyone would recognize me as a monster. Nobody would accept this. And yet here we are. If you complain about long wait times, and your solution isn't to figure out how to get more doctors, clinics, hospitals, etc. and instead to argue against universal care, you're a literal actual human monster. Face the wall immediately.
.. especially when people complain about long wait times in countries with universal healthcare.
True story from the USA...
Living out in the woods I get bit by ticks, one year I actually contracted Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, twice!
First time was early enough in the week to get into the Veterans Administration medical center, took half a day for blood work, prescription of antibiotics, picking up the prescription and I was only out like 60 bucks for the visit.
A few months later I had a relapse on Friday evening, when the VA was closed for the weekend. Went to the local private hospital, took me something like 8 hours to actually be seen (I had a fever of 103F) and all they did was put an IV bag in my arm and write a prescription, which couldn't be filled AT THE FUCKING HOSPITAL and charged me $1000 for the privilege (with health insurance that wouldn't pay out because I don't get sick enough to generate enough medical claims to get past the "deductible barrier").
Face the wall immediately.
Exactly, we don't have time for this shit, there are material conditions to improve and a big fucking climate apocalypsis starting. Call me a tankie, I only hear "urgent"
With the 40 hour work week (really it should be less, but lets just say for now), and a good chunk of that being administrative/record keeping/keeping up on doctor news and stuff, say like 5 hour long appointments per day. So 25/week. 100/month. 1000/year, if we are throwing in a decent amount of vacation time. But people are probably gonna see their doctors more than once a year if they are normally healthy, even. Let alone if someone gets really sick, or has some chronic disease. Or what if a bunch of people get sick at once. So 1 doctor could see 500 people on a regular basis. Which is about right, probably. Like, you would want your doctor to have appointments open, typically, within a month.
...
and the actual answer is:
Physicians per 10,000 People: 81.9 (2017), so 10,000 people / 81.9 doctors or 1 doctor / 122 people.
damn, and I thought I was being overly generous with scheduling and vacation time. :amerikkka:
Lower the cost of medical school and see how many more doctors we produce.
Godspeed comrade. I work for a company that sells HRT and holy shit this stuff isn’t cheap
i wonder if there are based dermatologists out there that prescribe spiro to treat "acne" and it gets fully covered by insurance.
one of my docs used to prescribe me zyban instead of wellbutrin which was fully covered by my insurance (same drug but marketed to smokers) to help me out lol
Looking for a cancer doc so I can get bica
I actually went to a doctor once solely because prescription prevacid was cheaper, she said I'm your psychiatrist and the signed it anyway
I actually don't know how queueues sound cuz that fuckint word has too many vocals all together
Yo igual kiu
pero igual esa palabra está mal que exista
Todo el ingles esta mal, con que la pronunciación sea equivalente me quedo tranquilo jsjsja
Todo el ingles esta mal
Como puedes decir algo tan controversial pero con tanta razón? :eric-andre:
Um actually long lines of people trying to get healthcare is why public healthcare is bad.
I know the meme is we're already waiting super long for healthcare with insurance but I'm 90% sure shit is manufactured. The US doesn't have (much of) a shortage of medical resources its just allocated in absurd ways to satisfy capitalists. The reason I'm waiting three weeks for an MRI is because that's the wait for an 'in-network' machine connected to the insurance; not a function of gross MRI machines vis-a-vis gross demand.
But yeah seize private clinics & invest more while we socialize that shit
