I prefer to make the distinction between Corporatism vs. Capitalism in these type of discussions. Corparatism, the big companies and governments as a symbiotic unit, not Capitalism is the problem. I have lived in Montreal with its public health care system for a year, and I now live in a rice farming village in East Java, Indonesia with their public healthcare system, and I grew up in Brooklyn, NY, so I speak from my experience and what knowledge I have acquired. Sure, you can go to the doctors here in East Java, and pay $1 to $2, and walk away with 3 or 4 prescriptions, but I am not sure that is good for several reasons. People go without even a thought to thinking about their ailment or complaint. The doctor doesn't do more than listen, and possibly listen with a stethiscope, and then prescribe generic medications to treat the oral complaint. I have seen my father-in-law come back with 7 medications due to high blood pressure. I checked it with my portable monitor, and he does have high blood pressure. They prescribed a blood thinner, an antacid, and bunch of other meds you would see as possible prescriptions. My twelve year old niece had a blood test at school, and her cholesterol was a bit high. Result: 3 prescriptions, and not a lot about diet change or exercise. Lines are longer the closer to the city you get. Here people are there with sore elbows, headaches, etc... These are people who shake off a lot of hard daily work and bruises. They go at a whim when they are not working, and bored, and the simplest of ailments are perceived. I am anxious about the amount of prescriptions handed out, and the quality.
In Montreal, in Spring or in stretches of good weather, there would be lines outside the emergency room. I went and inquired if it was for flu shots, or some other special day since they had setup folding tables and chairs to handle the patient load. The jaded healthcare worker explained this was typical, and made some comment about if somebody sneezes, is bored on unemployment, they head to the emergency room.
My daughter needed surgery back in NJ, USA, while I was in SE Asia, and I thought it was going to cost me $16k to $20K, since my coverage had just expired. I asked how much to pay up front in cash to make sure she could get the surgery, and it turned out that if I paid the hospital, the anaesthesiologist and the surgeron each separately the cost would be and was $5k. I asked why, and I was told by all 3 offices, that this was their real price, and that when it goes through the insurance companies they spend up to a year or more trying to collect, and at a 40% rate or less. The gratitude of me pre-paying in cash, was shocking. They never have that, and it makes for less work for them. They were so thrilled. The hospitals and doctors charge a lot more to make sure they cover the administrative costs of tracking and chasing payments, and to cover the costs of the procedures themselves. I guess that's what you get when you let big companies and government intervention do their thing.
I am sad at this Theranos thing. I do not know about the truth; I guess we shall soon know. I see the idea of disrupting the labs and innovation as a good thing. So I hope guilty completely, partially or not, it has at least challenged the status quo. I know their are smaller quantities of blood testing kits available, not as small as Theranos, but I sure never heard of them before this fiasco. The benefit of reading HN! The conspiracy side of me, urges me to look at big Lab and Pharma as not wanting this to happen, or at least outside of their walls. They will make a slightly more volume blood test work, and now reap the publicity and sell it to the public and government. My Uncle Victor, who upon seeing my drawing of a car running on water buy using a solar cell to perform electolysis on water and exhaust of water back in 1974 (I had just built a solar oven and purchased a small solar cell, too small) spurned the idea, said to me: The big oil companies, or (pardon the racist, parochial remark here relayed) the 'arabs will come after you'. We used to call him Archie Bunker from All in the Family. A very funny show that would cause many to protest if it were on the TV nowadays.
Sweden is always held up as a model of public healthcare, but we forget their financial crisis in the 1990s that started with slow growth once the US ended the gold standard in August 1971. They didn't get out of the 1990s crisis until they started embracing more capitalistic practices, so their healthcare system should not be used as an argument for it to be applied in the US. Not to mention, costs of covering 9.5 million people in a smaller geography, vs. 310 million people in a much larger geography. It is not simply a scaling problem or application.