This thread is by no means comprehensive with regards to the #NHIBill but here goes.
Nationalised healthcare, otherwise known as universal healthcare, is generally bound by something called the ‘Iron Triangle’. It states that with regards to healthcare systems you can have any 2 of the following:
- Access
- Quality
- Cost effectiveness
Never all 3.
The reason for this is simple economics which acknowledges that hospitals and doctors are finite resources, and the field of healthcare an ever expanding list of treatement options and procedures. With enough money it is possible to ‘break’ the Iron Triangle but only temporarily.
Suffice to say that South Africa neither has the funding nor the resources to break the triangle. In fact the #NHI arguably provides only 1 of the 3 imperatives - access. It will not be able to provide uniform quality and it will be highly cost ineffective for actual taxpayers.
Regarding the specifics announced today the biggest problems thus far seem to be changes to:
- Medical Aid administration
- Brokers
- Co-payments
And of course the funding “model” (that’s a generous description) is both unrealistic and contemptuous.
The Government essentially wants to take over the role of all medical aids. They intend to treat every citizen as a member of a centralized medical aid. Think Home Affairs but for Health, then repeat that statement and you’ll understand the problem.
At the same time as stating that the NHI will provide healthcare for everyone the Government also envisions continued existence of medical aids, but if the NHI will be as wonderful as claimed then nobody would need further cover. It’s either an admission or a slip of the mask.
In addition Government seems to have a problem with the 25% liquidity held by medical schemes, however this is regulated by legislation and is not the choice of anyone actually running a medical aid. It’s like being angry with the way you dressed yourself today.
The removal of brokers saves less than R100 per month on each policy but it also removes an individual who advises people on the best medical plan for their purposes and life stage. Taking away this information provider isn’t a train smash but does seem short sighted.
Lastly the proposed abolishing of co-payments isn’t the great coup some seem to think. Medical aids charge co-payments because some procedures are too costly to be subsidized by the scheme. Thus part of a procedure is paid for instead of none of it.
Doctors too sometimes charge co-payments usually to supplement the fee paid to them by the medical aid which undervalues their skill or time. Removing these payments will only result in a decreased supply of doctors to perform certain procedures.
Over and above this the entire system is being set up to be hostile to medical professionals and their freedom. The entire world needs doctors, and we still train some of the best in the world. Government sticking their proverbial finger in doctors’ eyes is highly ill advised.
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Part of the reason that younger people globally are so entitled is because they’ve been told that people who have nice things are “privileged” and that this has been given to them not earned.
Nothing could be further from the truth.
If you were a kid who grew up before the 90s then you understood privilege as something to aspire to.
‘That guy drives a really nice car, what a privilege’
‘This lady has such a beautiful home, she’s really privileged’
Privilege was known to be something you earned.
Equally it was understood that to achieve a position of privilege you had to work pretty hard to get there.
Those who didn’t earn their position of privilege were largely mocked e.g. trust fund kids who didn’t work hard but spent money like water.
I’ve had plenty of good faith engagement with my assertion that the outrage and amplification of Kiddie Amin merely plays into his hands and serves as a very effective marketing campaign for his interests.
I think it’s valuable to discuss what the reaction should look like. 🧵
Let’s deal with the most common objection;
“You can’t ignore this kind of behaviour cf. National Socialist Germany”
Yeah I agree. It’s not about ignoring but rather about moderating response and controlling narrative.
As things stand that idiot says one thing and the very people he’s painting as the enemy react exactly as an enemy would. Because he’s targeting a minority this sets up precisely the dynamic he’s attempting to create.
The result of this is quite the opposite of the ideal.
Human attention span together with the nature of time means that the contemporary relevance of any event has a finite limitation.
There are many recent examples of this.
2 years later video evidence shows the Jan 6 riots at the Capitol were not what we were told they were. 🧵
It doesn’t matter though because enough people were fooled on the day, and in the weeks which followed. The goal of making people believe that this was a seminal event has been achieved and regardless of any evidence to the contrary now, a significant portion of the US and the
global population will always believe the lie. Facts be damned.
The pandemic also presents us with numerous examples of this phenomenon. When a virus started infecting people across the world it was obvious that it’s origin was very likely a laboratory.
There is a very weird view amongst some pandemic skeptics (the group of people right about almost everything covid related) that believing a virus escaped a lab following gain of function testing makes you a fool. There are so many inconsistencies in this thinking. 🧵
Firstly if you don’t believe the overwhelming evidence of a lab leak which those in power across politics, science, and the media have tried to hide for 3 years then you assumptively believe those same people including Fauci who said this was a natural event.
This is an incredibly odd and easily refutable position to hold, however if you’re stuck on natural evolution theory then it makes no difference if others are saying that gain of function is dangerous. This is objectively true - we should not be dangerously enhancing viruses.
Francis Harris, @fharris2011, chose to pick a fight this evening because I noted that those in power seem to want anything but peace as an outcome to the war in Ukraine.
Why would a former deputy editor at The @Telegraph behave like this?
So I went digging. 🧵
Mr Harris is now the “Managing Editor” at CEPA.
What is CEPA you ask?
Well it’s the Centre for European Policy Analysis of course.
Sounds innocuous enough, right?
Yeah I thought so too, and then I went to have a look at their funders.
Oh will you look at that;
Lockheed Martin
and the US State Department amongst others.
Yeah it boggles the mind why a person who works for an organisation like this would be against peace.