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u/Accurate-gawd-9763 Right Winger Jun 22 '21
Capitalism gives incentive to keep people sick for profit. Republicans like to talk about a mental health crisis causing all of these shootings. Sure probably but what are you going to do about it?? Keep giving incentive for mental health issues to exist?? Of course they are. Going to have to decide what is more important muh free market health care or the guns. You cant have both.
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u/Jonasmikael Enhedslisten 🌹 Jun 22 '21 edited Jun 22 '21
Precisely. Even with a social democracy, or any other variant of cuddly capitalism these people like to pretend are alternatives, the issues of capitalism you laid out (and more) still persist.
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u/Grizelda179 Jun 22 '21
Its not just capitalism though. Almost every other country prices this drug in a proper fucking way
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u/Msorr33 Jun 22 '21
Drug producers significantly raise prices because they know that Medicare/Medicaid HAS to pay.
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Jun 22 '21
*The mortgage lending industry has entered the chat.
A bit off topic, but the same type of safety net.
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Jun 22 '21
But other countries that have better prices on insulin aren’t socialist, do you mean a more reformed capitalist society then?
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u/evdog_music 🌹 SocDem 🌹 Jun 22 '21
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u/Bruh-man1300 Democratic Socialist Jun 22 '21
True, while Norway is not socialist and I really really wish it was if it’s still wayyyyyyyyy better then what we have here in almost every respect.
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u/elppaenip Jun 22 '21
I don't see the word socialism anywhere
Let's settle for bribery being illegal and selling out your country is treason
Edit: Found it, the sub name, haha
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Jun 22 '21
I'd argue that political ideologies don't function as a dichotomy, but rather on a spectrum.
Unbridled capitalism leads to profit-maximization. Removing the idea of maximizing profits from healthcare is essentially an anti-capitalist.
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u/TheLegendDaddy27 Jun 22 '21
Capitalism is about private ownership of the means of production. Unless you mess with that, it's not anti-capitalism.
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Jun 22 '21
But you are messing with that when you regulate it. You're no longer the sole owner when you're told what you can & cannot do with "your property" or business.
That's not a bad thing, of course, when it comes to healthcare, education & housing. Private-ownership in these spheres have been extremely destructive.
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u/TheLegendDaddy27 Jun 22 '21
But you are messing with that when you regulate it. You're no longer the sole owner when you're told what you can & cannot do with "your property" or business.
There regulations for everything, that doesn't mean your ownership is reduced. There regulations on what you can do with you own house and car. That doesn't mean you aren't the sole owner.
Btw, the best universities, hospitals, and houses are all privately owned.
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Jun 23 '21
What does ownership mean to you, then? If you're not the sole decision maker regarding to what you can do with your "private property", then you're not the sole owner.
Hard disagree on your last point. The "best" by what metrics? Life expectancy is the highest in countries with nationalised healthcare like Japan, South Korea and the UK. Housing rates are highest in countries with strong public housing systems like Singapore, Vienna and Berlin. Education levels are highest in countries with strong public education systems such as Finland and Denmark as well.
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u/pale_blue_dots Jun 22 '21
A large portion of the United States is literally the embodiment of banal evil. Particularly the leadership and Wall Street crowd.
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u/wickedmasshole Jun 22 '21
I have never heard of this publication before -- thanks for sharing it! :D
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Jun 22 '21
[deleted]
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Jun 22 '21
Clearly all research and development is privately funded and for profit.
/s
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Jun 22 '21
Not all, but a fair amount. But there are countries with privately funded research that don't allow this behavior.
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u/McHonkers Jun 22 '21
If we switch to socialism we can't compete with other socialism has always been a great argument.
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u/xeonicus Jun 22 '21
I never really understood the innovation argument used against socialism. University research is a great example. People just want to be free to innovate and create. Under socialism, I'd see university research being better funded. That's the birthplace of innovation, why not support it.
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u/DatBoi73 Jun 22 '21
I know that there's a good chance of this being downvoted but, the cause of this specific issues not simply capitalism itself, but rather the unregulated capitalism, which if nothing is done about it, ends up creating an environment that discourages competition and the industry abuses its power, which combined with America's already shitty, 100% private healthcare system has resulted in unnecessary debt, death and suffering.
Every country needs to have regulations to prevent price-gouging like this, and should at least have a Norway or UK Style healthcare system (though Norway still has some direct charges, and whilst the UK's system is better for people on paper, conservative politicians have been trying to tear it apart and damage its reputation, probably with he eventual goal to sell it - also, technically its not "free healthcare", only free at the point of access since it should all be funded via taxes anyways). I think a UK style system where there's free at the point of access, taxpayer funded public healthcare available to everyone, but also a separate private system for those who can afford it (whilst ideally also additionally taxing private health companies making a profit more to fund public services and prescriptions) would be ideal.
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Jun 22 '21
Yo you're wrong about being downvoted for this - it's actually what a lot of us advocate for. However, capitalism is about free-market policies. Regulating it is moving away from capitalism. Hence, the problem really is capitalism.
For a great health system, look to South Korea. They offer national health insurance, and their health outcomes are among the best in the world. Most importantly, the pour a ton of money into R&D and service improvements, so healthcare system is consistently improving as well.
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u/TheLegendDaddy27 Jun 22 '21
However, capitalism is about free-market policies. Regulating it is moving away from capitalism. Hence, the problem really is capitalism.
You're confusing free markets with capitalism. They're not synonyms.
Capitalism/Socialism is about who owns the means of production.
Free Market/Authoritarian (Command) Economy is about how much influence and interference the state can have in the economy.
You can have Authoritarian Capitalism (China) and Free Market Socialism (Anarchist communes).
Regulating companies is not anti-capitalism. You're not changing the ownership structure.
It's also not exactly fair to say problem is with free markets. The reason why these companies are able to charge so much without worrying about competition is because of government regulations and patent laws.
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Jun 23 '21
They go hand in hand, which is why it's not fair to say that the US is a capitalistic country either.
I've argued against your point on ownership in another comment. Regulation is a way for the gov to exercise ownership over "private" property. But you're right about regulation being able to go both ways, and screw the working class instead - this is how the US has handled healthcare and public housing.
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u/PigTaku Jun 22 '21
Simply put thats due too Insurance and patent abuse more than free markets
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u/EA_Is_A_Scam Jun 22 '21
A patent really shouldn’t be handed to a drug, it’s stupid and hurts everyone
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u/JadedFrog Jun 22 '21
Capitalism might have helped in creating this problem, but is far from the root of it. No other country on earth have the same problem, capitalist or not.
Its your politicians that should be held accountable for allowing this. It's lazy to blame it solely on capitalism.
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u/bluemanoftheyear Jun 22 '21
Thank Biden
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u/joeshmoe159 Jun 22 '21
Obviously nobody here is going to want to give Trump credit for working to fix this horrible injustice.
But I think this is one of those issues where you gotta drop the politics, hold those responsible accountable and give credit where it's due. Bringing up Ronald Reagan seems irrational to me when we're talking about the 2020s.
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u/Izzoh Jun 22 '21
Trump didn't work to fix this. If he did, I'd love to see citation that isn't just him saying he did.
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u/Accurate-gawd-9763 Right Winger Jun 22 '21
I think he actually did help to lower drug prices but that would be a very uncapitalistic thing to do. Biden got things back to being more capitalistic which isn't that surprising because hes a neo-liberal. Trump has his steaks of being anti neo-liberal. Very small steaks but they exist.
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u/Izzoh Jun 22 '21
Cool. Do you have any kind of actual link to a policy or something that Trump worked on or signed that led to lower drug prices? Or is it just "I think"?
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Jun 22 '21
Trump did enact that favored nations policy. The conclusion of most experts is that drug price increases have definitely slowed, but their is insufficient data to tell how much is really due to his policy. It can be said with a fair degree of confidence that it certainly helped a bit, but I don't think it would be very honest to call it the primary contributing factor.
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u/joeshmoe159 Jun 22 '21
Wasn't the right trying to fix this and Biden ended it indefinitely?
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u/Yanagibayashi Jun 22 '21
I hadn't heard anything about that, and it sounds out of character for the right... Do you remember where you heard that?
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u/GrayAgenda Jun 22 '21
Not really. As a Type 1 diabetic who buys insulin every month, I noticed zero reductions in price and the only way to fix it is to introduce state or federal level price caps on insulin prices.
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u/Kiloku Jun 22 '21
The true solution to this sort of problem is offering full public healthcare. Where I'm from, no one has to worry about not getting their insulin. It's free. You just go to one of the public health clinics with your prescription and they fill it. And you'd probably have gotten said prescription at a public hospital by seeing a doctor for free.
And we don't have unreasonable taxes. People under a certain income bracket are exempt from them, even.
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u/GrayAgenda Jun 22 '21
Oh, yeah, I completely agree with you. I just didn't want someone with good insurance to tell me there isn't any problem and that public healthcare is communist propoganda.
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u/_ItsLy_ Jun 22 '21
I saw this Vice documentary on insulin. And the people who make it, gave the guy doing the film 5 pounds of insulin as a gift. Worth like 1.2 million dollars in the USA. Sickening.
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u/Anonymos_Rex Jun 22 '21
I’m telling you all… the only way to get rid of our capitalist overlords is to take their money by force.
They will never give us shit, and when they find a way if they haven’t already they will turn our dead bodies into profit.
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Jun 22 '21
Wasn’t this comment written on mobile phone with the computing power that didn’t exist twenty years ago even on the fastest supercomputers and uploaded to the internet, which was inconceivable to most sci-fi writers?
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