The U.S. is the only developed country with a government frankly out to kill its constituents. Germany has not just universal health care, but mandatory paid sick leave of up to six weeks, and sometimes more. French workers have 30 mandatory paid vacation days (the EU average is 20-plus) and are reimbursed 70% of the fee for a doctor visit, which is €25 (about $25 at the moment).
Home visits in France are more expensive but reimbursed at the same rate. Home visits!
The U.S., of course, has no mandates for paid sick leave, paid vacation, or paid holidays, although many employers offer one or all of these, and some employers were forced to provide mandatory paid Covid-related sick days beyond what they offered ordinarily.
Other developed countries also have robust social welfare systems supplementing their superior healthcare, as compared to our patchwork, complicated, chintzy and unequally applied version, which is among the reasons we lag them in almost every index of medical care.
These countries also somehow manage to avoid hospital horror stories on the scale of ours. Not to say malpractice is invisible abroad, but you won’t find, e.g., private equity firms buying hospitals, defrauding and then firing their employees and closing not one but two hospitals serving patients who have no local alternatives.
Amazon Care. Google doesn’t have rocket ships or piratical health care ambitions (?). Amazon for the win.
Really: I wish we were commies. “Relentlessly driven to boost profits, US hospitals have introduced a management system called “lean production” that seeks to cut out any inefficiencies. The result has been disastrous: overstressed workers, unattended patients, and a hit to worker solidarity.“
“Medical care in America entails only an illusion of choice. Bureaucrats dictate the options in advance, guided not by the goal of the best possible patient care but by the aim of maximizing revenue.“ The Nation remarks on an essential reform should Medicare for All ever become a reality. Man, I wish we were commies.
In which McKinsey consultants simultaneously worked for pharmaceutical firms and their regulators, incinerating a supposed firewall twixt the two, and sold the pharmaceutical firms their access to regulators. “In an email in 2014 to Purdue’s chief executive, a McKinsey consultant highlighted the firm’s work for the F.D.A. and stressed “who we know and what we know.“ (Purdue is the Sackler family, with all that that entails.)
“In 2010, 16.9 million Americans were enrolled in the Medicare Advantage, Medicare supplement and Medicaid plans operated by the big six (insurance companies). In 2021, that number had increased by 46 million–373%–to 63 million.“ Insurance industry whistleblower Wendell Potter breaks down the galloping privatization of Medicare and Medicaid.
The Communications Workers of America note that a giant federal contractor providing people with information about Medicare and Obamacare saddles its own employees with substandard plans (PDF).
This piece is about a year old, but still relevant: “Calls are growing for President Joe Biden’s Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary, Xavier Becerra, to use his administrative power to control drug pricing in a way that Becerra himself supported both as a member of Congress and as California Attorney General.“ Becera can regulate prices on pharmaceuticals developed with federal funds, bypassing Congress, but now that he can, he won’t.
“Most Americans receive their health insurance through their employer, and it seems that gives them enough coverage to meet most of their needs. But your survey shows that 25% of adults in employer-sponsored plans fall into the underinsured category. Why is that?“ BECAUSE WE’RE NOT FUCKIN COMMIES, THAT’S WHY.
(Contributors to this post include The Glands’ Double Coda; The Feelies’ The Good Earth; and The Soft Boys’ Underwater Moonlight. Music suggestions welcome.)
Can you have 'sort of like', 'sort of unsure' and 'Spot on' buttons?