Thread by @AfirasKip

While I'm pounding away at this:

Socialized medicine is most commonly denounced because the implication is that it will always weigh the cost of care against the value of individual life and make its decisions in a mercenary deterministic manner based upon that cost/benefit.

Thing is, that's an argument that relies upon two assumed points:
1. Socialized medicine's highest priority is providing care at an optimal cost/benefit ratio
2. Socialized medicine is forced to cut costs wherever possible and will do so at the expense of the health of a patient.

The thing is, neither of those needs to be true. Socialized medicine can afford to spend however much is appropriated to it, and the appropriation is determined by the law or finance determining body of government. In the USA, that's Congress.

The US spent $700B in defense spending in 2018. That's just 2018, mind, and a huge percent of defense spending every year goes to massive amounts of hardware that is produced, sent to warehouses, and several years later, decomissioned without ever seeing use.

Famously, the Abrams tank design is a laughable liability and is actively undesirable for troop quartermasters to have to plan around, and more are made every year because defense contractors are also influential lobbyists.

Back on point: Demonstrably, America has overfunded budget areas. There's no reason we must assume healthcare would be necessarily underfunded; funding will be determined based on public need and lobbyist demand (the $700B military spending was $150B in excess of planned budget)

Now, Capitalist healthcare! What do we know about that? Well, for one, it's for profit.

So, by necessity, it's going to behave like a corporation. Corporate behavior is actually very easy to follow: Provide the least service/product for the highest possible price.

Additionally, corporations cut costs wherever possible in order to lower overhead, which increases profit. In extreme cases, a corporation will outright remove a large portion of their own assets in order to recoup the costs expended on that asset (See: Blizzard layoffs)

In today's America, we see rife reports of underfunded hospitals, overpriced basic necessities, and minimized production of staple products (Nearly 50% of saline solution used in American hospitals comes from one plant in Puerto Rico).

Essentially, we can conclude that the needs of a for profit health system means... cutting costs wherever possible and determining whether denying care for an individual will cost more in lost reputation and faith than the treatment costs. Which uh, sounds familiar.

The thing is, for profit healthcare *inherently has death panels*. If your care is expensive and they're able to defer most or all of the costs onto you without inciting public outrage, then that's the smart business move, 100% of the time. We see it everywhere.

Hospitals are *sending insured people letters asking them to start GoFundMe's for their health costs because their insurance declined coverage*. This is a thing that's happening. That's how bad privatized health insurance has gotten.

Meanwhile, in France, a strong and smart investment in education and diversification means you can walk into a pharmacy with a common problem, receive a diagnosis, and be on your way with your prescription in 15 minutes at no out of pocket cost. Anyone can do this.

Furthermore, centralized care costs means that pricing controls on things like... let's say, prescription medicine, are determined not by a board of investors, but by a board of government appointed doctors and experts interested in providing as much treatment as possible.

Which do you think is more friendly to affordable medicine costs? And before you start yelling about innovation, *we already subsidize prescription medication research*, and that industry did fine before the health insurance market came en vogue.

I'm not going to keep hammering the point home with specific examples, but the TLDR is: Privatized medicine weighs your life against the dollar already, 100% of the time, and organization of it is messy, decentralized, and actively hostile to patients.

Socialized medicine does and has worked in dozens of cases that are ranked higher than us in the WHO healthcare quality ratings, and literally every one of those countries spends less per capita on healthcare than we do. (And all of them subsidize research within their borders!)

We're not stupid in this country. We're not incapable of doing great things. We can retool our healthcare system into one that works for citizens, instead of wealthy shareholders. So let's *fucking do it.*