(no subject)
I think I figured out healthcare. The countries that developed universal healthcare first - like Norway, the UK, Japan and other nations - were completely fucked over in WWII. Like, there was a high amount of people with grotesque and debilitating injuries from war. There was a huge need to help these people, a high proportion of veterans, and a population thrown into poverty by wartime issues. It didn't happen in the U.S.. Here, the results of war were more of an abstraction and the civilian population just didn't physically suffer as much.
And while Europe/Japan were dealing with a host of serious medical issues, there simply wasn't the treatments/medications/expenses then...and for Americans that did get really sick, there just weren't many medically-available options. My grandpa died of leukemia in 1961, he probably would have made it with technology today. So healthcare was still cheap, if only because there weren't a lot of options. There were tons more veterans back then and labor was strong, so most people had some form of healthcare. I doubt doctors made as much money back then, and charity care from religious hospitals was more common.
So as medical technology and treatment options increased, costs rose. The publics in Europe and Japan liked their free healthcare, and conservative politicians had no luck taking it away (even Thatcher in the UK didn't really cut the National Health Service that much). But in the U.S., costs rose dramatically and individuals were forced to pick up the tab. The 60s saw Medicare for the old, but that was about it. For reasons of social/political culture, the U.S. made little progress. I theorize that countries with more homogeneous populations (basically Japan and all of Europe) have more collectivist cultures and caring for the sick was seen as a social, not private, matter.
A lobbyist-run congress ensures big profits for healthcare and lame coverage for people who buy it privately. And a host of other stupid policies - corn subsidies, low food quality, low tobacco taxes - are killing Americans. We have lobbyists to thank for this one, too. The end result is a country that spends more per-capita on health care and gets way less. Awesome. We're number one!
And while Europe/Japan were dealing with a host of serious medical issues, there simply wasn't the treatments/medications/expenses then...and for Americans that did get really sick, there just weren't many medically-available options. My grandpa died of leukemia in 1961, he probably would have made it with technology today. So healthcare was still cheap, if only because there weren't a lot of options. There were tons more veterans back then and labor was strong, so most people had some form of healthcare. I doubt doctors made as much money back then, and charity care from religious hospitals was more common.
So as medical technology and treatment options increased, costs rose. The publics in Europe and Japan liked their free healthcare, and conservative politicians had no luck taking it away (even Thatcher in the UK didn't really cut the National Health Service that much). But in the U.S., costs rose dramatically and individuals were forced to pick up the tab. The 60s saw Medicare for the old, but that was about it. For reasons of social/political culture, the U.S. made little progress. I theorize that countries with more homogeneous populations (basically Japan and all of Europe) have more collectivist cultures and caring for the sick was seen as a social, not private, matter.
A lobbyist-run congress ensures big profits for healthcare and lame coverage for people who buy it privately. And a host of other stupid policies - corn subsidies, low food quality, low tobacco taxes - are killing Americans. We have lobbyists to thank for this one, too. The end result is a country that spends more per-capita on health care and gets way less. Awesome. We're number one!