Amdist the coronavirus pandemic, people have been assigning blame everywhere, but the place most baffling is tht left's blame of private healthcare. For example, there has been a great shortage of coronavirus tests in the US. The government refused to allow the private sector to make tests, and then, there were very few of them. This argument is mostly used, from what I have seen, from people pointing to the US as example because "It has private healthcare, but it's doing bad." Even though there was very little that was "private" about coronavirus related health services in the US. There are a ton of restrictions and regulations, especially with everything related to the coronavirus. My theory is that some people in other countries aren't aware of this, or think that the US is a completely free market healthcare system, which is simply not true. The government took responsibility for just about everything coronavirus related, on the grounds that private healthcare could not the trusted with it. Then, when it doesn't yield results, private healthcare takes the blame. This is an issue I believe is very wrong with economic leftism that makes it difficult to keep in check. If it creates a problem, it can blame the free market as the cause, and offer more of itself as the solution, making the issue worse and calling for more of itself in a loop as it expands. Unless I am missing something, what did private healthcare really "fail" at? It has to be something they were allowed to do under the law, that government did not restrict or regulate to really be a failure on private healthcare's part.
I don't really see it as having failed. Afaik, Cvirus deaths still havn't eclipsed malpractice deaths (and if they have, prolly not by much), and those have long been a nearly universally accepted innevitability of our healthcare system. Why its suddenly unnacceptible now instead of long ago that mistakes might happen, I can only guess. Given the reports of improper use of ventilators and debates over which meds are effective, the HC system is still practicing how to effectively respond to this new challenge. That combined with the tendency for those who die with Cvirus to have other potentially life threatenning conditions that complicate it, it seems likely to me that our healthcare system is doing as well as any healthcare system could've ever been expected to. Perhaps with the single caveat of its foundational SOP being pharma centered instead of nutrition centered for at least the last century, leading to general degredation of our collective health IMO. But thats primarily a result of the influence that we've collectively allowed the pharmaceutical corporations to hold over the HC regs, not specifically the fault of the entire HC industry itself. I think we're doing well with the Cvirus. Its just that folks have an unreasonably low tolerance for **** happening all of a sudden. Prolly because the political division in our nation breeds a constant need for blamestorming...
Private healthcare isn't very good at thinking ahead for disasters. When you run a private company, its not practical to keep an excessive amount of space, storage, and staff in case of a pandemic that happens every 100 years. It is too expensive to operate that way. Private healthcare will only have the resources needed for a normal number of illnesses. This is one reason why we have government regulations. We can stockpile equipment or mandate that private healthcare have a certain amount of stockpile at hand. So this is also a failure of government regulation and policy to properly prepare for a pandemic. We saw this problem even with countries with universal healthcare. The way our system has failed is that we have less beds and doctors per capita than other developed countries. This is because high costs lead to less people going to the doctor. But when a pandemic hits, this can be a problem. Our healthcare system is also 2 - 3 times as expensive as in other developed countries so this is going to hit our country a lot harder financially. Everything healthcare related is several times as expensive here as it is everywhere else. We are also going to have a problem with people putting off getting treatment due to financial worries and this will only increase the death rate and the development of advanced cases. Additionally, since healthcare is tied to employment, and tens of people are losing their jobs, they are losing even their over-priced employer insurance when they need it most but medically or financially. There is the option of Cobra, but they have to pay the full cost of healthcare which is 2 - 3 times as much as they paid as an employee and much more expensive than the healthcare on the private exchange. This is at a time when they just lost their jobs and forced onto unemployment benefits where they get only a part of their original income. Given the large number of uninsured in the US, the number who have newly lost their insurance, and the high out of pocket costs for people with insurance, this virus is going to hit people really hard financially. A full course of treatment can cost from $5,000 to $30,000 depending on how well you are covered and the severity of the illness. So people will need a government bailout. Insurance companies will also need a bailout. The idea behind them is that everyone pays a little bit and covers the cost of the very small number that gets sick. They fine-tune their premiums to cover how many they think will get sick. But with a pandemic, a lot more will get sick than they are expecting so the insurance company will have to pay hospitals more than they are getting in premiums. These companies earn large profits and have large reserves of capital, but still face the possibility of going out of business. These problems are effectively solved if the population is on public insurance. The government doesn't need to be bailed out or need to bail out insurance or sick people. It already covers healthcare costs and will continue to do so as normal. It can also more directly negotiate with hospitals to bargain for lower prices during the pandemic. Additionally we can more easily mobilize the national healthcare rather than dealing with thousands of insurance companies and healthcare corporations.
