this post was submitted on 18 Oct 2023
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One of the main reasons employers want to keep healthcare private; enormous leverage against labor, organized or not..

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[–] [email protected] 116 points 1 year ago (2 children)

Isn't it illegal for an employer to retaliate against striking unionized employees?

[–] unfreeradical 81 points 1 year ago

Laws protect business, not workers.

[–] [email protected] 50 points 1 year ago

yes but the law has no teeth. The punishment is a strongly worded letter from a judge and a fine that is cheaper than paying an employee.

a General Strike is needed

[–] [email protected] 28 points 1 year ago (1 children)

This is precisely why public, non-profit, university hospitals are always superior.

[–] unfreeradical 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)

For profit hospitals are a historic aberration.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That is probably not true if you look across the history of human civilization. I agree that it’s a recent development vis a vis growth in this area.

[–] unfreeradical 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

The observation was intended as applying to the industrial era, since such is the time within which emerged hospitals as we now know them.

However, I feel the same generalization holds more broadly. Hospitals have not been instituted to enrich an owner.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

There’s a reason that hospital and hospitality are such related words. They were originally more like inns with physicians. You paid for a room and received treatment in it. Profit was certainly part of the picture.

[–] unfreeradical 3 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

There are many variations of the theme throughout history that may be called hospitals, but any large facility for housing the ill would have tended to have no private owner. Doctors visiting the homes of patients has been more common historically than patients visiting homes or offices of doctors.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Now that’s the service I wish still existed.

[–] unfreeradical 1 points 1 year ago

One problem is that as technology has been advanced to treat health conditions, care for individuals has been forgotten in its basic essence of being humane and social.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Even more reason to strike. Issue 1 in the demands: we still get healthcare when we strike

[–] unfreeradical 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Once you cross a certain line, you might as well be suggesting burning down the house and building a new one.

[–] uis 15 points 1 year ago

I wish they make their own hospital with blackjack and hookers.

[–] XbSuper 13 points 1 year ago (1 children)
[–] OrderedChaos 3 points 1 year ago

Land of the free.

[–] [email protected] 10 points 1 year ago (3 children)

Is there a way to view this article without subscribing?

[–] dragonflyteaparty 6 points 1 year ago

Open it on Mozilla and choose reader view?

[–] pdxfed 5 points 1 year ago

Like most of whatever parent company or crappy site interface some mid-tier cities have, if you reload the page a few times it should give you the option to view? Maybe you got the adock popup, same thing, there is usually an option out. I'm not a subscriber.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)
[–] Darkhoof 7 points 1 year ago

That's obscene. I hope the nurses teach them their place.

[–] Desistance 6 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Keep going. Fuck them.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Healthcare can stay private as far as I'm concerned, but it certainly shouldn't be provided by the employer. Just give me more cash and let me buy my own.

[–] unfreeradical 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

The profit motive definitely deforms the structure of medicine and medical services.

A guarantee for coverage, with most providers being private, is the essence of the systems in many countries, and is far better than the system in the US.

Yet, even considered globally, our world has been made bleaker by the domination of healthcare, for development, manufacturing, and distribution of technology and processes through private corporations, the features of such systems including monopolies, patents, and private investment.

We might try to imagine medicinal systems being structured and practiced as a public good, emphasizing human life as having the highest value.