Comment by gfiorav
5 months ago
Right. I believe every socialist should feel offended by the term “free healthcare.”
Building an economy capable of sustaining such a system requires immense effort and collective support. Describing it as “free” is a marketing tactic that assumes people are stupid.
> Describing it as “free” is a marketing tactic that assumes people are stupid.
No... it's a statemet of fact that means when I leave the doctor's, I don't have to pull out my checkbook or credit card or wait for a bill to arrive.
But the doctor isn't working for free, the nurse isn't working for free, the receptionist isn't working for free, the machines in the office weren't free, the rent on the office isn't free. Yes, theres no bill that arrives that you pay for directly out of pocket, but the system very much isn’t actually free.
Who on earth thinks the doctor is working for free, or the nurse, or anyone else...?
This is the most strawman of strawmen I might ever have heard.
By your logic, the word "free" should be banished from the English language, because literally nothing could ever be free.
Except, for people who have common sense, "free" means you don't have to pay for the thing directly.
In this case, your taxes get aggregated with everyone else's and then some gets split up into health services. But since there's no direct connection between the two -- you don't get more healthcare if you pay more taxes individually, and you don't get to pay less taxes if you don't go to the doctor -- it's conceptualized as paying taxes on one end, and getting free health care on the other. This is just common sense. Everyone understands how this works. It's the same way we have free schools. Or you think schools aren't actually free either...?
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