Shouldn't we be expanding the health care infrastructure?

[milestogo]

The pandemic has been going on for almost 2 years. There are shortages of health care workers and hospital beds. Yet we are behaving as though this is some kind of temporary situation.

What if its not?

What if the virus continues to evolve and infect people for years to come?

I get that nobody anticipated this, but now that it has been here for 2 years shouldn't the country be planning as if it could last a long time?

[WhiskeyGrinder]

1. One would think!

[CrispyQ]

2. You'd think, wouldn't you? But we have other priorities.

$768 billion for the military & it was barely a blip on the news. I didn't hear one repub ask how we were paying for that.

[Solly Mack]

3. The virus is adapting...people, not so much.

[WhiskeyGrinder]

4. And not only will we be dealing with variants, we'll be dealing with long-term complications in

people who survived the variants. Vascular issues, long covid, increased risk of diabetes in children. It's clear leaders are woefully unprepared for the moment, or what's coming.

[underpants]

5. Supply of health care is regulated so as to increase price

The free yearly physical in Obamacare brought a lot more people into the system. That, it could handle. Nursing is the big key but it takes years to become a nurse and it’s a tightrope - one mistake or unexpected event and you can get flushed out. I know several stories of people in nursing school right near the end and they lost transportation or needed work and they didn’t finish.

[milestogo]

6. The Chinese put together 2 new hospitals within a matter of days.

Amid surging cases of COVID-19, China built two hospitals in the pandemic's epicenter, Wuhan, in under two weeks to isolate and treat COVID-19 patients. Consisting largely of prefabricated rooms and components, the two-story structures were dubbed "instant hospitals."

https://www.npr.org/sections/goatsandsoda/2020/09/10/909688913/whatever-happened-to-the-instant-hospitals-built-in-wuhan-for-covid-19-patients

[Demsrule86]

7. We have a 50 50 congress people. We could pass BBB without paid leave or the child tax credit and

fix the Medicaid issue in states that did not vote for expansion which would help everyone. We would also get paid pre-k as well as other really good things.

[CrackityJones75]

8. Sure. Let's use magic.

How else do you propose doing that at the moment?

[leftstreet]

9. DURec

[stopdiggin]

10. our healthcare 'infrastructure'

is largely in the private for profit sector. I'm not sure how on board I am with pumping a lot of money into our Catholic hospital systems. Expanding personal coverage, government funded systems and clinics - that all makes sense. But bolstering people that are then in turn refusing medical services because of their belief systems - turning away ambulances from emergency rooms, or discharging patients on to skid row streets? No thanks!

[milestogo]

13. The point is to bolster a system that cannot handle the current patient load because of the pandemic

I know someone whose cancer surgery is being delayed because the hospital does not have enough open beds. There are lots of people in this situation.

[stopdiggin]

14. I understood the point.

And I'll stick with mine. I'm not sure if I want to be plowing government money into institutions that are unaccountable - and sometimes acting counter, and with prejudice, to my own beliefs and ethics.

Give me a government run system (w/ some controls and accountability) - and my answer becomes quite different.

[Bayard]

11. Isn't some of this in the Build Back Better plan?

I'd like to see more doctors AND nurses get a nearly free ride through school where they are required to spend a certain amount of their early career in areas that desperately need their skills. My ex used to work for Univ. or Louisville. He said if you went into the locker rooms of the med school, you didn't see posters of the Peace Corp, etc. You saw ones of ski resorts and luxury autos.

We could also loosen the requirements for personnel coming in from other countries, Cuba, for instance.

[CousinIT]

12. de-privatizing, de-profitizing, expanding, yes. n/t

[Klaralven]

15. We should be reducing the need for healthcare infrastructure

Through vaccines, antiviral drugs, better neonatal care, fewer preterm births, less disease from poor health habits, less drug addiction, etc.

[Autumn]

16. Stop it! That just makes too much sense. Have you forgotten we have a bloted miltary that

needs to piss away a shit ton of money?