this post was submitted on 24 May 2025
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[–] michaelmrose@lemmy.world 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

Basically healthcare is free at point of service in the majority of the most functional and healthy societies. It's not infinite and its rationed by need as opposed to being rationed according to who has the most money. This is ultimately a more valid solution to finite resources than our over complicated system which hands half the money to middle men in the name of managing it.

[–] AcidicBasicGlitch@lemm.ee 3 points 2 days ago

I agree, and just to be clear I was being sarcastic. I would also guess it's way more than half the money.

Between health insurance companies, hospital administrator salaries, liability insurance for doctors, and drug patents making most medications unaffordable, I would say it's pretty easily about 3/4 or more.

I volunteer in a free clinic in a red state that has had the Medicaid expansion for less than 10 years. It provided the absolute bare minimum healthcare to essentially everyone in need, but it still made such a huge difference in terms of patient health outcomes to just offer that bare minimum.

Now the U.S. is targeting that entire program through budget cuts, and in addition, at least in my state, private hospital oligopolies have been ramping down acceptance for months now because they seemed to know what was coming before anyone else.

The argument is that the cost of providing that bare minimum is unsustainable. Even if that were true, and the cuts weren't actually only necessary to provide another tax break for the wealthy, there are clearly so many other places we could be making cuts to reduce the cost of healthcare, rather than to the tiny amount that goes towards actually providing the barely minimum healthcare coverage to some of the most vulnerable patient populations.