My plan is all people who have medical conditions due to being obese or smoking, etc get no help from taxpayers. Costs of everything go down for people who try to lead a decent lifestyle. Leave the fat people to the churches.
Or just don't socialize the costs and let people pay for their own medical needs and expenses as they see fit or can afford to. *gasp
Yes, but to go full-market you would need to allow insurers to turn people away who cost too much to insure.
My plan is all people who have medical conditions due to being obese or smoking, etc get no help from taxpayers. Costs of everything go down for people who try to lead a decent lifestyle. Leave the fat people to the churches.
Or just don't socialize the costs and let people pay for their own medical needs and expenses as they see fit or can afford to. *gasp
Yes, but to go full-market you would need to allow insurers to turn people away who cost too much to insure.
Binary argument, see the OP. In the very real presence of negative externalities no where do I argue for a completely free healthcare market. I do the contrary in fact.
I'd argue there are several concepts being grouped together here that are separate. The US by far has the best health care system when you have something wrong...in identifying it and in treating it. You have cancer and you will likely have it diagnosed here before anywhere else. You have money and cancer you come to the US for treatment. You are an average Joe and tear up your knee you would much rather be here than anywhere else in the world.
US system is shite for preventive/proactive treatment...you are overweight instead of paying more insurance and losing weight we'll give you a pill.
I'd argue there are several concepts being grouped together here that are separate. The US by far has the best health care system when you have something wrong...in identifying it and in treating it. You have cancer and you will likely have it diagnosed here before anywhere else. You have money and cancer you come to the US for treatment. You are an average Joe and tear up your knee you would much rather be here than anywhere else in the world.
US system is shite for preventive/proactive treatment...you are overweight instead of paying more insurance and losing weight we'll give you a pill.
Well said. If our healthcare system was a football team we’d be tearing it up on offense and special teams, but our defense sucks.
Here is why health care if fucked up and expensive:
The Throbber just spent the better part of eight hours today trying to secure a referral to a specialist (cardiologist) with whom he'd already been going to for years. Haven't been the last couple years because, well, forgot one year on the annual visit and then the Vid hit.
Little bit of pain in the chest, couldn't tell if it was cardiac related, just fucking old age or what. No problem, right? Wrong.
1 - Call cardiologist...sorry, you haven't been in for two years - we need a referral from your primary care physician. Ok, fine. whatever.
2 -Call Primary Care Physician...uh, we're not in the office today, you should go to our affiliated clinic, get checked out and they'll refer to you the cardiologist.
3 - Go to the affiliated clinic - walk in get the vitals, tell RN guy the problem and ask for a referral to the cardiologist. I'm not dying or in distress, mind you....just want to get a fucking referral.
4 - RN guys says, well, we don't have EKG machines or anything like that so I need to send you to the ER and get some work done....I'm like WTF?!? ER???? Seriously? RN guy says, Oh yeah, I do this 6 or 7 times PER DAY!!!
5 - Go to the ER...get vitals checked again. Get an EKG which takes 5 minutes. They must want to make sure I'm not going to stroke out immediately. Get IV drip line put in. Sit in waiting area with godforsaken people for two hours.....take me back to get a chest xray...sit in waiting area with godforsaken people for another 90 minutes. Get taken back to some room and hooked up on a heart monitor. Wait for another 30 minutes. Nurse comes in and asks the same fucking thing Steps 1 thru 4 did. Takes a lab sample. Nurse then goes on lunch break...new nurse monkeys around with shit (no my junk, the heart monitor shit)...wait around another 20 minutes for Dr. Doogie Howser Bro.
6 - He says "what's the problem?" Explain it for the sixth time....I just want a fucking referral. Oh, easy, I can do that....let me get your last lab sample back first...wait some more...."Alright, dude, you're good - I'll send the referral to the cardiogist. This is six hours into this ordeal.....
7 - Throbber goes home. Rants to Mrs. Throbber v2.0.
8 - Phone rings and it's the cardiologist office. "Mr. Throbber - we're sorry but we don't accept Premera Whatever the Fuck Plan" you have. We accept all other Premera plans, just not that one. It's out of network and you'll have to pay out of pocket". Like fuck I am. Can you forward my referral to another cardiologist who DOES take my cadillac insurance plan?
9- "Uh, no. You'll need to have your Primary Care Physician make that referral".
Honest to fucking god. That was my entire day. And I'm right fucking back where I was at the beginning....
My guess is that debacle just cost me/my insurance company a shit ton of money. A SHIT TON.
Here is why health care if fucked up and expensive:
The Throbber just spent the better part of eight hours today trying to secure a referral to a specialist (cardiologist) with whom he'd already been going to for years. Haven't been the last couple years because, well, forgot one year on the annual visit and then the Vid hit.
Little bit of pain in the chest, couldn't tell if it was cardiac related, just fucking old age or what. No problem, right? Wrong.
1 - Call cardiologist...sorry, you haven't been in for two years - we need a referral from your primary care physician. Ok, fine. whatever.
2 -Call Primary Care Physician...uh, we're not in the office today, you should go to our affiliated clinic, get checked out and they'll refer to you the cardiologist.
3 - Go to the affiliated clinic - walk in get the vitals, tell RN guy the problem and ask for a referral to the cardiologist. I'm not dying or in distress, mind you....just want to get a fucking referral.
4 - RN guys says, well, we don't have EKG machines or anything like that so I need to send you to the ER and get some work done....I'm like WTF?!? ER???? Seriously? RN guy says, Oh yeah, I do this 6 or 7 times PER DAY!!!
5 - Go to the ER...get vitals checked again. Get an EKG which takes 5 minutes. They must want to make sure I'm not going to stroke out immediately. Get IV drip line put in. Sit in waiting area with godforsaken people for two hours.....take me back to get a chest xray...sit in waiting area with godforsaken people for another 90 minutes. Get taken back to some room and hooked up on a heart monitor. Wait for another 30 minutes. Nurse comes in and asks the same fucking thing Steps 1 thru 4 did. Takes a lab sample. Nurse then goes on lunch break...new nurse monkeys around with shit (no my junk, the heart monitor shit)...wait around another 20 minutes for Dr. Doogie Howser Bro.
6 - He says "what's the problem?" Explain it for the sixth time....I just want a fucking referral. Oh, easy, I can do that....let me get your last lab sample back first...wait some more...."Alright, dude, you're good - I'll send the referral to the cardiogist. This is six hours into this ordeal.....
7 - Throbber goes home. Rants to Mrs. Throbber v2.0.
8 - Phone rings and it's the cardiologist office. "Mr. Throbber - we're sorry but we don't accept Premera Whatever the Fuck Plan" you have. We accept all other Premera plans, just not that one. It's out of network and you'll have to pay out of pocket". Like fuck I am. Can you forward my referral to another cardiologist who DOES take my cadillac insurance plan?
9- "Uh, no. You'll need to have your Primary Care Physician make that referral".
Honest to fucking god. That was my entire day. And I'm right fucking back where I was at the beginning....
My guess is that debacle just cost me/my insurance company a shit ton of money. A SHIT TON.
For a goddamned referral.
Yeah, aren’t referrals supposed to help keep costs down by preventing specialists offices from being clogged up with hypochondriacs and other patients who could receive alternate treatments?
Here's a csb from Norway: Relative of mine in her 70s hurt her shoulder skiing, needed surgery. Didn't have to wait too long. Surgery was botched, leaving her in even more pain. She had to wait for nearly a year to get the surgery to fix the mistake. During that time she couldn't ski or do other things she enjoyed doing. Two years later she died of cancer.
I have no axe to grind with Norway, the women are pretty, the air is clean, it's a great place. The healthcare system seems fine to me. It's just that there are tradeoffs.
Because of life style/obesity/diabetic epidemic that America has, the medical system starts with one arm and from the elbow up the other arm tied behind it's back going into a fist fight.
In addition everyone is for trying to control costs, limit lottery, multi generation settlements payouts, etc UNTIL it affects them or a family member, then it's run every test possible, spare no expense to help or save a life.
We also have the same amount of doctors (and I would assume nurses, clinics, hospitals, etc) as we did in 1960 yet the population has went from 200 million to 330 million documented people.
So the government either has to throw an obscene amount of additional money into the system to close the inadequate supply of products and services needed to meet demand, or do (in some form) what every other nation that has socialized medicine does which is to limit services which brings down the demand b/c there is a certain percentage of patients that expire b4 they ever get the help the needed or it's too late when they do.
Here's a csb from Norway: Relative of mine in her 70s hurt her shoulder skiing, needed surgery. Didn't have to wait too long. Surgery was botched, leaving her in even more pain. She had to wait for nearly a year to get the surgery to fix the mistake. During that time she couldn't ski or do other things she enjoyed doing. Two years later she died of cancer.
I have no axe to grind with Norway, the women are pretty, the air is clean, it's a great place. The healthcare system seems fine to me. It's just that there are tradeoffs.
Another CSB:
Kid I know is 15 years old and buckle-tears his meniscus playing freshman football. Has arthroscopic surgery, fast recovery, spent the night at a friend's house the same day watching Monty Python movies. Great outcome.
One year later, other knee blows out. Surgeon who did a great job on the first knee is booked out nine months, so he goes with a different surgeon who's available in a month. Wakes up from surgery with a giant soft cast from groin to halfway down the foot. Cooling pouch fed by an Igloo cooler that could be raised to circulate icewater inside the cast and wrapped around the knee. He couldn't get off the couch except to piss or shit for two weeks, and the trips to the bathroom included extreme pain. Immobilizer brace for a month, re-learn how to walk, three months before even a light jog was possible. Turns out this kid was knocked out on the operating table, the surgeon went in with the scope, looked at the knee, and said, "Hey, this looks like a perfect candidate for trying out that new procedure I learned at the conference last month. The one where we suture the tear through the scope instead of just cutting the flap out."
First time this kid gets hardly touched on a football field--six months after what should have been a simple arthroscopic surgery--his knee explodes again. Surgery number three, at sixteen years old. Football season starts in three months, so once again no time to wait for the surgeon who seemingly did a great job on the other knee. This time, it was back to the butcher for another round. Once again, it's knock-out time, surgeon goes in, cleans up the tear... "You know, it felt like there might have been something behind the patella. Let's cut a fourth hole, another through the patella, and have a look behind there."
Kid wakes up again with yet another groin to foot Igloo cooler immobilization device. The hole in the patella made the swelling ten times as worse and doubled the recovery time. Tons of pain, feeling of no stability. Had to rush recovery, and it was only two weeks prior to the junior season starting that he could finally sprint. Dives on and recovers an onside kick in the first game of the season.
*pop*
There was plenty of time to wait for the doctor who fixed the first knee to finally clean up the other.
This all happened in the United States. The country with the greatest doctors, technology, and standard of care in the world, right? Be careful with small sample sizes.
So the government either has to throw an obscene amount of additional money into the system to close the inadequate supply of products and services needed to meet demand, or do (in some form) what every other nation that has socialized medicine does which is to limit services which brings down the demand b/c there is a certain percentage of patients that expire b4 they ever get the help the needed or it's too late when they do.
Divorce healthcare from employment. It's fucking absurd.
I hate hr people.
The Throbber is not employed. (But his wife who carried the Cadillac plan is - and she'd bolt her job in a heartbeat if it wasn't for the fucking bennies, not the least of which is the health insurance).
What I did see during my six hour ER debacle - there's a lot of fucking fat people in this country. Not, kinda sorta could use to lose 10 pounds....OBESE FAT PIGS. And there are a fuck ton of crackhead drug addicts.
Perhaps if we attacked those two items alone, we'd see a massive improvement in the healthcare system and homelessness.
Unfortunately none of that deals with the cost of the actual drugs, which is a huge driver in increased costs. One easy, quick solution to that: state that we will pay no more than the average cost of a drug across a basket of similar countries: let's say Canada, the UK and Germany. If you want to charge more for the drug than the average cost across those countries, you can do so but you lose your patent exclusivity. We currently subsidize the rest of the world by paying outrageously high prices compared to similar economies to the point that states are now looking at importing drugs from Canada that were manufactured in the US in the first place.
There's a lot of other waste in the pharmacy/PBM/drug space that could be fixed, but the above is the lowest hanging of fruit.
I was going to mention this but you beat me to the punch.
I am going to skirt dangerously to Tug talk here, but the fact that the US is not only footing the in pharma but in things like biomedical devices is definitely problematic. We might not have the best standard of care, but we’re still the best in scientific/medical research. That research ain’t cheap and the cost has to be passed on to somebody.
That’s why when people start comparing the US healthcare system to other countries, I get a little upset. There are some very unique problems that the US has to deal with that other countries do not. It’s fine to look to these places for ideas, but trying to replicate Canada or anyone else probably won’t work.
Truth is, there is no such thing as completely private R&D in medicine or biotech. NSF is almost always somewhere in the funding tree. And, yes, that includes Harvard and its $31 billion endowment. You'd think they wouldn't need the Fed's money. But that's in part why they have $31 billion. They know the power of spending other people's money.
No kidding... 2/3 of the billion and 1/2 that the UW rakes in annually for research grants in the last decade is for medical research... UW is in the top 5 for benefitting from this trend and it floating the boat for UW at the present time. The Dubs ascendency as an academic university is directly tied to these events.
Truth is, there is no such thing as completely private R&D in medicine or biotech. NSF is almost always somewhere in the funding tree. And, yes, that includes Harvard and its $31 billion endowment. You'd think they wouldn't need the Fed's money. But that's in part why they have $31 billion. They know the power of spending other people's money.
No kidding... 2/3 of the billion and 1/2 that the UW rakes in annually for research grants in the last decade is for medical research... UW is in the top 5 for benefitting from this trend and it floating the boat for UW at the present time. The Dubs ascendency as an academic university is directly tied to these events.
With an annual budget of about US$8.3 billion (fiscal year 2020), the NSF funds approximately 25% of all federally supported basic research conducted by the United States' colleges and universities.
Cost of a single aircraft carrier minus any planes or personnel: $9 billion to $13 billion depending on which one. Cost of just the R&D for the F22 Raptor: $32.4 billion (over $67 billion total program cost). Cost of program to dispose of surplus weapons grade plutonium: $7 billion+ (as of 2014, so certainly much higher now). Cost of the Department of Homeland Security headquarters: Over $3 billion (and over ten years to complete...). Cost of the GPS satellite system: $12 billion and $2 million per day. Cost of James Webb Space Telescope: $9.7 billion. Cost of Human Genome Project: $5 billion (shared across countries). Cost of Copernicus satellite monitoring system: $7.4 billion. Cost of Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer: $2 billion. Cost of proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository: $96 billion. Cost of Mars rovers: $2.5 billion each. Cost of National Ignition Facility: $3.5 billion. Cost of Large Hadron Collider: $4.75 billion. Cost of ISS: $150 billion. Cost of middle east wars since 2001: $6.4 trillion (as of 2019).
Cost of entire yearly U.S. federal budget: $4.829 trillion. So the NSF's entire budget is almost a twentieth of a percent of the federal budget. Which operates at a $2.3 trillion deficit.
I'm not saying that there isn't still a debate to be had around whether the federal government should be funding university research (although I'd guess this is exactly the kind of government spending that has paid for itself multiples over and made this country rich), just trying to offer some perspective.
Here's a csb from Norway: Relative of mine in her 70s hurt her shoulder skiing, needed surgery. Didn't have to wait too long. Surgery was botched, leaving her in even more pain. She had to wait for nearly a year to get the surgery to fix the mistake. During that time she couldn't ski or do other things she enjoyed doing. Two years later she died of cancer.
I have no axe to grind with Norway, the women are pretty, the air is clean, it's a great place. The healthcare system seems fine to me. It's just that there are tradeoffs.
Another CSB:
Kid I know is 15 years old and buckle-tears his meniscus playing freshman football. Has arthroscopic surgery, fast recovery, spent the night at a friend's house the same day watching Monty Python movies. Great outcome.
One year later, other knee blows out. Surgeon who did a great job on the first knee is booked out nine months, so he goes with a different surgeon who's available in a month. Wakes up from surgery with a giant soft cast from groin to halfway down the foot. Cooling pouch fed by an Igloo cooler that could be raised to circulate icewater inside the cast and wrapped around the knee. He couldn't get off the couch except to piss or shit for two weeks, and the trips to the bathroom included extreme pain. Immobilizer brace for a month, re-learn how to walk, three months before even a light jog was possible. Turns out this kid was knocked out on the operating table, the surgeon went in with the scope, looked at the knee, and said, "Hey, this looks like a perfect candidate for trying out that new procedure I learned at the conference last month. The one where we suture the tear through the scope instead of just cutting the flap out."
First time this kid gets hardly touched on a football field--six months after what should have been a simple arthroscopic surgery--his knee explodes again. Surgery number three, at sixteen years old. Football season starts in three months, so once again no time to wait for the surgeon who seemingly did a great job on the other knee. This time, it was back to the butcher for another round. Once again, it's knock-out time, surgeon goes in, cleans up the tear... "You know, it felt like there might have been something behind the patella. Let's cut a fourth hole, another through the patella, and have a look behind there."
Kid wakes up again with yet another groin to foot Igloo cooler immobilization device. The hole in the patella made the swelling ten times as worse and doubled the recovery time. Tons of pain, feeling of no stability. Had to rush recovery, and it was only two weeks prior to the junior season starting that he could finally sprint. Dives on and recovers an onside kick in the first game of the season.
*pop*
There was plenty of time to wait for the doctor who fixed the first knee to finally clean up the other.
This all happened in the United States. The country with the greatest doctors, technology, and standard of care in the world, right? Be careful with small sample sizes.
Think this isn’t a US thing...there is a wide distribution of competence in every single job/career and if you blindly let somebody do surgery on you...you should expect a distribution of results.
Had my right ankle rebuilt 3-4 years ago...tore it up from decades of soccer. First doctor I went to told me about a new procedure they had where they remove all the cartilage and regrow new cartilage, wouldn’t be able to put pressure on it for 6 months, and wanted to know when I wanted to schedule it. Told him thanks, left, and then found the doctor who works on the Texans and set up an appointment with him. Took 3 months to get in, but he thought the first guy was nuts and ended up fixing my ankle.
In Europe they regulate to reduce the crazy experimental surgeries, but you also are regulated/limited against doctor-shopping to find the best doctor for you if you are smart enough to do it. There is no perfect system...pluses and minuses to everything.
I'd argue there are several concepts being grouped together here that are separate. The US by far has the best health care system when you have something wrong...in identifying it and in treating it. You have cancer and you will likely have it diagnosed here before anywhere else. You have money and cancer you come to the US for treatment. You are an average Joe and tear up your knee you would much rather be here than anywhere else in the world.
US system is shite for preventive/proactive treatment...you are overweight instead of paying more insurance and losing weight we'll give you a pill.
Well said. If our healthcare system was a football team we’d be tearing it up on offense and special teams, but our defense sucks.
Comments
US system is shite for preventive/proactive treatment...you are overweight instead of paying more insurance and losing weight we'll give you a pill.
Went online and made a plan and executed it over a year or so
Pinot Noir. The final touch
The Throbber just spent the better part of eight hours today trying to secure a referral to a specialist (cardiologist) with whom he'd already been going to for years. Haven't been the last couple years because, well, forgot one year on the annual visit and then the Vid hit.
Little bit of pain in the chest, couldn't tell if it was cardiac related, just fucking old age or what. No problem, right? Wrong.
1 - Call cardiologist...sorry, you haven't been in for two years - we need a referral from your primary care physician. Ok, fine. whatever.
2 -Call Primary Care Physician...uh, we're not in the office today, you should go to our affiliated clinic, get checked out and they'll refer to you the cardiologist.
3 - Go to the affiliated clinic - walk in get the vitals, tell RN guy the problem and ask for a referral to the cardiologist. I'm not dying or in distress, mind you....just want to get a fucking referral.
4 - RN guys says, well, we don't have EKG machines or anything like that so I need to send you to the ER and get some work done....I'm like WTF?!? ER???? Seriously? RN guy says, Oh yeah, I do this 6 or 7 times PER DAY!!!
5 - Go to the ER...get vitals checked again. Get an EKG which takes 5 minutes. They must want to make sure I'm not going to stroke out immediately. Get IV drip line put in. Sit in waiting area with godforsaken people for two hours.....take me back to get a chest xray...sit in waiting area with godforsaken people for another 90 minutes. Get taken back to some room and hooked up on a heart monitor. Wait for another 30 minutes. Nurse comes in and asks the same fucking thing Steps 1 thru 4 did. Takes a lab sample. Nurse then goes on lunch break...new nurse monkeys around with shit (no my junk, the heart monitor shit)...wait around another 20 minutes for Dr. Doogie Howser Bro.
6 - He says "what's the problem?" Explain it for the sixth time....I just want a fucking referral. Oh, easy, I can do that....let me get your last lab sample back first...wait some more...."Alright, dude, you're good - I'll send the referral to the cardiogist. This is six hours into this ordeal.....
7 - Throbber goes home. Rants to Mrs. Throbber v2.0.
8 - Phone rings and it's the cardiologist office. "Mr. Throbber - we're sorry but we don't accept Premera Whatever the Fuck Plan" you have. We accept all other Premera plans, just not that one. It's out of network and you'll have to pay out of pocket". Like fuck I am. Can you forward my referral to another cardiologist who DOES take my cadillac insurance plan?
9- "Uh, no. You'll need to have your Primary Care Physician make that referral".
Honest to fucking god. That was my entire day. And I'm right fucking back where I was at the beginning....
My guess is that debacle just cost me/my insurance company a shit ton of money. A SHIT TON.
For a goddamned referral.
I hate hr people.
Relative of mine in her 70s hurt her shoulder skiing, needed surgery. Didn't have to wait too long. Surgery was botched, leaving her in even more pain. She had to wait for nearly a year to get the surgery to fix the mistake. During that time she couldn't ski or do other things she enjoyed doing. Two years later she died of cancer.
I have no axe to grind with Norway, the women are pretty, the air is clean, it's a great place. The healthcare system seems fine to me. It's just that there are tradeoffs.
Because of life style/obesity/diabetic epidemic that America has, the medical system starts with one arm and from the elbow up the other arm tied behind it's back going into a fist fight.
In addition everyone is for trying to control costs, limit lottery, multi generation settlements payouts, etc UNTIL it affects them or a family member, then it's run every test possible, spare no expense to help or save a life.
We also have the same amount of doctors (and I would assume nurses, clinics, hospitals, etc) as we did in 1960 yet the population has went from 200 million to 330 million documented people.
So the government either has to throw an obscene amount of additional money into the system to close the inadequate supply of products and services needed to meet demand, or do (in some form) what every other nation that has socialized medicine does which is to limit services which brings down the demand b/c there is a certain percentage of patients that expire b4 they ever get the help the needed or it's too late when they do.
Kid I know is 15 years old and buckle-tears his meniscus playing freshman football. Has arthroscopic surgery, fast recovery, spent the night at a friend's house the same day watching Monty Python movies. Great outcome.
One year later, other knee blows out. Surgeon who did a great job on the first knee is booked out nine months, so he goes with a different surgeon who's available in a month. Wakes up from surgery with a giant soft cast from groin to halfway down the foot. Cooling pouch fed by an Igloo cooler that could be raised to circulate icewater inside the cast and wrapped around the knee. He couldn't get off the couch except to piss or shit for two weeks, and the trips to the bathroom included extreme pain. Immobilizer brace for a month, re-learn how to walk, three months before even a light jog was possible. Turns out this kid was knocked out on the operating table, the surgeon went in with the scope, looked at the knee, and said, "Hey, this looks like a perfect candidate for trying out that new procedure I learned at the conference last month. The one where we suture the tear through the scope instead of just cutting the flap out."
First time this kid gets hardly touched on a football field--six months after what should have been a simple arthroscopic surgery--his knee explodes again. Surgery number three, at sixteen years old. Football season starts in three months, so once again no time to wait for the surgeon who seemingly did a great job on the other knee. This time, it was back to the butcher for another round. Once again, it's knock-out time, surgeon goes in, cleans up the tear... "You know, it felt like there might have been something behind the patella. Let's cut a fourth hole, another through the patella, and have a look behind there."
Kid wakes up again with yet another groin to foot Igloo cooler immobilization device. The hole in the patella made the swelling ten times as worse and doubled the recovery time. Tons of pain, feeling of no stability. Had to rush recovery, and it was only two weeks prior to the junior season starting that he could finally sprint. Dives on and recovers an onside kick in the first game of the season.
*pop*
There was plenty of time to wait for the doctor who fixed the first knee to finally clean up the other.
This all happened in the United States. The country with the greatest doctors, technology, and standard of care in the world, right? Be careful with small sample sizes.
What I did see during my six hour ER debacle - there's a lot of fucking fat people in this country. Not, kinda sorta could use to lose 10 pounds....OBESE FAT PIGS. And there are a fuck ton of crackhead drug addicts.
Perhaps if we attacked those two items alone, we'd see a massive improvement in the healthcare system and homelessness.
Cost of a single aircraft carrier minus any planes or personnel: $9 billion to $13 billion depending on which one.
Cost of just the R&D for the F22 Raptor: $32.4 billion (over $67 billion total program cost).
Cost of program to dispose of surplus weapons grade plutonium: $7 billion+ (as of 2014, so certainly much higher now).
Cost of the Department of Homeland Security headquarters: Over $3 billion (and over ten years to complete...).
Cost of the GPS satellite system: $12 billion and $2 million per day.
Cost of James Webb Space Telescope: $9.7 billion.
Cost of Human Genome Project: $5 billion (shared across countries).
Cost of Copernicus satellite monitoring system: $7.4 billion.
Cost of Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer: $2 billion.
Cost of proposed Yucca Mountain nuclear waste depository: $96 billion.
Cost of Mars rovers: $2.5 billion each.
Cost of National Ignition Facility: $3.5 billion.
Cost of Large Hadron Collider: $4.75 billion.
Cost of ISS: $150 billion.
Cost of middle east wars since 2001: $6.4 trillion (as of 2019).
Cost of entire yearly U.S. federal budget: $4.829 trillion. So the NSF's entire budget is almost a twentieth of a percent of the federal budget. Which operates at a $2.3 trillion deficit.
I'm not saying that there isn't still a debate to be had around whether the federal government should be funding university research (although I'd guess this is exactly the kind of government spending that has paid for itself multiples over and made this country rich), just trying to offer some perspective.
Had my right ankle rebuilt 3-4 years ago...tore it up from decades of soccer. First doctor I went to told me about a new procedure they had where they remove all the cartilage and regrow new cartilage, wouldn’t be able to put pressure on it for 6 months, and wanted to know when I wanted to schedule it. Told him thanks, left, and then found the doctor who works on the Texans and set up an appointment with him. Took 3 months to get in, but he thought the first guy was nuts and ended up fixing my ankle.
In Europe they regulate to reduce the crazy experimental surgeries, but you also are regulated/limited against doctor-shopping to find the best doctor for you if you are smart enough to do it. There is no perfect system...pluses and minuses to everything.