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Idealists like you are why 100 million+ died due to communism in the 20th century. We've gone from borderline stone-age medical treatment where basic surgery w
by throwawy3589 8y ago
Idealists like you are why 100 million+ died due to communism in the 20th century.
We've gone from borderline stone-age medical treatment where basic surgery was impossible and simple infections untreatable to where we are today in less than a century. Is everything perfect right now? No, but it's improving steadily and I think with the current advances affordable health care will be possible within the next 10-20 years without government mandating it.
- deleted 8y ago[deleted]
- your-nanny 8y agothis is historically illiterate, and frankly insulting. if there is any starry eyed idealist here it's.. you.
- throwawy3589 8y agoI don't recall the Soviet Union creating many new drugs when they were following Lysenkoism and denying genetics for ideological reasons. The result was 50 million people dying in China alone. But I'm sure that was just the evil imperialists fault. The US adopting universal health care would be a waste of trillions of dollars and arguably the dumbest, most selfish, and most deadly decision in human history when accounting for the much better way those trillions could be spent.
- kzzzznot 8y agoThe Soviet Union and taxpayer funded healthcare in capitalist systems are very different. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man
- dang 8y agoPlease don't violate the site guidelines regardless of how bad another comment is. That only makes things worse. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- meowface 8y agoHow do you reconcile these ideas with the fact that most developed countries do have free universal healthcare and are doing fine?
- throwawy3589 8y agoAs I stated in another post, their health care is subsidized massively by the US acting as a profit center to fund drug and medical technology development. The US produces a disproportionate amount of new drugs, other countries mostly create cheaper and easier to make follow on drugs. Get rid of the profit motive and new drug creation grinds to a halt. https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-7fa1b6167f99405f82524d108b4bfd70.webp https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-7fa1b6167f99405f82524d...
- iknowstuff 8y agoUh, looks like if you combine all European countries on this sketchy chart, as one should considering it's only fair to compare markets of similar amounts of population, their output looks similar to USA's. This says Western Europe alone is responsible for 22% of pharma revenue, as opposed to 33% from all of the United States: https://www.statista.com/statistics/784420/share-of-worldwide-pharma-revenue-by-country/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/784420/share-of-worldwid...
- meowface 8y agoSurely there can be some kind of balanced situation where drug and technology development can still be profitable in the US but impoverished people can still get free healthcare instead of avoiding doctor/hospital visits and dying?
- dang 8y agoWe've banned this account for repeatedly violating the site guidelines. Please don't create accounts to break HN's rules with. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html