Comment by baq

> It shows that the US never had a world war on the continent. All the other countries treat health care as a matter of national security.

You seem to be making a weird connection here, but maybe I misunderstand you.

Are you truly suggesting that countries who have socialized health care do so because they've been affected by war on their territory at some point?

A historical aside, the reason private health insurance was created in the US was World War 2.

I could be misremembering pieces, but the long and short of it was that salary compensation was capped/restricted during World War 2 and so companies began offering benefits outside of salary, private health insurance among them, to retain their employees.

> shows that the US never had a world war on the continent. All the other countries treat health care as a matter of national security

I forgot about the world-class healthcare the populations of Africa, the Middle East and the war-ravaged parts of Asia enjoy.

I agree there is probably a link between war and healthcare. But the link flows through civic pride and identity, and population-wide familiarity with the horrors of war, more than it does from any sense of military preparedness. (That said, I've never seen an American politician try to sell universal healthcare as a national security imperative. Hmm...)

There are plenty of countries with 'socialized' healthcare that had no wars in their territories.

I'm not sure I follow that argument - Canada shares a continent.

>It shows that the US never had a world war on the continent. All the other countries treat health care as a matter of national security.

Sounds like https://xkcd.com/1122/

For instance, Canada, which also arguably "never had a world war on the continent" has public healthcare. What gives? What about all the central/south american countries that don't have public healthcare?