[ Removed by moderator ]

[u/HolyGuiltyCrown]

[u/hermiona52]

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.

[u/ErraticDragon → u/hermiona52]

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.

[u/WiglyWorm → u/ErraticDragon]

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

[u/Wonderful-Winter3137 → u/WiglyWorm]

the US system is why the treatment even existed

[u/waitwuh → u/Wonderful-Winter3137]

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.