If anything good results from Covid-19...

[jayem]

I hope it shifts the political focus to healthcare. Which people should realize is as vital a national security issue as military defense. (And orders of magnitude more important than illegal immigration.) And we must know that healthcare goes hand-in-hand with health insurance. I'm not at all advocating for 100% taxpayer funded, womb-to-tomb, no-cost sharing, government provided coverage for every conceivable medical need. But there are sensible ways to make health insurance more cost-effective, more equitable, more user-friendly, more versatile, and far better suited for an advanced 21st century society.

If we can spend $2 trillion to bail out businesses, and send relief checks to most of our population (with possibly more to come,) we should be able to provide everyone with more rational and efficient health coverage.

 

[iluvatar5150]

I hope it shifts the political focus to healthcare. Which people should realize is as vital a national security issue as military defense. (And orders of magnitude more important than illegal immigration.) And we must know that healthcare goes hand-in-hand with health insurance. I'm not at all advocating for 100% taxpayer funded, womb-to-tomb, no-cost sharing, government provided coverage for every conceivable medical need. But there are sensible ways to make health insurance more cost-effective, more equitable, more user-friendly, more versatile, and far better suited for an advanced 21st century society.

If we can spend $2 trillion to bail out businesses, and send relief checks to most of our population (with possibly more to come,) we should be able to provide everyone with more rational and efficient health coverage.

I'd like to see a cultural shift wherein healthcare and healthcare work gets the same sort of machismo and cache as does being a warrior.

 

[essentialsaltes]

I realize this is daydreaming level optimism, but I'd like to see more credence given to experts. This crisis is happening faster than climate change, so maybe it will be easier to see (and, sadly, hurt more) that the experts were right all along and the deniers were simply clinging to false comfort.

 

[loveofourlord]

some of the biggest problems in the US aside from the healthcare system and who pays, is that every hospital is like a island to itself, two hospitals one county over can't tell that one has 30 extra ventilators, and the other needs 20.

 

[MorkandMindy]

Single payer does cost half as much as our existing profiteering patchwork system costs, due to simplification, cost restraint and co-ordination. At a nearby hospital there are more administrative workers allocating costs around all the various payers than there are beds.

Private medical care is profit-motivated and keeping reserves for disasters is loss-making and therefore not a priority.

 

[MorkandMindy]

For-profit medical care also has a different set of priorities. A friend's wife had two strokes and on admission to hospital after an injection to prevent another stroke a CAT scan and an MRI scan showed large swaths of her brain were destroyed and she would at best be in a persistent vegetative state.

An honest doctor would have said that he is sorry nothing can be done because most of her brain had been destroyed and she will never regain awareness of who she is or who anyone else is and nature should be left to take it's course.

But it was a profit-making operation so the doctor said she needed immediate life-saving treatment, an operation to remove the tumor that would kill her. 109,000 dollars later the tumor was out and she remained in a vegetative state an extra five months which was a challenge.

But the hospital got more money, 109,000 dollars is good pay for an hour or two of work.

 

[MorkandMindy]

So it's half the price, more responsive and more human rather than money oriented.

Offer single payer medical cover to everyone and tax the private insurance because it doesn't provide disaster and other care.

Offer that package and not all, of the zillion other things Bernie wants to include in his platform and we'll all be winners

 

[Skewpoint]

I realize this is daydreaming level optimism, but I'd like to see more credence given to experts. This crisis is happening faster than climate change, so maybe it will be easier to see (and, sadly, hurt more) that the experts were right all along and the deniers were simply clinging to false comfort.

Oh, bless your heart dear! That kind of optimism is far past daydreaming. You're in a year long coma at that point.

 

[essentialsaltes]

I realize this is daydreaming level optimism, but I'd like to see more credence given to experts. This crisis is happening faster than climate change, so maybe it will be easier to see (and, sadly, hurt more) that the experts were right all along and the deniers were simply clinging to false comfort.

There may be a slight effect, but for a grim reason.

One of the strongest and most robust predictors of social distancing behavior is found in attitudes toward another major challenge facing the United States: climate change. Places where residents are less likely to agree that global warming is happening, that humans are the cause, and that we have an obligation to do something about it are the places where residents haven’t changed their behavior in response to coronavirus.

 

[loveofourlord]

There may be a slight effect, but for a grim reason.

One of the strongest and most robust predictors of social distancing behavior is found in attitudes toward another major challenge facing the United States: climate change. Places where residents are less likely to agree that global warming is happening, that humans are the cause, and that we have an obligation to do something about it are the places where residents haven’t changed their behavior in response to coronavirus.

Well in a ironic way....they get punished for not accepting climate change. People often ask, "Whats the harm in believing in X." like conspiracy theories, or that big foot is real and such, biggest issue isn't that belief, but what the thought process that reached that belief effects in other avenues.

 

[ThatRobGuy]

I would agree that single payer (though not perfect) does seem to produce the best outcomes for the lowest cost.

However, it is still an expensive program...and to fund it will require a conversation that many are still suggesting that it's "taboo" to have a discussion about...that being "When do we start getting the economy moving again?"

You do have some far-right economists trying to put the foot on the gas now (which would be a mistake), and on the other side of the coin, you have some far-left economists suggesting that we have to keep thing the way they are now until a vaccine or medication is introduced (which could be 12-18 months away).

If you have 30% of of small businesses out of commission, and 15-20% your population unemployed (and thus needing social safety nets), it's going to make funding and overhaul to our healthcare system very difficult, if not impossible.

Not to mention, if the economy stays down for a year, I sincerely think we'll see a sharp uptick in both mental health issues, as well as drug-related issues (both of which will add to healthcare costs). I think just about every state (from what I'm reading) as seen a drastic spike in calls to their Suicide prevention hotlines. A) because people who were already dealing with those issues have been cut off from their social support systems, and B) losing one's job (with bills piling up) will create that issue for people who didn't already have it.

Let's just be perfectly frank here, while someone getting $1200 is better than not getting it, it's hardly a replacement for the income requirements of most Americans. If you have a person who was making $50k/year, with 2 kids, getting that $1200 (+$1000 for having 2 kids) just simply isn't gonna cut it.

While some of us are fortunate enough to have the ability to work from home, and are in sectors that aren't being all that impacted by this (I'm fortunate in that regard), that's not the case for a lot of people.


There are definitely certain changes that need to be made to our healthcare system, that have been highlighted by this outbreak. However, being able make those changes (and fund them) is going to require some focus on the economic side of things as well.

I truly feel that if we don't re-open the economy (obviously, with some of the social distancing mitigation approaches still in place) in 2 months or so. Not only will we not having the funding to accomplish some of these changes, but we'll have issues on our hands that are far worse than anything Covid-19 can do to our society.

 

[rambot]

There may be a slight effect, but for a grim reason.

One of the strongest and most robust predictors of social distancing behavior is found in attitudes toward another major challenge facing the United States: climate change. Places where residents are less likely to agree that global warming is happening, that humans are the cause, and that we have an obligation to do something about it are the places where residents haven’t changed their behavior in response to coronavirus.

Honestly. I think capitalism has made many people lay and stupid: I mean, communism gets all the applause for doing the same thing but likely the most robust free market in the world has a lot of intellectually, emotionally, personally lazy individuals.