"It is totally fair for people to identify private insurers as the key bad actor in our current system," writes Matt Bruenig of the People's Policy Project. "The quicker we nationalize health insurance, the better."
It’s useful to precise about exactly why it’s bad. The idea that capitalism breeds efficiency is baked into the American psyche at this point. But in this case it’s literally the opposite of the truth.
This isn’t like a highly trained transplant surgeon demanding a salary of 800k instead of 600k. No health care is delivered by an insurance company.
Every dollar earned in profit by a health insurance company is a dollar that was spent on health care for which no health care was delivered. They are literally just inefficiency in the system.
Being bad is one thing, but a lot of people say “Well of course people think it’s bad. It’s not handing out money to people willy-nilly, so people hate it”. Some people would rather have bad things that are efficient with money (because if you have a lot of money, you can solve the problem).
Being financially inefficient may get some people to look into it and change their tune.
Going from…
I spend more money and get what I want, poor people just need to work harder and be smarter with their money.
To…
Why am I paying more money for bureaucracy when I could be paying less money for less bureaucracy? I don’t care if more people get help…I just want to be paying less.
Of course, some people would rather pay more for more red tape because they really hate the idea of poorer people having access to the things they have. But some people are not that bad.
For-profit insurance has been painfully and obviously “very bad” since before I existed. No “actually” needed. This is common knowledge.
Now what are we going to do about it?
It’s useful to precise about exactly why it’s bad. The idea that capitalism breeds efficiency is baked into the American psyche at this point. But in this case it’s literally the opposite of the truth.
This isn’t like a highly trained transplant surgeon demanding a salary of 800k instead of 600k. No health care is delivered by an insurance company.
Every dollar earned in profit by a health insurance company is a dollar that was spent on health care for which no health care was delivered. They are literally just inefficiency in the system.
Keep the pressure up I guess? Probably a combination of on lawmakers and insurance companies, why not big pharma while we’re at it?
Being bad is one thing, but a lot of people say “Well of course people think it’s bad. It’s not handing out money to people willy-nilly, so people hate it”. Some people would rather have bad things that are efficient with money (because if you have a lot of money, you can solve the problem).
Being financially inefficient may get some people to look into it and change their tune.
Going from…
To…
Of course, some people would rather pay more for more red tape because they really hate the idea of poorer people having access to the things they have. But some people are not that bad.