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| ▲ | foco_tubi 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | The more interesting hypothetical is: would a NICU stay still cost $1M if the factors inflating that cost (namely, insurance subsidizing hospital revenue) were no longer in place? | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | I can assure you it wouldn't be $0, or anywhere near close to that. My kiddos were born the day before the third trimester and spent two months in the hospital. Staff it at minimum wage, cap the costs at just the stuff used, and you're still talking a lot of money. | | |
| ▲ | foco_tubi 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | No one is making the claim that the cost of service would be $0. Quite obviously. What you can't be sure of is the real cost in terms of resources, and how that would be accounted and paid for. The price of your childrens' stay, to you personally, could be far less than what you originally paid personally if healthcare was not reliant on private subsidy. You would also likely be subsidizing the costs of other children staying in the hospital through public subsidy using your tax dollars. I reckon that last point is where a lot of people in the US get hung up. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | > No one is making the claim that the cost of service would be $0. Quite obviously. I am making the claim that the cost will be prohibitive to handle via charity, especially as a national healthcare strategy, as proposed upthread. | | |
| ▲ | foco_tubi 21 hours ago | parent [-] | | Do you not agree that charity/philanthropy is already an essential part of the US healthcare strategy? | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 19 hours ago | parent [-] | | US healthcare costs are $16k/person/year. I do not think charity makes up a particularly signficant portion of that cost, no. | | |
| ▲ | foco_tubi 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | That's not the question I asked, but you're still heading down the road to being incorrect. The fact is that charitable giving, need-based aid, philanthropic donations, government assistance, and other forms of subsidy fund *roughly half of the sum total American healthcare costs.* That's trillions of dollars. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 18 hours ago | parent [-] | | > government assistance That's not charity! | | |
| ▲ | foco_tubi 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | Maybe not according to your personal definition. Government welfare is a form of institutionalized or compulsory collective charity, although it is not “charity” in the private voluntary sense. | | |
| ▲ | ceejayoz 17 hours ago | parent [-] | | > Maybe not according to your personal definition. Not according to any common definition. I, too, can win every argument if I get to make up the definitions. > compulsory collective charity Compulsory makes it not charity. That's a tax. | | |
| ▲ | foco_tubi 16 hours ago | parent [-] | | Regardless of whether or not you agree with any specific definition, the state of US healthcare is such that half of all spending needs to be subsidized in one form or another. To remove even the paltry billions that may fit under a strict category of “voluntary charitable giving” would be a disaster. |
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