There are plenty of capitalist nations that provide public healthcare on a large spectrum of coverage and quality.
Ahead of Canada, sure (they come worst here in both scenarios) but behind countries like the UK, Germany & the Netherlands that do have universal health care.
"Aljin says treatment at their local hospital in the city of Cebu was slow, and she had messaged everyone she could think of for help."
The Philippines' constitution says access to healthcare is a human right. They have universal healthcare insurance, and public hospitals and medical centers.
The next one is the girl from Colombia. Colombia has a mostly public (with regulated private) healthcare system with universal health insurance.
The next one is from Ukraine. Ukraine has a government run universal healthcare system. Wikipedia tells me "Ukrainian healthcare should be free to citizens according to law," fantastic, but then it goes on, "but in practice patients contribute to the cost of most aspects of healthcare."
In first world countries with social healthcare systems like Canada and Germany and Australia, people with complex illnesses do not get coverage for unlimited treatments either, or general costs of being sick (travel, family carers, etc). There are many cases of fundraisers for, and charities which try to help, sick people in need in these countries.
Capitalism is not the reason not everyone with cancer is being cured and not chasing expensive treatments. Healthcare is something that you can throw unlimited money into. You'll get diminishing returns, but there will always be more machines and scans and tests and drugs and surgical teams and devices you can pay for. It doesn't matter the economic system, at some point more people will get more good from spending money on other things, and those unfortunate and desperate ones who fall through the cracks might have to resort to raising money themselves.
I needed a sleep study. An inpatient sleep study is booked 3 years out here. Good insurance.
Seeing that sleep study doctor in the first place just to get sent a $150 gadget that listens to me sleep? I waited two months. The follow up appointment? 3 months.
Do you know why non-emergency care waits that long? Efficiency. Turns out, hospitals want to not spend extra money on doctors they don't need whether they get paid by the government or this weird industry called "insurance" we have developed.
Go head, tell me about how you can get any treatment or any scan in a week without fail in our wonderful overpriced system.
This quality of service costs me and my wife ~$23,000/year.
Sure, we can walk into urgent care and get seen. I've also never had a problem walking into a walk-in clinic in Canada, either. The clinic's lobby and the doctor's car in the parking lot isn't as nice over there, though.
In capitalism it is easy and transparent: price, with the side effect of aligning society interests with those of the selfish individual.
Of course the strange and heavily regulated US health-care system is obviously far far away from a free market.
In socialism it's much more random: black markets, lists, lotteries, friends and network of connections. The side effect is that the most productive individuals are discouraged and punished, with the whole society lagging in effect.
Case in point: the EU that started lagging the USA so much in growth that ended up having to beg for basic defense when a blood-thirsty neighbor came hungry for land.
> In socialism it's much more random: black markets, lists, lotteries, friends and network of connections. The side effect is that the most productive individuals are discouraged and punished, with the whole society lagging in effect.
Evidence: the vast majority of European countries who have socialized medicine and seem to be doing fine.
You do realize that the "vast majority" of European countries doesn't mean highly developed Western Europe, right?
Here in Central and Eastern Europe (where I live) socialized medicine is not "fine". You should visit some hospitals in Bulgaria or Romanian to get a more complete picture. We pay the state outrageous insurance costs every month then go and pay out-of-pocket in private hospitals when we actually need them.
>Evidence: the vast majority of European countries who have socialized medicine and seem to be doing fine.
That evidence of socialism working well, only works as long as there are enough resources to cover the needs of most people, basically some of the wealthier European countries.
But when those resources become scarce due to poor economic conditions and/or mismanagement, then you'll see the endless queues, black margets and nepotism running the system.
Evidence: former European communist countries who experienced both systems and where in some, nepotism to bypass lists still work to this day.
the market / capitalism won’t correct itself, much people want to call it God/ perfect
Regulation, anti-trust laws try to correct somethings but many politicians are against those things because they limit the profit that can be made, profit first, that’s the corruption
And no, no lists, no lotteries or any of that other lies the conservative US media is spewing out to keep the masses pacified.
I strongly believe, that if US citizens were to experience German healthcare for a year and having to go back to the US system, that there would be riots. Because I don’t think anyone with first hand experience of both systems would ever want to return to the US system.
Even once I do hit the income threshold to switch back to private (switching back to fulltime work), I'm pretty sure I won't.
As far as doctor choice goes, I feel like I have more on the public insurance here (like 90% of the population) than I did with UHC in the early 2000's back in the US. I certainly have fewer financial surprises.
Yes, this system has issues. But I'd still take it any day over the US.
But you have lists, queues, lotteries, whatever you call it. That's not a lie. The fact you think lists are a vast right wing conspiracy demonstrates your government is not really forthcoming about your healthcare system. There are lists everywhere. There are ambulance wait times, hospital emergency wait times, various levels of urgent and elective treatment wait times. There are procedures and medicines and tests that are simply not covered at all.
Now, obviously USA has queues and lists too. And I could be wrong but I'm sure I've heard that US private insurance companies are notorious for not covering certain treatments and drugs as well. I don't know what it is exactly these right wing people are saying about healthcare, I thought they did not like the American "Obamacare" though.
There definitely are lists. You don't just get the surgery or therapy you need the next day. You get the next free slot in the list of people queuing at the hospital/practice that still has free slots.
For example the first appointment you can get at my state funded therapist if you call today, will be in june. How is that "not a list"?
Or like, if you call most public GPs in my neighbourhood, they'll all tell you they're full and don't have slots to take on any new patients and you should "try somewhere else". How is that "not a list"?
But don't worry your free market friends are killing it right now, for tax reductions
https://www.wired.com/story/how-trump-killed-cancer-research...
The benefits were already delivered by that strong and prosperous economy in form of products and services.
Taxation is of course necessary to fund government spending but we need to keep in mind its drawbacks: from discouraging productive activity and slowing economic growth to giving politicians funds to buy votes with populist social policies.
And it makes sense, considering human nature and motivation: how much would you work considering the taxation? Me:
0-20%: I work as hard, want to excel and advance; I will take risks and invest in entrepreneurial endeavors
20-40%: I will do my duty, 9-5 then hit the door to spend time with the family; actively seek low-responsibility low risk high stability and lots of benefits government jobs
>40%: f that s, I will take my welfare payments and do various cash jobs without declaring that income; stay in my parents basement playing Xbox, smoking weed and jerking off
Like, yes, we are discussing an "imperfection" here! You are the one that asserting the greater perfection, not the lesser.
https://www.forbes.com/sites/danalexander/article/the-defini...
Most of his added wealth comes from "crypto" and name licensing.
Both actual capitalism, i.e. the bad thing, and this which can plausible be argued to be well-functioning market economies, are is often stabilized by adding elements of communism to the system-- publicly funded education, healthcare etc. This is one of the reasons why I as a vaguely socialism-influenced whatever I can reasonably be said to be see communism, i.e. a system characterized by the distribution principle "to each according to his need" as less revolutionary than the socialism distribution principle "to each according to his contribution". Communist distribution principles can coexist with ill-functioning market systems such as things which have degenerated into actual capitalism, whereas the socialist distribution principle can't.
The market is just reacting to the regulatory environment and all the political patches and shortcuts of same done to appease voters over the last 100 years. Fix that and the market will sort itself out.
“Bad news, detective. We got a situation.”
“What? Is the mayor trying to ban trans fats again?”
“Worse. Somebody just stole four hundred and forty-seven million dollars’ worth of bitcoins.”
The heroin needle practically fell out of my arm.
I don't think your statement is true absolutely, I think it's very possible to have pure market economies that are quite well-functioning, i.e. not monopolies etc., where many people are very rich but with some people being really poor, even to the point of not being able to afford healthcare or healthcare insurance, so I don't think it's guaranteed to be true, though I think it's mostly true.
You won't have to worry about distributing advanced cancer medications when they don't exist in the Communist version, because they weren't discovered. You can't fulfil a need with a drug you never risked a giant amount of funding and effort to discover.
Let’s also imagine the other side of the equation. Can you not imagine any penalty or cost other than bankruptcy? Let’s say you are forced to allocate $1 million per year to research. is the only cost function you can imagine based on the risk of default?
So I don't understand how your comment really relates to mine. My comment is basically me quibbling about terminology with the terms capitalism and market economy.
This allows decentralised decision making for large grained resource allocation - for example should we build a factory for shoes, or for toothbrushes? - and is a good thing, as central planning has been demonstrated to not work if applied to the whole economy. (the converse, no central planning to any of the economy, has also been demonstrated to not work!)
However that accumulation can be (and nowadays usually is) orchestrated by a corporate entity, which in an ideal world would be almost entirely beneficially owned by retirees on an equitable basis.
What has gone wrong, is that the benefits of productivity enhancements (since 1970?) have flowed to capital more so than to workers - which not least prevents them from forming capital themselves (savings/pensions), hence rising wealth inequality.
But this kind of thing, i.e. capital accumulation by some to the exclusion of others, is, I think, objectively problematic in that it's not really compatible with free markets since capital ownership will be barrier to entry once capital has in fact been accumulated by some to the exclusion of others.
I agree that it is decentralized though, but sort of like how feudalism is decentralized.