A lot of people gonna discover that capitalism does in fact have a finite price on a human life.
It's easy to have lower wait times when you don't have to serve everyone.
Conservative politicians in both of the countries you mentioned have been systematically, over the course of decades, been defunding their own government-run healthcare programs, specifically in the hopes that people like you will conclude that because of this the system is "broken" and that we must as a result switch to the private, profitable healthcare that said politicians are being paid to support.
If you want to talk about properly funded public healthcare, there are plenty of good examples in the EU to look at.
I think it is amazing that in a country as "exceptional" as the US, the answer to "Why can't we provide affordable and accessible healthcare to everyone?" is "We are going deport liberal scum like you".
That's still a capitalism problem.
Neoliberal scum politicians (regardless of party) will underfund, sabotage and dismantle piece by piece, previously working fine government-run healthcare (and other infrastructure) to the benefit of private health interests.
Besides "people die waiting for care in Canada" is only a valid argument if more people don't die NOT waiting for care because they can afford it in the US.
Comparing the wait times of a system catering to everybody vs a system that excludes from even considering care a huge chunk of the population is cheating - even if we ignore the underfunding and neoliberal reforms issue.
That all happens in the US too—and worse—but also we pay more and get worse health care.
At this point, it should be pretty clear that privatization of healthcare just doesn't work that well in general.
[1] https://www.law.cornell.edu/regulations/california/title-22/...
cratermoon•14h ago
I'm sure that's a factor, but there's more to it: https://www.texasobserver.org/critical-condition/
devilbunny•13h ago
One of the big ways that cost containment has been done is forcing more efficiency. That should be a good thing, right? Except that small rural hospitals will never, ever be as efficient as large urban ones. And the "disproportionate share" (overly large amounts of Medicare/Medicaid patients) payments aren't enough to keep those places open. So while it's definitely saved money, that's not much help when you live an hour or more away from any healthcare facility.
jmye•2h ago
The real answer is, and always will be, shifting the model entirely away from that to capitated models and better care model incentives (instead of incentives based around just ordering more shit for patients). It’s also an easy way to account for better geographic distribution.
That said, you’re also not solving rural healthcare without dramatically increasing the number of providers, so the revenue models are only going to get you so far regardless.
guywithahat•13h ago
The articles argument is that private insurers need to cover medicare/medicaid costs, which seems silly. It also seems to ignore the obvious question in my mind, which is maybe rural hospitals just have to run leaner to meet market demands. It makes me wonder if there's a reason rural hospitals pull large investments, such as regulation demanding unattainably high levels of care, forcing them to be unprofitable.
veggieroll•12h ago
IMO this is the missing gap in a lot of the US economy. Cars, housing, medical care. Kei trucks, SRO apartments, and so many more similar solutions are functionally illegal.
pragmatic•4h ago
MAGA is a death cult. Everything they do accelerates the demise of their way of life and communities.
jmye•2h ago
Blaming United or whatever is memeworthy, but it’s also the easy and only partially correct answer.