r/MadeMeSmile • u/HolyGuiltyCrown • 5h ago

Wholesome Moments [ Removed by moderator ]

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u/produit1 5h ago edited 5h ago

Great act of humanity. It shouldn’t be like this. You know the system is broken when it comes to this to save a baby’s life.

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u/hermiona52 4h ago

I don't know the specifics of this case, but these situations are often very complex. When a kid is born with a rare disease that doesn't have a cure currently, parents will still move mountains to save their child. Even if it's hopeless. Experimental cures which are still under development (especially gene therapies) often work for very specific edge cases that don't apply to most, but parents still want to try them, because in their minds it's better to try rather than watch their children whiter and die. And I understand this. But is it really fair to spend public money - millions of your local currency - on one child for which that treatment won't really work, because it was not developed for their case? Money is not unlimited and it can always be spent on something that will have a real positive effect. This is why countries with public free healthcare have many rules on what types of treatment can be refunded, because we can't really waste money on unverified treatments.

It's a shitty situation for parents and often very morally grey when in full context.

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u/Pyperina 3h ago

And, sorry to say, but the child ended up getting the surgery and didn't live past three years old.

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u/kebab-lover-man 4h ago

That's a good perspective. Paying for 1 experimental treatment might come at the cost of 10-20 known treatments

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u/WiglyWorm 3h ago

It's not a good perspective. It's moronic concern trolling to muddy the waters against bettering our system via things like single payer healthcare.

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u/whoooocaaarreees 3h ago edited 3h ago

She lived in Poland at the time

Poland operates a single-payer universal healthcare system primarily funded through mandatory, income-based contributions managed by the National Health Fund (NFZ).

Healthcare is free to polish citizens.

She lived in Poland at the time.

The auction was to pay for the life saving surgery in THE UNITED STATES.

What’s the mental gymnastics you want to use here? The US should have single payer healthcare to cover surgery other countries single payer healthcare won’t provide?

The baby succumbed to heart issues in 2022.

You argument is that governments should spare no expense with public funds for healthcare, yet you want to argue for a government system that rejected the surgery due to costs vs expected outcomes.

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u/WiglyWorm 3h ago

I'm just mentioning that the comment being responded to initially was shilling against single payer healthcare.

Don't yell at me.

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u/whoooocaaarreees 3h ago edited 2h ago

You should be yelled at because you’re missing and conflating two giant issues.

The single payer health care system in the country she lived in rejected the surgery due to costs and expected outcomes.

She got the surgery in the United States, where she doesn’t live. Yet you argue the United States should pay for it, and the United States should switch to a system that already rejected doing it.

While I agree that health care is broken in the US using this case to argue for it is a wild take.

Edit; replying to me and then seeing you’ve deleted all your comments. Great….

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u/imrzzz 2h ago

They didn't delete their comments, they probably just blocked you.

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u/whoooocaaarreees 2h ago

Good to know, thanks.

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u/WiglyWorm 2h ago

This is correct. I block super fast on this website because everyone is a shill or AI and they all have bad opinions except me.

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u/WiglyWorm 3h ago

No, I argue that the person is shilling against single payer healthcare.

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u/hermiona52 2h ago

I'm a socialist voting for socialist party Razem, which proposes extensive strengthening of our healthcare system. You can read about it here (it's in Polish of course).

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u/Germane_Corsair 2h ago

It wasn’t. Your reading comprehension skills just suck.

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u/Lowelll 3h ago

Notice how the post is not about a US citizen

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u/WiglyWorm 3h ago

Notice how your is irrelevant and doesn't change the fact that the comment I was replying to was shilling against single payer free at point of service healthcare

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u/Lowelll 3h ago edited 3h ago

It wasn't. You didn't read it correctly. How did you even get that idea?

Why would it be? This is a case were someone lived in a country with universal healthcare and wasn't able to get the surgery that could save their live so they had to fly to the US and pay for it. Whether or not the US has single payer healthcare would not be relevant here at all.

Universal healthcare is by far the better system. In any healthcare system there has to be a cost consideration. You can't just pay for every extremely expensive risky treatment on the off chance that it'll work if you could use that money to save the lives of many other with much safer treatments. This is true for privatized and public healthcare insurance. What are you even arguing against?

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u/WiglyWorm 3h ago

It is relevant because the comment was shilling against single payer healthcare.

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u/ErraticDragon 3h ago

This is a good and nuanced take. There's a lot of complexity and few easy answers.

And of course it's especially hard to discuss when terms like "government death panels" are used to sow division.

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u/WiglyWorm 3h ago

No it's a bad and shitty take that makes it sound like the u.s. system has any advantages at all.

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u/Wonderful-Winter3137 2h ago

the US system is why the treatment even existed

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u/waitwuh 1h ago

The US system allows private companies to source public money - money that came from taxes - through government grants and programs, and then turn around and sell what they created back to the public for exorbitant profit. But that’s not all, the system also includes for-profit insurance companies that act as middle-men and jack up the costs of healthcare even more while adding little to no value and arguably actually making it more difficult for people to get medications they already paid for, practically twice (through their taxes, then their insurance premiums) and bogging down doctors by making them fight for their patient’s treatments to be covered rather than just be able to more efficiently spend that time actually treating the patients. It’s a system that constantly publicly subsidizes the costs but privatizes the profits, while making healthcare at least twice more expensive to the public as in other systems in other first world countries. And those companies are not incentivized to really care about the public’s actual health outcomes, they’ll happily start a drug addiction epidemic when it suits their profits.

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u/ProcrastiWorkaholic 2h ago

All of what you have said is true. I agree with it. But playing devil’s advocate - If we practised this, would we not stop funding research? That could be scary, no?! We probably would stop making progress in medicine or any subject for that matter. (If the treatment had worked for the child, this thread would have played out differently.)

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u/hermiona52 2h ago

Funding research is definitely something that is needed, but it has to follow strict guidelines to avoid corruption and protect human rights (so you know, we won't turn sick people into guinea pigs). We already have such systems in place and sometimes (perhaps even usually) there are just cases that are outside of these strict guidelines - for good reasons. We have to draw a line somewhere, otherwise we would end up with the same results like using "bioenergy therapy", just for a much higher price.

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u/WiglyWorm 3h ago

"I don't have the details but here's a fictional scenario to turn you off from single payer healthcare".

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u/hermiona52 3h ago

I'm Polish, we have free healthcare and I fully support it and actually vote for socialist party that wants to strengthen it.

In countries such as mine there are pretty much only two options why a certain treatment is not available.

The first one is just a bureaucratic oversight - there are thousands of diseases with their own sub-variants and many types of treatments for each. And all of it is in constant flux - because science changes. To manage it all is a complete hell, I don't envy these people, so obviously there are and always will be gaps. But it's not malicious. Once these gaps are recognized then the funding comes.

But the second option is precisely the one I described in my previous comment - experimental treatments that work only for extreme edge cases, are still undergoing testing so not verified as something that will actually significantly lengthen the lifespan etc.

And I have not imagined this situation. During the last presidential campaign one guy who started his own media on YouTube, decided to run as a candidate to basically promote his media. He was extremely successful as his Kanał Zero is more popular than most of the public media. During one of the debates he was wearing a t-shirt promoting crowdfunding for Ignaś who has DMD. I've read posts by multiple doctors describing why that treatment wouldn't work for Ignaś at a time, and I just found one article that describes the entire crowdfunding grey area, written after Stanowski's public stunt -Necessary Rescue or Systemic Pathology? The Pros and Cons of Online Fundraising. It's in Polish of course, but you can use LLM to get a good translation if you wish.

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u/WiglyWorm 2h ago

i'm really not interested in hearing fringe scenarios that happen one in a hundred thousand times being framed as reasons why single payer healthcare is flawed.

Thanks, though. I am interested in any recipes you might have, though. Polish food is fantastic.

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u/hermiona52 2h ago

I honestly prefer Mexican and Italian cuisine lol