So my apartment building had this issue today which required calling the cops. The older gentleman (92 years old) neighbor who also lives there was outside with me to greet the cops.

The first cop who came never wore a mask and also used the older neighbors phone. At one point he finally put his neck gaiter on (which he later took off and never put back on) and commented how he’s not scared of COVID and “oh by the way I had it a few months ago and it only lasted four days” in a “no big deal” type way.

Healthcare, or rather health insurance, is a rather new construct. Heathcare as a basic "right" even more so.

In my own lifetime I've seen the cost of being able to have access to healthcare go from affordable to not even affordable with insurance.

My family, or rather my parent's family, (two parents, two boys, two girls) never had insurance, but we went to the doctor when we needed to, got vaccinations we should have gotten, and all of us went to the ED with broken bones, high fevers, etc.

My parents always paid our PCP in cash, and paid the ED when they got the bill. My mother stayed in the hospital with each if us for 1 week as was the practice then, and they paid it off before she stayed.

My family was, at best, lower middle class, in the 1960's. We were poor (below the poverty line) some years, lower middle class some years. My parents never worried about, nor talked about "health insurance".

Now, fast forward to my family. MomHawk and I together make somewhere between 8 to 10 times what my parents made on their best year, not adjusted for inflation. The thought of going to the ED for anything more serious than a sprained wrist, even with insurance, scars me financially to death, never mind a stay in the hospital.

Access to healthcare isn't the problem, insurance is the problem. You should not be required to have it, to receive care. That is the basics of it. Centralized healthcare coverage won't fix that.

I don't know what the right answer is, but so far, I haven't seen it.

Maybe the fact that the MEDIAN salary for Physicians in the US is $208,000 per year is part of it. (For those that need a reminder, median is the salary in the middle, not the average or mean. For every person making below $208,000 there is one making more than $208,000). It's a least a symptom of the problem.

Well did I mention that time in the MVA (Maryland DMV) that every single person was wearing a mask except for the state police officer.

This challenges some of my preconceptions. It doesn't necessarily correspond to carbon footprint but, especially after sorting in a spreadsheet, very interesting.

Goddammit. I dressed down a kid in the auto parts store for letting his mask droop under his nose. While my size and tone combine effectively, I need to figure out a way to do it without frightening everyone else in the room.

...maybe. Not sure. I'm sure it left an impression on everyone.

Check it out. Change the file extension to xls. (and, no, there aren't any macros. It's Libre Office.)

I'll take a look next time I'm on my PC

I got the picture.

Way to go, you big ol bully - :slap:

So a criticism of a vaccine being pushed to the masses deserves to be ignored due to our current political state? Is this why western media widely ignores the ivermectin research and trials?

I just like to get a lot of information, from multiple sources.

Sometimes, unfortunately, fear is the best motivator to get someone to do something necessary.

Especially with the pandemic. After this country's completely bungled response, a year of on-and-off half-measures, mixed messages, and a crazy patchwork of 50 different plans in each state, most people are just tired. Even smart, informed people are simply sick and tired of it all.

Sometimes, fear is exactly what's needed to remind people that the virus isn't done with us, that it can kill them, that they can kill other people by not wearing masks, and like it or not, they still need to do the right things.

I grew up below the poverty line. A working single parent, whose job didn't provide healthcare insurance in the 1950s-1970's. Any 'healthcare' we had was paid for out of pocket. Which meant, we often went without it. My single working mother supported herself, her parents, and myself. There wasn't enough money to provide healthcare for everyone, and there were consequences to that. Whenever anyone became sick or needed to see a doctor, it was a financial crisis that meant there wouldn't be money for something else.

I've personally experienced and lived through what life is like without being able to afford healthcare. It's bad.

Insurance is exactly the problem. Insurance companies are not in business to maximize the quality of healthcare for their customers. They are in business to maximize financial returns to their shareholders. The law in this country requires that. If corporate management doesn't do everything imaginable to maximize profits for shareholders, they will be sued, and replaced. Ask me how I know.

The problem with leaving healthcare to the 'market' and 'private sector' is that corporate profits are maximized by delivering as little healthcare as possible. Every dollar spent on taking care of a patient is a dollar that doesn't go to he bottom line for the financial benefit of shareholders. It incentivizes (and essentially, legally requires) insurance companies to provide the absolute bare minimum of healthcare they can possibly get away with.

Compensation for specialists is certainly one piece of the cost puzzle in the U.S., and contributes to higher costs. I would argue that primary care physicians and nurses don't get paid enough in this country for that they do (along with Park Avenue cardiologists getting paid too much).

I don't think there is any 'best' or 'right' answer. But I absolutely think there are better solutions than the mess in the U.S. Like, the examples of just about any other country.

As has been extensively discussed elsewhere in this and other threads, the U.S. has - by far - the most expensive healthcare in the world. We're clearly number 1 in cost. But we're far from the best in quality. Most objective assessments (such as the WHO) place the quality of healthcare in the U.S. somewhere around 35th-38th.

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/...er-capita-2019

https://worldpopulationreview.com/co...e-in-the-world

This is because so much of the money that contributes to our healthcare being the most expensive isn't going to, you know, actually care for patients. It's going to corporate profits and maximizing shareholder value.

Despite all the money the U.S. spends on 'healthcare', one look at how we've done with the pandemic shows how effective it's been. 4% of the world's population but 25% of the world's cases. Over 200,000 new cases and 3,000-4,000 new deaths each day. Doesn't seem like the system is working very well.

While there may be no 'best' or 'right' answer, I would suggest learning from the experiences of other countries that have both higher quality and lower cost healthcare than the U.S. Such as, pretty much any country in Europe, or Japan. By any measure, every country that has better quality and lower cost healthcare than the U.S. also has a national healthcare plan. They take 'profit' and 'maximizing shareholder value' out of the equation - which frees up that money to be used to actually care for people.

In my career I spent a great deal of time overseas, working with people in the pharmaceutical industry around the world. I spent about 1/4 of my time over a more than 35 year period out of the country. I never once met anyone who would trade their national healthcare system for the 'freedom of choice' of the U.S. system. I did get a lot of questions, puzzlement, and pity for us and our system.

For the most part, we are in agreement, but I will say....

What I quoted was the median for all Physicians and Surgeons. It is further broken down on a link in the page to "Specialties". Unfortunately they only have the mean wage, not the median, but family and general practitioners are average is above the median.

I don't put nurses in the same category, pay wise, as Physicians as they are more reasonably compensated when compared to other careers. However, they are in a service industry and there is a limit as to what the compensation can be without affecting the price of healthcare. And, lets not get into the "travelling nurse" pay being offered right now during the Pandemic (very well earned, but well out of line with reality).

It's sort of the same argument about Teachers being underpaid. I don't disagree, but how loud would the screaming be if suddenly everyone's property taxes were doubled (and rents go up for those renting) when we double teacher's salaries and the funding goes up to match? I don't know about other parts of the country, but the large majority of it is school funding here.

look, we can only focus on one thing at a t OH LOOK AT THAT CLOUD, IT LOOKS LIKE A FISH WITH A TOP HAT

You're not accounting for the tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of dollars of debt combined with 4-8+ years of lost earning potential while accruing debt to become a doctor, nurse, teacher, or other 'educated' professional.

A rising tide lifts all boats.