| ▲ | tptacek a day ago | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
That's not how this system came into being. It's a path-dependent quirk of the tax codes of the 1940s. We got into this predicament because of WW2-era wage controls (a dollar spent on health care by your employer was literally worth more than a dollar in wages). This is one major reason why most of the world's universal systems make private insurance work, and it doesn't blow up the way ours does. But I don't think employers are any happier about it than you are! | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ▲ | toomuchtodo a day ago | parent [-] | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
You are of course correct on how we got here, I argue we are still here for many reasons, one of which is what I stated. I mean, there is no will to fix healthcare, but lots of will to spend $100B+ to go to war with Iran, right? I simply do not see anyone who cares enough to fix this exceptional mess, even taking into account the coordination problem of doing so. We could treat this as an emergency requiring a fix, but we don't. Why? We can certainly find this will for, "low ROI nation state actions". Can we afford it? Doesn't stop trillions of dollars for DoD spending for middle east wars or tax cuts for the wealthy, so that isn't an argument, that's subjective cover for not fixing it, we do lots of things we cannot afford (current sovereign debt outstanding is ~$40T, as of this comment). Can't be done? Almost every other OECD country has solved this in some way. Therefore, as a scholar of systems, the root cause I am left with via Occam's razor is "This is an active choice to not fix this suboptimal system, where the fix would be both more economically efficient and humane, For Reasons while the electorate is lied to or paid lip service." Employers, who supposedly are unhappy with their healthcare costs, could form a coalition and lobby for legislation and fund PACs to fund candidates who would fix this state by state with universal healthcare systems (Canda's universal healthcare system started in a single province as an experiment, for example). Why don't they? Are the costs not high enough yet? They can't argue they don't have enough power, they already, in many ways, bend the US government to their will. They have the power, they actively choose to not use it to fix this system failure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_purpose_of_a_system_is_wha... | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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