What can we do about healthcare?

Protest, riot, strike, etc. The government is owned by the robber barons. Aligning healthcare with a profit motive is violence of the highest order and we should respond in kind.

Yup. Peaceful protest doesn't register to rich people. They can't hear it over the clinking sounds of their champagne glasses as they toast their profit margins.
- For the rich to get the message you have to hit them where it hurts, in their wallets, their balance sheets, their portfolios, or their vital organs.
  
  Effective peaceful protests do this. If your peaceful protest doesn't make a businesses have a loss it will be ineffective.

Assuming you're a US citzen:

Identiy that the fault is how we fund healthcare, not "government meddling" or "bad researchers".
Pick a major political party.
Register as a member and find out where your local meetings are.
Make clear that the ONLY issue you care about is fixing healthcare.
Volunteer, donate, or run if you can.
Vote in every general, primary, or special election for whomever makes fixing healthcare a priority. Spoil if you must, but VOTE.
Dont fall for lies.

Fixing healthcare funding is itself broadly popular, but since its inherently unprofitable to care for sick, disabled, or elderly people all possible fixes are either "socialism" or "die quickly"

Healthcare should be like roads or schools or calling the police, not like cars or contractors or hiring a lawyer.

It shouldn't be like calling the police.
- If you call the police you might wind up dead or in an institution for months or weeks.
  
  If you call for an am ambulance, you might wind up dead or in an institution for months or weeks AND will definitely have a huge bill that you have to pay.
- Why not, it will definitely reduce the amount of sick people. Because they are dead of course, but still.
  
  Joking obviously.
The single greatest problem with medicine in the US is insurance. It makes costs horrendous.

I can pay less out of pocket for certain procedures than my copay.

People seem to want to kill insurance company CEOs.

My only complaint about this response is everyone that says it is all talk.

If that's the only option and I don't see another headline, there are a lot of people doing absolutely nothing.
- I agree. This can't be the solution. It also doesn't not have to be part of it either.
Lol comment 'botta be removed

Edit: Yo, how is it still now removed? It's been 10 hours! 🤣 Mods be slacking

FREE LUIGI
- Quick before someone gets injured by truth!
- This is ml ofc it won't be removed

Vote better.

Lol good one
The strategy that just keeps working better and better as time goes on.

Collectivize it, Cuba has a much better system at much lower costs.

elect different lawmakers

Elect lawmakers that would pass single payer, like they have in europe. However, this is an unrealistic expectation in our modern political landscape. So we need to change the political landscape to make that possible.

find a way to dismantle the right wing propaganda machine, or make one as powerful but not a fountain of lies. Difficult since the right wing has the full support of the billionaire owned news media. They are pros who have studied pyops inside and out and excel at it.
join the democratic party and attempt to overthrow its pro-rich leadership. difficult. Is it really a democratically run institution?

create alternative orgs

create coops and/or nonprofits to provide better options than predatory insurance companies. maybe easier because its grassroots and small compared to changing our national leadership. There's a danger of genuinely helpful institutions being outlawed due to mainstream medical lobbying.

direct action

we've already seen how successful propaganda of the deed can be. but will it actually produce change, or just lead to repression? it has at least communicated the extent to which Americans are disgruntled - not just the deed itself, but the overwhelmingly positive reaction to it.

general strikes, boycotts, other demonstrations might be a possibility. you need an effective campaign to get people on the same page.

The system won't allow lawmakers that will enact real change
- Yup.
  
  Won't happen until we legislate companies from contributing to electoral candidates and severely limit the amount an individual can contribute.
  
  Which won't happen.
  
  So we're basically done for.
- I mean technically, you can, but you have to get your message through all the propaganda. When people are willingly eating lies from facebook and fox news, and other corporate media, it's an uphill battle.
  
  Also, if you get someone really good, they might get JFK'ed.

The current parties will do nothing. We would need to replace over half of both legislative houses with people who support single payer Healthcare (right now there's like less than 5 iirc) to make substantial change.

I don't know. But on November 19th I had a stroke, treatment and ICU stay of 3 days was over $200,000. Honestly wish I didn't survive it, would have been much cheaper.

How much assets do you have?

If you rent and don't have own much that they can seize, just refuse to pay.

Right now the US is basically a two-party system with both parties bribbed by the same health insurance companies. The will of the people demands change, yet both parties refuse to implement change.

Withholding your vote does nothing as it's essentially a two-party system. Voting for one party or the other does nothing as they're both paid off by the same health insurance companies.

In desperate times when the government no longer represents the people, people turn to vigilantism to solve ongoing problems, as we saw with the killing of the CEO.

It's going to get a lot worse, there WILL be more killings.

This is getting off topic from the original post, but I did hear an interview on NPR of a few ways to lift the 2 party system. The only one that I can remember now is that each state would need to pass a law to allow the state to split theIR electoral votes. IIRC, Maine and Oklahoma(?) do this. The result is that if a state has 5 electoral votes, they would split the electoral votes amongst the candidates. If I remember the example right, Maine sent 2 votes for Trump, 2 for Harris and 1for someone else.

Initially, this would weaken the state's country-wide impact, but as more states vote in such a system, it would allow independent candidates to secure a foothold. I imagine that if all states did this, the net effect would be to have the 2 parties that we currently have soften their stance on things in order to secure votes that would normally have been lost to the independent.

Two ways forward.

1: Universal healthcare as seen in Canada.
2: Private heath coverage with strict price controls set by the government as seen in Japan.

For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.

Get involved with Mutual Aid groups.

Learn some basic First Aid.

Make connections with doctors and nurses who want to escape this broken system and get them involved with Mutual Aid groups.

This last part shouldn't be too hard, depending on where you live. I live in a progressive city with lots of doctors with good values who already do tons of charity work as it is. Getting them involved wouldn't be too difficult because they're likely already involved at some level. I've had doctors and dentists who volunteer at our free clinics for those without medical coverage, so it seems like taking the next step into Mutual Aid is probably something they're game for.

Ummmmm, we have a perfect example in the news right now

Saying "American Healthcare System" there's no such thing.

There are many, many disparate elements to medicine in the US. Understanding all those elements and how they relate is primary.

I think you're worried about the deck chairs on a sinking ship, at this point.

As a Canadian... try and snag us some good doctors as the American healthcare system collapses.

Maybe we can get the Canadian ones back.

In the USA, single payer. But that will never happen under fucking Trump

The healthcare costs in America will ensure there's no transfer of wealth between generations.

I know it may sound callous, but if you have skills. A lot of countries are looking to fill skill shortages, you could emigrate to somewhere with a sensible health system.

Failing that, as someone else pointed out. Grassroots action!
Get involved, change the narrative build up from local level. Shooting CEO's is not a long term solution, yes it grabbed attention, yes it showed how fucked off the population really is.... build on that momentum.

Paul Cockshott - Obstacles to the China path in Latin America.

M4A

Civil War
Revolution
Societal Collapse
Tribal, post-apocalypse
Misinterpreted Bible leads to a few genocides
Someone rediscovers the light bulb Pick back up around Edison on our timeline...

You're looking at around 2350 or so, so... good healthcare sweet spot is likely to be around 2420, supposing you ended up somewhere in the future that isn't irradiated, or is irradiated in such a way that it regrows limbs, which could be good and bad.

If you're talking about working with what we've got, well... save some .PDFs in the war truck.

What have you tried?

It's not complicated. When it becomes more profitable for politicians to help the oligarchs than it does for them to help the working class, things will improve. So pick a politician helping the oligarchs and make it very "unprofitable" for them.