Comment by delecti
1 year ago
> Your job dictates your insurance, not you, and most jobs [...]
This is answering the question with a very narrow focus on what any one person can do. Sure, when I filled out my job's open enrollment last month, there was no checkbox labeled "Evil Corporation Insurer (y/n)", but there's no inviolable law of nature that requires the US to be this way.
Exactly. There's a lot of talk about trade and other countries "ripping off he US", but almost no mention that the US pay significantly more for the same drugs sold in other countries.
The narrative that we're getting 'ripped off on trade' is a myth. In the real world, when someone says "I got ripped off" it means they were overcharged for something. In politics, getting 'ripped off on trade' means we're being undercharged by foreign countries, which is apparently less desirable than being overcharged by Americans. Seems like the only trade here is a fake rip-off for a real one.
I wonder how people would respond to a survey that asked: "Would you support policies that aim to increase foreign drug imports to bring down pharmaceutical prices?" and a follow-up: "If yes, what about lumber, steel, etc?" My guess is that many would say yes to question 1, but not apply the same logic to other goods.
Propaganda is very effective when there's some kernel of truth behind it.
For this trade deficit question the important context is that some trade partners artificially devalue their currency (relative to the USD) to maintain strong export advantage (which therefore directly disadvantages their own people, since their wages are worth less on the global market, ie. when they are importing they have to pay more, when they are going on a vacation abroad they have to pay more, and this is a large chunk of the "missing trade" (the trade deficit), which translates to missing demand for US exporting sectors.
The other important piece of the puzzle is that US residents are also negatively affected by one distinct factor, which is the resource curse of the dollar's reserve currency status. Because due to the exorbitant privilege[1] (of the USD being the de facto global reserve currency) the financial sector is at an advantage compared to other sectors, and it slowly crowds out other economic activity.[2]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exorbitant_privilege
[2] https://www.phenomenalworld.org/analysis/the-class-politics-...
I agree! There's no inviolable law.
What there _is_, is too much pain and too many spoons that each and every person needs to manage every day, and most (nearly all) people are unable/unwilling to let even more important things drop.
We also have crab mentality in the US, where if one person hopes for, or even gets, something better, they're pulled back down.
And we have an efficient, powerful propaganda machine that tricks people into voting against specific areas of their interests - see "I love ACA, but I hate Obamacare" commentary.
The work to fix this is terrifyingly hard and *huge* and the people that will choose to fight and improve the situation will be making absolutely enormous sacrifices to do it.
>I love ACA, but I hate Obamacare
To be fair, ACA passed, and here we are. Healthcare companies are making more than they ever did. Have you considered that powerful propaganda machine works both ways?
https://www.axios.com/2024/08/08/insurer-profits-health-care...
It's not surprising that a law whose goal was increasing the customer base for a service also increased the profits of that industry.
Maybe that's because profit obsessed entities who are run by evil people are like the Borg in that they adapt and find ways around obstacles.
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I think a main root cause of high insurance costs is failure of govt to break up health company monopolies and other impediments to a competitive marketplace like no individual mandate which should make it hard for smaller players to take on risk that they can afford to manage.
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