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Comment by Alupis

2 years ago

> There are plenty of countries which operate functioning public health systems with optional private care.

You mean the US...?

It's a quaint idea... but nobody likes the reality once it's implemented. Evidenced by the fact that the US is already the largest public health system in the world, and people do not even realize it.

No, functioning, so not like the US, universal public health care with costs covered by the government.

I'm not sure why you're ignoring a lot of Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

  • The states that were well on their way to having public options before obamacare generally have ok public options at this point. Frankly they probably would have done better without the federal wrench being thrown into things.

  • > I'm not sure why you're ignoring a lot of Europe, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

    These are exactly the ones I had in mind.

    > universal public health care with costs covered by the government.

    To be pedantic, this doesn't exist anywhere in the world. The taxpayers foot the bill universally. You may not personally care, but it matters when we're discussing spending other people's money.

    In the US, we already have universal public health care. If you cannot afford to pay a portion of your premium, you can be eligible for healthcare at zero expense to you.

    The US government spends more on healthcare than any other nation. The US is already socialized healthcare. It's just not the utopia people thought it would be so they continue to complain...

    It gets way more complicated than we can discuss here - things like private premiums are so expensive because the socialized system does not pay it's entire bill, etc. The entire thing is a massive C.F. but speeding further down that same tunnel is not going to suddenly magically make it better. It's very much-so the "but we can do it better" mentality, despite however many previous attempts there has been.

    • >> These are exactly the ones I had in mind

      Those countries citizens rate their happiness with the healthcare system in their country ~2x higher than US citizens do. So that line of thinking doesn’t hold.

      >> it matters when we're discussing spending other people's money

      That’s not how money works and until that fundamental misunderstanding is eliminated, learned helplessness will prevail. A country that issues its own currency cannot save money in its own currency.

      The hard limitation a government faces is resources, not capital.

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