Fiber optics transmit data through the medium of light, not electricity. It is exactly the same thing. The inside of the fiber optic cable is reflective and works just like a tube of mirrors. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiber-optic_communication

If you seriously don’t think Mexico has healthcare you need to take a step back and check your biases.

I have seen at least plans, and I think it's actually been done, for using fiber optic cables connected to a skylight to transfer sunlight to rooms that otherwise wouldn't be able to have any.

Nothing about fiber optic cables are about data specifically. It's just a cable that transmits light in a very similar way a tunnel with mirrors would (but better). It happens to be very useful for data, but it's just sending light through it that's interpreted as data at the other end.

Take your daily vitamin D pill!

Honestly, you’re getting a bad bias from the kinds of Americans that currently are immigrating there.

No, he really isn't.

One probably needs to look at the demography as well. Half of Germany's healthcare workforce is probably busy explaining retirees not to drink beer to swallow up their pills at any given time

Fuck. I really should have taken Spanish seriously back in High School after all

In Denmark (and I would assume those other countries as well) it varies depending on the factors. If you are a foreigner but are living in Denmark, or if you are staying in Denmark for a job, then you can apply for the rights of free healthcare treatment, but if you are a tourist needing urgent care, and are not a citizen of the EU (or the Nordic countries), or under the age of 18, then you will be billed.

So there definitely is a financial infrastructure to bill in Denmark, even though its own citizens never see it. Without knowing it precisely I would also assume that the bill would be very reasonable compared to a bill for the same treatment in the US.

That's one of the things uasians don't understand. Universal health care doesn't mean there are no private hospitals or practices. It means you have a choice, but you are covered no matter what.

Happy cake day!

It isn't too late to finish learning Spanish :)

So, it is that easy. Crazy.

Sounds like everywhere with actual free healthcare tbh. Here in Malaysia the healthcare has been free for decade, but doctor shortage, wad shortage is the common theme plaguing the sector, so the wait time for non-emergency treatment tend to be long. If you want quick service you can visit private healthcare.

This doesn't seems like a shallow gesture, this could actually pave the way for the future when the issue is under control.

Ah, so that's why the US is getting more aggressive towards Mexico. Can't have universal healthcare so close to the border.

This stands out even more because we're in an era when even countries with Universal Healthcare have been walking back on it (as well as Social Security, Unions and other earlier Leftwing conquests) by privatizing them piecemeal through things like forced outsourcing of some services and public-private initiatives.

Always was

You're a dick

Right now Americans are the assholes.

Right now? Americans have always been the assholes. Ask the Natives.

You can replace "muricans" with "rich immigrants".
For corrupt/conservative governments, rich immigrants are cool, and called investors.
Poor immigrants are terrorists.

I stand corrected, you are totally right.

Ask the Natives.

And all their slaves (including the current legal slaves who are incarcerated)

The Vietnamese, Kmer, Iraqis, Iranians, Cubans, pffff....

Wait. It's easier to list the ones that don't think they are assholes: Israel (bigger assholes), eeeehm.... Oh yeah, themselves as they are self-centered AF. End of the list.

In some countries they don’t even have the financial infrastructure to bill patients,

That's a bit fat-fetched....

What's important to note is that these placed aren't going back on it because it doesn't work. They are going back on it because of back room deals made with corporate insurance lobbyists and their bought politicians. Profit is always the driving force for privatization.

Just don't go for Duolingo

On both sides, lol.

Can we have health care, if Mexico pays for it?

Americans are already going there for cheaper health care. My dentist recommended some expensive work, and when I told him it cost too much, HE suggested I go to Mexico, and get it done for a third the cost.

Exactly.

You can just look at the experience of creating the National Health Service in the UK (there's a bunch of documentaries floating around) to see how it's an overall positive for Society by a large margin, not just directly but also indirectly because for example when people can go see a doctor for free they are far more likely to end up being treated for sickness early on (which its cheaper and easier) or to get treatment for debilitating but not life threatening conditions which in turn even gets reflected in higher Economic outcomes because healthier people are more productive.

Universal Healthcare Systems only "don't work" for those who are fatcats getting a slice of that sweet sweet 13%+ of national GDP (about 18% in the US) that goes into Healthcare in the average country.

Yes it's what's happening here in Canada and it's sickening. But it looks like it's better to blame the left for no reason, so why vote for them? Better keep slowly dismantling everything we collectively built instead!

And Mexico makes that easy in a lot of border areas. You can throw rocks between dental offices and pharmacies in Palomas. Walk across the border and not even show ID, until you to come back.

I voted her for this kind of policies, but reality is not that simple. Public healthcare costs a lot of money, and current facilities and personnel are in the stone age. I wouldn't go to any public healthcare facility right now as my first choice. At least not where I live. Sustained investment and vigilance are key, and I hope that by the end of her mandate we will have something we could call a proper public healthcare system, not yet a decent one, but an existing one.

one joke.

You can always come to Mexico to learn. Just try to avoid highly gentrified areas and you'll be fine. We are always happy to assist foreign people.

I think it's important to point out that this was for the formalized workers, not for all the actual workers. As all this decades past, less and less workers were recipients of social benefits, including healthcare. Work informality became an ally of cheap parallel healthcare systems as it became the new normal. This is not enacting dead laws only, the president is trying to fix the loophole between formalized workers and actual workers by truly universalizing healthcare to everyone, worker or not.

It is not part of your negotiations with your employer. You get health insurance through IMSS (social security) by law. It is not optional and the service is not tied to your salary. You can make millions, or minimum wage, your IMSS coverage would be the same.

We've had another coverage called "seguro popular", this has been free and not tied to employment since early 2000s. It was revamped and gutted by the previous president. The only requirement to get coverage was to not have coverage by IMSS. So, employed, you get IMSS. Unemployed, you got seguro popular.

So it is an empty gesture

You joke, but people overusing the free Healthcare is a problem.

I have a few friends/family working on both social security and state hospitals (the free healthcare mentioned in the article). There are a lot of users who are not sick and still go religiously to get appointments or try to hoard medicine. It's not a huge issue in the big picture but they do end up taking the limited time and resources from people who actually need it at the time.

The staff at the hospital knows them but they get the same attention as everyone, in case it is actually real this time.

I don't see how that's an argument for not doing this.

That's true, they fetch it from America.

I first saw that shit when I lived in Britain a decade ago, already at the hands of he who Thatcher called her "Greatest Achievement" (Tony Blair, who pivoted the Labour Party hard to the Right and away from a party representing the working class) and later directly at the hands of the Tories (Conservative Party).

Now that I'm back in my native Portugal (which also has a National Health service), the current rightwing government here is trying to do the same thing, tough not quite yet at the same point as NHS sneaky privatization was in Britain over a decade ago.

By the way, Mark Carney, now PM of Canada, was placed by and served as head of the Bank Of England for the Tories back when I was there, during which he was a great friend of bankers and presided over an economic period when in real terms the income of the lower 90% by wealth of the population was falling at about 1% per year, whilst that of the top 10% was growing at around 23%.

So, yeah, it does not surprise me at all, in any way form or shape, that Carney is working to make the fatcats fatter - same as he did in Britain - not for the good of most Canadians.

It's not, at all. Like I said, not really an issue. It's mostly that your joke reminded me of the situation than anything else

I have never overestimated the American healthcare system

That doesn't contradict anything I said. When did I mention electricity?

Fiberoptics are made of fiber. The ducts I described are empty inside.

Right, because fiberoptic cables are made up of little tiny strands of clear fiber, so that each one can have an "on" and an "off" status, creating the potential for high-speed data transfer.

What I'm saying is that these ducts don't need that, because they don't need to send billions of 1s and 0s per second. Just plain, natural light, which can be achieved without the fiber.

I like to compare it to someone sitting in math class, the lesson is on square numbers and they go "a square is a shape though". Everyone who actually paid attention knows the relation between the concepts and doesn't need to compensate ignorance with smug pedantry.

That is valuable context for sure, but the data doesn't illustrate wait times.

I'm from Canada which appears to have a similar ratio to Mexico (I don't consider our basic healthcare a "shallow gesture")

Wait times are long here, but twice as many doctors & hospitals would make the wait times only half as long, which would still be counted in years in some cases. So I don't believe that any country has "enough" or enough to make the wait times negligible, which is probably an unrealistic goal.

Well, the reason it's good for data transfer is the same reason it'd be good here. The properties of the cable means it's flexible and transmits light down the cable with little loss, and it's also pretty cheap. Light exiting the cable if reflected, because of the material properties, so it bounces down the path easily. A duct with mirrors doesn't have this property. You'd have to make sure the mirrors are angled correctly, and it'd only work if the light is collumated, so it's all traveling parallel and not spreading out.

Fiber obtic cables, again, are just transferring light. They don't have an on or off state. It's just light. It isn't just used for data transfer. It's just good for that because it's flexible and transmits light with little loss, and little spread. Light that comes in one end almost all comes out the other end, no matter how it bends on its path. This also means it's great for something like transferring light in a building. You don't need perfectly aligned mirrors that would decay in effectiveness with dust. You just run some cables from a skylight to where you want light, and it'll come out the other end.

You can transfer data without fiber optics. It can be done with mirrors, just like your idea. The problem is that this system runs into a lot of issues. It is only done for data transfer in very specific circumstances, where you can't have a direct connection usually, because of this. The same issues would happen here (with a little less concern, because we don't care about data integrity, only quantity). All this is to say, fiber optics are great for transferring light where you can't have a straight line, not just for data.

No you don't. You have three times as many nurses per 10k and more than 10% as many doctors per 10k.

There are big differences then. Where I live, we just got dental included in free healthcare, which is getting rolled out to more and more people in the next 10 years, where in the end everyone is included.

We already had free until age of 24 I think, but now they will go all the way. It's in Denmark btw.

This kinda thing doesn’t turn on over night. You might be able to afford private, but very few will be able to. The American paid system has a 3-9 month wait for doctor visits right now in Tucson. My doctor also doesn’t even physically examine me anymore because they’re so rushed to get in other patients, because capitalism.

Edit: not that capitalism is evil, it just has no place in healthcare.

A step in the right direction. Thank you for sharing the realism on a clickbait title.

it's a shallow gesture here because wait times are longer than reported, if you are lucky enough attended in time, and even then you will probably have to pay for every medicine and if you need surgery you will have to pay for any materials used too

hope that clears the sentiment we have in Mexico regarding our public healthcare