The healthcare industry is receiving perpetual bailouts through drug import restrictions, tax deductions, subsidies and favorable legislation.

The healthcare industry as it is is dominated by parasitic middlemen sucking the money from both patient and provider.

> the US has no leverage to demand 10% of healthcare companies' stocks

The US government doesn't need leverage. It just needs an act of Congress. Corporations are convenient fictions that exist at the pleasure of our legal system, which can be changed.

the US has no leverage to demand 10% of healthcare companies' stocks.

US federal government is the biggest player in healthcare, by far. 32% of all healthcare spending is Federal government dollars. They have plenty of leverage. Bad if they use it, but they have it.

$900+ billion in Medicare yearly $600+ billion in Medicaid yearly

The “US” you are referring to no longer exists. It has been replaced by a combo of North Korea and Venezuela :)

> Most people in the US seem to not realize that a social healthcare system is better for all of them due to all of them sharing the bill.

As a high-income earner I used to be in favor of privatizing healthcare here in Italy/Europe.

I've always seen the public healthcare system wasteful and inefficient. Our healthcare system really is in a terrible spot.

Then few years ago, a very close friend of mine, had to give birth to her child. She had chosen one of the most expensive hospitals in the region, where there would be a huge staff all for her, not that crappy public service she would get.

Then tragedy struck: in all the luxury and care she was receiving, her newborn had huge problems staying alive, and died of respiratory issues few minutes after birth.

A very preventable death the autopsy stated moreover if she was in an appropriate public hospital.

Why? Because larger public hospitals have all a newborn reanimation unit with trained staff exactly for these kind of emergencies. Private ones? They are virtually non existent, doesn't matter the country or budget, no private hospital can afford such an expensive unit that requires extremely specific training and equipment but gets to act rarely if ever. So they don't exist in those contextes.

Since then I realized how naive I was: private healthcare just cannot justify investing in a huge amount of treatments that are a financial disaster for the private clinic/hospital. They just can't.

Thus, at the end of the day, you don't really want private healthcare that has to choose what to provide on a $ basis, you just don't. You want a as comprehensive and available public service that needs the right amount of money and incentives to work properly.

I don't know how can it be achieved, but you really don't want to be that father/mother, sister, friend or patient that cannot access an important procedure because it makes no financial sense to offer it.

> I still wonder when CEOs will realize that lack of education and lack of healthcare will eventually land at their doorsteps

Have you considered that they don't care? They can make a better profit now, so why worry about what is happening 5 to 10 years down the line?

I frequently say the same thing about the word Capitalism. (Communism too). They're second only to 'god' in terms of historical baggage.

If you say 'I like Capitalism', a significant minority will hear 'I love US imperialism and hate nature', despite that almost certainly not being what you meant. Similarly, if you say 'I like Communism', many hear 'I love dictators, gulags, 5 year plans and famine'.

A word of advice: if you actually want to have valuable political conversations with people, don't start by identifying yourself with ideology that's arguably responsible for various atrocities and millions of deaths.

Socialism has nothing to do with government. It's an economic system not a governmental one.

It's a pendulum effect, with nationalization on one end, and privatization on the other. If capitalism and money itself is the best organizing principle that works around the world, it does limit the opportunities for change and growth. Socialism doesn't have a counter to the market principle, so they can only incorporate it. The US has a branding problem; freedom ain't free, but nobody even votes, so we earned what we got.

> "capitalism with American characteristics"

China is trying to beat US at its own game. US (or at least its current political leader) is trying to beat Russia at its own game. Russia is trying to remain relevant. Russia is the muscle, China is the finance.

China needs Russia just like Google (Chrome) needs Firefox. Without Russia around, China would get all of the attention instead. Without Firefox existing, Google would have no counter to antitrust allegations in the web browser space.

Anything you can do, I can do better. I can do anything better than you.

No, not like that!

It's like that Spider-Man meme where everyone is Spider-Man pointing their fingers at each other. All the power structures are mirroring each other. It's all kayfabe, all the time. Everything is wrestling.

https://www.nytimes.com/2016/05/27/magazine/is-everything-wr... | https://archive.is/muwUp