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The Netherlands subsidizes about 75% of healthcare costs using taxpayer money, and implements a system of price controls on private insurers while making covera
by matthewdgreen 5y ago
The Netherlands subsidizes about 75% of healthcare costs using taxpayer money, and implements a system of price controls on private insurers while making coverage mandatory. This would certainly be called nationalized, universal healthcare by the standards of US politics.
- refurb 5y agoIf it’s private insurers and private doctors how can you call it “nationalized”?
- matthewdgreen 5y agoBecause the government stepped in and said “we are going to use the enormous power of the state to make sure every citizen in this country is covered”, whether that involves using private insurance but dictating how and when it can charge, or paying for service directly, or subsidizing costs and then allowing private insurance to administrate. It doesn’t matter to me if you call it “nationalized insurance” or “universal healthcare” or “healthcare that is overwhelmingly funded and controlled by the state but leverages some private components in controlled ways” -— that’s just semantics. All that matters to me is that we don’t try to fool people into thinking that the Netherlands or Sweden have anything like the broken medieval mess we have here in the US, when obviously what they’ve done is radically different.
- refurb 5y agoNationalized means “government owned”. Maybe pick a different word? The govt has strict rules around drug manufacturing but it’s not accurate to say the industry is “nationalized”.