Economist blogger Matt Bruenig was recently a guest on the Slate podcast The Gist. During his interview, Bruenig made comments about how simple it would be to lower the costs of U.S. healthcare by freezing and ultimately lowering reimbursement rates. "Simply by freezing those payments, because the economy is going to grow, it will shrink. Right? It's relative size will shrink as a percentage of the economy."
When I confronted him on Twitter about his misdirected and overly simplistic view point (I cited the fact that lowered reimbursement rates have not shrunk U.S. healthcare costs and are contributing to the collapse of rural medicine), he went on to say that U.S. healthcare is so expensive because nurses and doctors get paid too much. He also said that my opinion was irrelevant and biased because as a nurse making $42/hour I am benefiting from this uniquely expensive system.
Help! I really want to defend my profession from narrow-minded, jerk-face opinions like this!
Economist blogger Matt Bruenig was recently a guest on the Slate podcast The Gist. During his interview, Bruenig made comments about how simple it would be to lower the costs of U.S. healthcare by freezing and ultimately lowering reimbursement rates. "Simply by freezing those payments, because the economy is going to grow, it will shrink. Right? It's relative size will shrink as a percentage of the economy."
When I confronted him on Twitter about his misdirected and overly simplistic view point (I cited the fact that lowered reimbursement rates have not shrunk U.S. healthcare costs and are contributing to the collapse of rural medicine), he went on to say that U.S. healthcare is so expensive because nurses and doctors get paid too much. He also said that my opinion was irrelevant and biased because as a nurse making $42/hour I am benefiting from this uniquely expensive system.
Help! I really want to defend my profession from narrow-minded, jerk-face opinions like this!
Here is the original Twitter feed: The Gist on Twitter: "On The Gist, @MattBruenig makes a case for Bernie’s trustworthiness and economic plans: https://t.co/ya9wNTGoUb"