"You exist to make money for us"

I'll never understand why normies love these freak grifters. They all look weird too. It makes no sense to me.

Although I disagree with Dr. Oz's premise, his argument that he's given here is sound.

And a person who makes that argument must believe in universal healthcare. Because there are people out there who can't work today because of health issues, or who are caregivers for people with health issues.

Universal healthcare also allows people to start their own businesses without fear that their decisions will lead to worse medical outcomes.

There may be nothing better for the old GDP than universal healthcare.

The true enemy in healthcare are not utilitarians. It's the small government idiots and the authoritarian sycophants.

Of course, as Dr. Oz is a MAGA conservative, I assume that he doesn't actually have this logical consistency. He likely doesn't even care what he's saying and just makes the most convenient immediate argument and doesn't have any underlying morality that it is based on, except to support Dear Leader, because that's the MAGA way.

Man they don’t even have the sense to know what the quiet part is anymore

It's one of those rare cases in which both sides should agree- whether you believe a government is an institutional arm of people who agree to collectively take care of everyone, or whether you give no shits and only want to make money. And yet somehow America still has terrible healthcare.

Ok I've had it with these fuckin gimps, fuck the Republicans

“You are worth keeping alive only as long as your owners can continue to extract value from your existence.” - Dr. Oz

The mask has come off. Huzzah.

And yet they appear to be trying to make people sicker

Thanks Oprah!

I don't like where Nominal Dr Oz is usually coming from, but the bare transactional relationship isn't all that wrong.

We participate in many social contracts in our day-to-day life. We hold doors, we say please, we pay for things, we clean up our mess; these are part of what makes us not dirtbags, but it's a relationship that has rules; it's why that asshole listening to loud music or shouting into a phone held like a pizza slice (where are the reality-show cameras?!) inspire such offense.

In the larger society, we work to get money for basic needs. We pay taxes into a consolidated pool for the things that are bigger than our household. We elect people to manage our stuff for us, because we learned that we can't individually manage the commons without tragedy. Parks, clean water, reliable power, all of this needs to be provided and maintained for the public with public money managed by people chosen by the public who can do that best. When that fails, we get Trump.

Healthcare is like parks: we can't afford it individually, and our ultimate focus on the 'I' and the 'now' makes us bad managers. So we appoint people to manage the best healthcare system we can build, try to keep selfish conservatives from corrupting it for their own gain, and we fund it from taxes. Obviously, this is another part that Americans may not be aware of, and so I'm hoping they can just go with it for a sec.

And there the relationship is plain: healthcare wins when everyone's a healthy, productive, contributing member of society, naturally. When that happens, everyone also pays taxes as per a proper sliding scale (again, Americans will want to suspend disbelief and imagine that's happening while their own system isn't doing that effectively right now), and taxes fund, in part, more healthcare.

A healthy healthcare system exists directly to improve the health of all people in society, and indirectly funds its own existence.

While qualitative KPIs are hard to show concretely, more healthy, smart, working people pay more tax, and that's quantifiable. Pared down to a brutally simplistic relationship, it's good healthcare <-> more tax paid.

I support this. Sure, I want people to be healthier, just like I support schools I'll never attend just because I want people to be smarter. But this healthcare<->taxes thing is something I can sell to the selfish, transactional-thinking conservative dirtbags as a quantitative, invest-now-profit-later kind of thing I think speaks to most conservatives and the shrewd investment-porn they want to believe they're part of.

I'm proud to occupy a position where I pay far more in taxes than I'm currently using in services; and having been on the other end of it more than once, I'm very glad to be paying healthy taxes because that's a far better problem to have. I think we pay too little taxes above a certain earnings level - this region removed its scaled supplemental medical services payment and so it's supported only from tax proceeds - and I worry it's put our healthcare at risk of manipulation by populist shitheels trying to cash in on a sicker healthcare system (America: you are here) and tell us it's the only way to do it (America and London and Paris: you are here), and I wish it took a healthier portion even though it makes poor-kid me a little sad if I can't keep more for myself. But that's how it is, because that's the contract we all enter into by existing in this region under the rules we vote on and upheld by people we choose.

So what happens after you retire?

Also, this ignores the rampant ageism that is ever-present in the workforce.

In today's economic circumstances, you are probably best working until you are 65 or more, unless you want to be impoverished in your later years. Also, your health care is tied to the workplace for the most part. Unless something changes drastically to correct this - something like UBI and/or better SS/Medicare, better ACA, etc., that's just the way it is.

In addition, biotech may add years of healthspan to people's lives, meaning they would be very able to work and live healthy lives much, much longer than was expected of prior generations. On the other hand, you have this accepted culture where it's like people start signaling to people as young as 35 that maybe they are getting long in the tooth.

I mean....what in the FUCK? How is that math going to work out in the aggregate?

Fuck Dr Oz

Weirdly, I agree with this statement. "Work gives you purpose." is something that my friends dad once said, that I only recently gotten to understand the meaning of. I have severe treatment resistant clinical depression and the only time I get a sliver of relief is when I'm at work and my brain is firing on all cylinders. It's only when I'm alone, on my own time is when all the feeling of inadequacy and self hate creep back. So yeah, if the whole purpose of the healthcare system is to keep me health enough to be a cog in the machine, then so be it.

Because, seriously, what's the alternative? Is your endgame to slouch on the couch all day? Is your end goal in life to be a sloth? You got to contribute, otherwise this whole thing doesn't work. And to make it work, you gotta work.