So grateful for today's Supreme Court Decision.....

[gimmethesimplelife]

Our medical-industrial system is shamefully perverted by greed. Pharma has a stranglehold on doctors with bribes and intimidation. Insurance sellers, rather than doctors, control every facet of patient care, with the bottom line all that matters. We should start over with a single-payer system and tear the old for-profit model out root and branch.

+10,000. I agree completely with what you have posted here, Jane. But I wonder if it wouldn't be easier to just starve the beast by having more and more Americans vote with their feet and offshore their healthcare, thereby denying the US health care system all those dollars it to this day arrogantly believes it can't ever lose? That would be one way to effect some change - massive American citizen offshoring of their health care needs, even to the point of surgery rehab and nursing home care being offshored. I can see this happening very easily in the future as wage continue to stagnate/decline and costs continue to rise. Something will have to give somewhere, and it's just too easy to offshore health care these days. Really, all you need is a small amount of courage and some savings for the much lower costs elsewhere.....I can even see health care offshoring rising to the point where employers are forced to give time off to employess so they can offshore their health care issues and have a job when they return to the US. Rob

[JaneV2.0]

Well, if Americans skipped the drive through and stopped by the produce aisle instead... The most efficient and effective health care is a healthy and preventative lifestyle. Unfortunately it has very limited profit potential compared to other models.

I'm all in favor of a "healthy lifestyle," (but not to the extent of shaming people who miss the mark) but what is a healthy lifestyle? It's a moving target. Yesterday's prescription for good health--the lipid theory--has been (or will be) proven disastrously wrong. And every individual is different. Restorative sleep; whole, untainted food; solid relationships; regular exercise; stress management--certainly beat entanglement with the for-profit medical establishment. I like to use the people of Roseto, PA as an example of what works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roseto_effect

[jp1]

Well, if Americans skipped the drive through and stopped by the produce aisle instead... The most efficient and effective health care is a healthy and preventative lifestyle. Unfortunately it has very limited profit potential compared to other models.

Indeed there are plenty of things that we can do to help avoid the need for medical care, but not everything is a matter of diet, exercise and all that. My sister in law would've died from breast cancer a decade ago were it not for modern medical care to name but one example.

[LDAHL]

Except that people can grow their own food, build their own homes with their own hands, etc. Treat yourself for cancer, or heart disease, or diabetes? Probably not.

It's hard to imagine us dropping down to that sort of pre-industrial level of civilization, and still expecting heart surgery.

[kib]

The other day I read the statement, "Our society needs to end its love affair with money." I know 'lust of money is the root of all evil' is not exactly a new idea, but somehow stated so boldly it just hit home ... what a difference it could make if individuals, and by proxy governments and corporations, could get past this stage of infatuation with the almighty dollar. Most of us move beyond the case of nonstop sex for sex's sake as our hormones calm down - albeit after many decades for some of us. Might we not move beyond acquisition for acquisition's sake, certainly a more learned behavior than sex, might we not "grow up" as a species? Might today's young people actually lead us there, since we're not really giving them much opportunity to get in bed with capitalism in the first place?

I wholeheartedly agree with the idea of diet as the biggest key to avoiding chronic western disease, but I think a bit of that "utopian" shift away from greed will have to happen first, before healthy eating is implemented as a basic tenet of our public lives. Imagine walking out your door expecting healthy affordable organic food to be available wherever you are, sort of like you anticipate there will be a public restroom. We're just not there yet. Or should I say, we're just not back there yet. 80 years ago, that's pretty much exactly what you expected when you walked out your door.

[LDAHL]

I don't want to be drawn into a black and white "answer the question yes or no" argument. My point is that we're starting with a premise that's so wrong it's evil, not that there should be no personal responsibility or opportunity for negotiation anywhere on the spectrum of human desire and acquisition. Starting with a belief that it's ok to hold human life for ransom is simply wrong.

I take a different view. If something can be produced profitably, people will produce more of it, whether it's a necessity or a luxury. Why fixate on one particular necessity and treat it as being somehow different from the rest that must be produced and rationed by some sort of special authority? Resources are finite, and we put a price on human life for all kinds of reasons. What makes one particular industry qualitatively different?

[kib]

I take a different view. If something can be produced profitably, people will produce more of it, whether it's a necessity or a luxury. Why fixate on one particular necessity and treat it as being somehow different from the rest that must be produced and rationed by some sort of special authority? Resources are finite, and we put a price on human life for all kinds of reasons. What makes one particular industry qualitatively different?

sigh. I have already stated that complex industrial health care is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about starting with the premise that life itself is a negotiable business proposition.

[jp1]

It's hard to imagine us dropping down to that sort of pre-industrial level of civilization, and still expecting heart surgery.

I guess my point is that of all the things that keep us alive we can provide everything for ourselves if we have to, or want to, except for medical care. While there is indeed a difference between living in a modern, contractor built, home and something one has built by themselves (although there are plenty of examples of really nice hand built homes on youtube) the difference between hand built and contractor built home is miniscule compared to the difference of self medicalized cancer patient and modern medical cared for cancer patient. The average person can choose to go pre-industrial in home choice and still live. The same is not the case with a lot of medical care.

[LDAHL]

sigh. I have already stated that complex industrial health care is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about starting with the premise that life itself is a negotiable business proposition.

Of course it is. Always has. Even before the rise of sordid capitalism began to help extending it. We price it all the time for insurance, for legal liability, in product design, in military strategy, in safety regulations. If economics is about making optimal use of finite resources, then applying the tools of economics to health care strikes me as a moral act.

[ApatheticNoMore]

sigh. I have already stated that complex industrial health care is not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about starting with the premise that life itself is a negotiable business proposition.

i think you can say it's unique in that healthcare as a market has failed so uniquely badly in the modern world in being affordable and humane to most people. Now you could say industrialized agriculture has failed as badly and be on really solid ground in terms of long term impacts etc.. but food here and now is broadly affordable (and some people still go hungry). With the ever massively increasing homeless, more and more and more tent cities under every bridge, though there might be an argument there as well. It's possible if wages and jobs had kept up with the cost of all these things (probably have with food) it would be less of a problem. I think so for housing, I'm not so sure about healthcare because:

The very market ITSELF refutes the "healthcare is not unique" argument. People do not have food or shelter insurance, they do have health insurance. There must be something unique about that market.