Embed Notice

Health Insurance is fucked, both in America's (fake) market system, as well as in socialized systems. When I was in the insurance industry, we had a book club/reading group for the book Redefining Health Care (2006, Porter, Teisberg) which talked about the lack of competition and zero sum games. Executives at a lot of insurances companies were reading and quoting this book, but none of them actually implemented anything it talked about; because it basically advocated for more competition. I wrote this back in 2007 while I worked there, back in my more liberal/progressive days:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/universalhealthcare/

I covered the Un-affordable care act once again in 2017, when I had returned to the country after spending ~5 years abroad. Even after having no incoming for 11 months, I was shocked at the insane cost of the minimum insurance in Washington State, and how little it covered:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/returning-to-america-and-the-unaffordable-care-act/

Socialized systems have a lot of different problems. I dated a girl who had Lupis, but it was misdiagnosed for years. She was fed insane amounts of steroids as a youth by an idiot doctor, and was later cited in that doctor's case study about stunted growth (which she caused). I've had multiple Canadian friends complain about their system, long before MAID was making the news:

https://battlepenguin.com/politics/why-i-no-longer-hate-america/#problems

Doctors are their own weird protected priest class now. A lot of what they believe and feed people doesn't even work. Ultimately the solution to lowering health costs is people being healthier, but no program or government propaganda is going to make that happen when there is an entire industry that benefits from people taking the most insane and harmful drugs imaginable (the COVID shots, Ozempic, puberty blockers, cross-sex hormones).

There need to be multiple board certifications, and people need to chose doctors based on the belief system behind that board cert (I'd like an anti-vax, anti-sugar doctor who believes men and women are different, please). We need to acknowledge health care is a religion and we need more denominations. Where is the Martin Luther of Doctors with his 95 theses?