and then of course, the expense is passed down to the individual, rather than the state that has enacted the longterm policy decisions made the population's health worse. the incentive cycle here is completely fucked
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there was a good @pkrugman.bsky.social newsletter recently describing how private health insurance is heavily subsidised by the tax system and that a large amount (majority?) of medical expenses go through medicare/medicaid
the state seems to pay a lot of the expense, certainly not all, but a lot
Try to walk to my library/grocer/coffee shop. Need to cross busy road w/o crosswalks. Complained to local supervisor whose office is in the library bldg he told me all roads are state controlled and their sole interest is moving cars not people on foot. Solution is to drive the 1 mile
∧ like fucking everything, we can have hyper expensive, bad for us and our environment options like cars or private jets, or we could just build a world with walkable/accessible cities and good public transit and high speed rail for far less per person with so many side benefits
and that car-based culture also influences how many Americans move about in cities that are best experienced on foot, whether it be NYC, Hanoi, Copenhagen, Munich, or Amsterdam
What’s fascinating is I cycle both in a city and then in suburbs/rural areas. The city is far nicer and motorists are way more considerate. Fascinates me
My time in Japan made me come back and walk a lot more. Not ideal in my area because it’s designed to drive everywhere, but still a few things I can get to that way.
It also makes us nuts as we travel most of our lives from hermetically sealed building to hermetically sealed building by means of a giant machine that hurtles down a concrete shoot packed in with a bunch of other giant machines. It makes us, aggressive, capricious, controlling, selfish, i.e. nuts.
Also traffic is one of the top-ranked causes of injury in the US. Add that to the health effects of pollution and it is one of our most damaging public health exposures.
Addressing growing public discontent with the private healthcare system is now imperative.
The evidence is clear: a publicly funded healthcare system leads to longer life expectancy and better overall health. Here a blueprint
The only way you get personal transport with no traffic is teleportation - and that will be a VERY long time if ever.
A bicycle is the nearest available choice.
Carrying someone of normal weight even. Yeah the pandemic of being overweight because people don't move around themselves as much as they should will demand larger aircrafts.
The hunger for large cars too, people won't be satisfied by lightweight planes or small aircrafts.
Like, I don't get what you want. The traffic will be in the air then, accidents will just be more deadly, pollution will not go away, yay mass death because the WLAN went out due a snowstorm. But weeee fancy flying cars, those are cool.
I don't believe it will happen and I don't think it's smart.
No pollution because they are electric. No collisions because of computer avoidance control. No WLAN involved. Infinitely more space to travel in than crowded, single level, single lane roads. It will happen whether you like it or not.
I appreciate how science fiction this all became so quickly. By day I’m in public health, but I love futuristic literature. It might not hold any answers for us, but maybe it helps us imagine a better world.
yes, in the sky where there are no roads and a lot more area in which to fly without interference and essentially no 'traffic' - but I'm talking about the very distant future, well beyond our lifetimes
Idk how you can have so little imagination about what congestion in the air could easily look like if even a small fraction of people traveled that way vs fucking trains ( even if energy and pollution and noise and clear unobstructed views of the skies weren’t massive intractable issues )
except logistics wise it would still have to be heavily limited & monitored like airplanes are. You would need to set up a traffic system to limit where people can fly so they aren't just crashing into each other all the time.
Also shifting traffic to the sky doesn't change the dynamics of where people are traveling to and from, which would make something like event traffic considerably more dangerous
Yes if people gave a damn abiut kids they'd be saying that any car over the size a small hatchback should be classed as a commercial vehicle, and restricted to commercial accounts only. They would also have high taxes and fees.
The infrastructure has to be there first. Right now even in the city a lot of areas don't have sidewalks or other pedestrian infrastructure. Even if people wanted to walk there's no way to do so.
And of course in suburbs & rural areas everything is so spread out walking is not feasible.
Living in the city, I had so many moments as a kid where I thought I saw a star, only to realize it was actually a plane or the like because it was moving too fast to be a star.
And it's not just that car-based transportation doesn't give you benefits that active transportation does, it's that it's actively harmful because of additional stress!
I quit my last job after they issued an RTO mandate in part because how much I hated driving there made me feel.
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the state seems to pay a lot of the expense, certainly not all, but a lot
approx 80% for medicare
approx 90% for medicaid
because of tax exclusions for esi and other tax benefits, approx 20% for privately insured patients
seems to be the opposite of what you say
https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/the-burden-of-medical-debt-in-the-united-states/
but then there's another 3.6t that is paid by the government and private insurance premiums
(approximately 400b is from third parties)
https://www.businessinsider.com/first-trip-new-york-city-frequent-traveler-best-worst-parts-2024-12
The evidence is clear: a publicly funded healthcare system leads to longer life expectancy and better overall health. Here a blueprint
A bicycle is the nearest available choice.
The hunger for large cars too, people won't be satisfied by lightweight planes or small aircrafts.
I don't believe it will happen and I don't think it's smart.
also, no this will never exist at scale.
It will never make sense for anything like helicopters to replace cars!
Click below to view ⬇️
And of course in suburbs & rural areas everything is so spread out walking is not feasible.
Nope! You just walk 30k steps/day on vacation
I quit my last job after they issued an RTO mandate in part because how much I hated driving there made me feel.
Moving away from car-oriented transit in urban planning is like the single most health-conscious thing cities can do and they simply refuse.
IT DOES NOT MAKE ANY SENSE!