coldfish wrote:The US medical system has done a fantastic job with covid so far. They have identified treatment methodologies and quickly distributed them nationally. As we are learning, ventilators are a bad idea. Giving people oxygen in other ways has drastically reduced fatality rates. Our doctors and nurses deserve an incredible amount of respect.
This is an unfortunate truth though. The US is certainly undercounting deaths but its by 20%. The numbers in europe are far higher though with estimates as high as 50%. Some of the stories out of Italy, Spain and the UK are abhorrent. If the US had the same case fatality ratio that the UK has, there would be 320,000 more dead americans.
Some of the nationalized health care systems have done well (Germany, Canada) but many have done just a terrible job. The US is going to have the lowest infection fatality rate in the world by a good bit.
Its sickening just how many infections we have had and I blame that squarely on Trump. As I have said before, his performance (or lack thereof) on this is going to be studied for centuries. That said, let's not hold up a lot of these other countries as wonderful examples of competence. Just because the news isn't running stories on just how bad the NHS did here doesn't mean it didn't happen.
America has been a global science, tech and medical leader since the late 1800s. Has nothing to do with the health insurance system. Of course we have great doctors and nurses and facilities. We also have Silicon Valley.
It’s the inefficient insurance system that has jeopardized it and ballooned out of control the last 40 years.
We have the best universities in the world. They have also gotten completely out of control as far as cost goes. College loans and expenses have ballooned beyond ration in the last 30 years, so the dire effects of these two important industries which were in balance for most of the 20th century, they will damage the current generations into the rest of the century in ways we can’t even process. Instead of retirement funds and savings, these debt collection agencies are going to blow up with a Gen XYZ crisis while Social Security balloons and falls apart.
It’s a shame really that the American Gov. stopped playing chess and decided to allow loan sharks to pig out on the Citizens’ savings.
If you think about the “circle of money”, it would be in America’s best interest and longevity to have a stable housing market with as many people having dispensable retirement savings, be able to pay off reasonable college loans (not 250k + interest when the job market averages 40-60k), and not have to worry about $10k a year Minimum going towards health care costs by the time you hit 30, with a rapidly ascending rate by the time you hit 40.
Meanwhile, it seems we are content with entering a high and low volatility with huge stock market swings and crashes every 10 years it seems. Even if covid never happened, the Bull market was going to pop like every other insane financial bubble in Wall St and real estate history.
So middle class middle/upper age families and individuals keep getting their volatile savings wiped. Then you bail out the lenders, banks and corporations that got us there, they raise rates to re-vitalize their broken profits, and reset the cycle.
Then they blame people for making bad life choices. Oh, I didn’t know that there were 2 job sectors the entire country should feel comfortable pursuing - medical and computer/software. Unless you’re already rich, then business school is fantastic because you can use dad’s connections and start-up money to make “brilliant” investment decisions with advisors. And why not pursue a career in politics? You just need a ton of money to hit the campaign trail.