11 ms·

One of the items this article doesn't cover is healthcare spending, which has increased between 2 and 8 times since 1980 (depending on whether you're looking at

One of the items this article doesn't cover is healthcare spending, which has increased between 2 and 8 times since 1980 (depending on whether you're looking at individual spending or share of GDP). Here's a decent collection of charts: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spending-healthcare-changed-time/ https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe... It has been shocking to me to see how cheap and effective healthcare can be in other countries, from an emergency visit to the hospital (in the US: I got a $50k bill for one emergency surgery) to an eye test and new pair of glasses (US costs running $500-$1000, although startups have chipped away at this). In the US, healthcare is effectively a collection of cartels -- an enormous parasite that will be nearly impossible to rip off our soft underbelly.

hot_gril 4y ago
I always see the healthcare cost to consumer compared to other countries, but that isn't the true cost to society if the govt is subsidizing the rest. AFAIK the US healthcare is still truly more costly. Monopolies or something, idk.
- willcipriano 4y ago
  The US government spends more on healthcare per capita than any other OECD nation. We are just being robbed.
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    That still mixes a lot of factors in, including how often people need care and what kind of care is provided. Better to compare the same procedure/drug/etc in the US vs elsewhere. I think in the US it's usually more costly that way, especially when it comes to drugs.
  - ekianjo 4y ago
    > healthcare per capita than any other OECD nation. You also need to mention that the US is not like any other OECD nation. It also happens to he the nation with the largest innovation in Healthcare, and not just by a little. By Far.
    - acdha 4y ago
      Which is heavily paid for by taxpayer-funded research, so Americans are paying for it on both sides.
      - mattkrause 4y ago
        Heavily is something of a stretch: the NIH is a fairly small part ($40B) of the federal budget ($1,600B discretionary + another $4,000 mandatory spending). It's about 0.5% of the total budget, which works out to about a dollar a week for the average taxpayer. On top of that R&D spending has a huge multiplier: a lot of that money supports small, high-tech businesses, which in turn hire people...etc
        acdha 4y ago
        I never claimed it was a huge part of the federal budget, only that NIH and NSF provide a large fraction of basic science research. It’s always tricky tracing that to actual treatments but the drug companies tend to fund development of promising candidates from taxpayer-funded basic research more than doing that basic science themselves, and a lot of their R&D goes to tweaking existing drugs which might make them more effective/convenient but definitely protects the company’s margin against generics.
    - ceejayoz 4y ago
      Yep! Innovative billing practices, and innovative marketing! Actual R&D is a distant second. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-pharmaceutical-companies-are-spending-far-more-on-marketing-than-research/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...
    - Barrin92 4y ago
      there's no discernible innovation in healthcare, at least if you go by any actual metric that would indicate that. Life expectancy in Cuba is higher than in the US, infant mortality in the US is higher than in any peer country, drug death rates are higher than in most if not all comparable nations, and so on. The pharmaceutical industry might produce innovations concerning some rare diseases or whatever, but there's no discernible reason why that is, or should be paid for by the public healthcare sector.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    Americans also consume a lot more healthcare. And doctors and nurses earn 2x more than in other countries. An NHS nurse makes something like $33k a year. In the US it's going to be $60-70k before overtime.
    - notch656a 4y ago
      I'd be curious to see what portion of US health care goes to salaries of licensed health care workers, and how the relates to labor costs of various middle men and administrators, as well as regulatory compliance people.
      - telchior 4y ago
        Administration costs have gone something like 4x since 1980. The specific share they take is probably dependent on the niche, but like universities, a huge portion of cost is siphoned away to paper pushing.
      - Gibbon1 4y ago
        When you go to the doctor ask them if they think they are making more or less than your deductible for the visit.
        notch656a 4y ago
        The only time I've seen a doctor since I've been responsible for health insurance was when the police took me there in handcuffs against my will and without a court order or any legal basis. Obviously on that occasion I refused to provide insurance. I've never been to the doctor voluntarily as an independent adult or paid a deductible for my healthcare. Can you explain how the deductible relates and is useful for figuring doctor's pay?
        Gibbon1 4y ago
        When you see a doctor when you have insurance you have to pay an out of pocket fee. Because economics teaches us that patients needs skin in the game otherwise people will abuse 'free healthcare'. This makes total sense if you're an economist. Because well if you are an economist you are an extremely stupid person. Now if you're an accountant you'd take 20 patients a day X 250 working days a year X $50 and get $250,000. Which is close or more than a doctors take home.
- SQueeeeeL 4y ago
  It actually just is, if we're talking about purchasing power of an individual, which is pretty much the only thing the average person cares about
  - hot_gril 4y ago
    It matters when you're talking about policy. Subsidizing healtchare doesn't fix the problem of anticompetitive behavior among the suppliers, or pushing unnecessary treatment/drugs.
- buildartefact 4y ago
  The US federal government also spends more per capita on healthcare than almost every other nation.
  - nightski 4y ago
    Median after tax income per capita in the U.S. is really high as well, almost at the top.
    - acdha 4y ago
      Less so after you correct for all of the things which we have to pay for out of pocket: health insurance, copays, drugs, etc. but also things like education, childcare, retirement, transportation, and often housing. I’ve known a number of people from Europe or Asia and all of them commented on how they thought they’d be making more here based on the raw income numbers, and how much more stressful it was here because you had to do more work yourself to get the same or lesser quality.
      - nightski 4y ago
        A lot of those things are based on life circumstances. If you have a large family in a major metropolitan area making the median income then yeah you might be worse off. If you are a tech worker in a small city or town then it can be quite lucrative. You have a lot of control over these variables, especially when younger.
        notch656a 4y ago
        >Less so after you correct for all of the things which we have to pay for out of pocket: health insurance, copays, drugs, etc. but also things like education, childcare, retirement, transportation, and often housing. You end up paying for those things in other countries where you're provided them but not directly charged for it. The difference is in the USA for most of those if you don't pay you simply don't get the service, while in other countries you get the service but the tax-man may come and put you in jail if you don't pay for them. It's an individual choice but I prefer getting to pick (at least a little bit) how to spend that money personally rather than the government entirely deciding for me, although I can see how someone coming from a place where government does all that would find it uncomfortable.
gruez 4y ago
Not saying that healthcare spending isn't an issue, but it doesn't seem like a major contributor to the problem of gen Z being poor. They're not exactly at the age where most of them are racking up huge healthcare bills from chronic illnesses.
- ceejayoz 4y ago
  Their salaries are suppressed by the cost of insurance premiums, typically paid by their employer.
zbuf 4y ago
You might find this video interesting from a UK perspective, I suspect with a mix of overlap and difference to the USA: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuXzvjBYW8A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuXzvjBYW8A David Willets draws comparison of "boomers" to other generations, and includes what is paid into healthcare vs. what is consumed in a lifetime.
ekianjo 4y ago
> In the US, healthcare is effectively a collection of cartels Not just in the US. For example there's a huge glasses cartel in France with specialists that are protected by the government and make pairs of glasses cost 500~1000 USD with very little reimbursement, while in Japan private companies (that actually compete against each other's) let you have glasses for 60~70 USD all included. You are literally better off flying to Japan from France to shop for eyewear.
- rhexs 4y ago
  Might be tricky if you don’t speak Japanese though. Do they have multilingual optometrists that cater to tourists? I suppose Tokyo is big enough you can probably find one of anything.
  - QuarterReptile 4y ago
    French people are rich enough to be proficient English speakers, as are people in Tokyo. Seems like it'll probably work out. I spent about a week in Japan, split between Tokyo and Nagasaki, and had no problem, having not even tried to learn any Japanese, except that I couldn't get the right train stop because I couldn't even recognize the characters, much less read them.
    - missedthecue 4y ago
      Apparently Japan has fewer bilingual citizens than even the USA.
      - Bilal_io 4y ago
        > than even the USA. The US has a lot of immigrants, so I wouldn't count it as a country with a low percentage of bilinguals.
        missedthecue 4y ago
        Citizens?
Macha 4y ago
Honestly, glasses there sound like they're only double what they are here which as far as comparing US healthcare costs normally go is practically reasonable. Usually I'm hearing about the same thing costing 10x or more.
notch656a 4y ago
Healthcare in the US is hilarious. I got a bill when Border Patrol forcefully took me to the hospital to "search" me, despite not consenting to the search and them having no warrant or court order at the time care was rendered. That's right, you can be billed in the US if you never consented to have care, refused to even go to the hospital, no psych hold was in place, never had any emergency at all, and some healthcare workers touched you against your will without a court order nor being under arrest. I complaint to the state nursing board and they said this is all good and dandy. Name one other country where you can bill care to someone who refused it while being psychologically stable and being alert and oriented to deny consent, and no court authorized the treatment.
slg 4y ago
This is all true, but I am guessing the article skipped it because rising healthcare costs likely impact Gen Z much less than the population overall. Obamacare has allowed children to stay on their parent's insurance for much longer. All of Gen Z is still young enough to qualify for that, so as a generation they haven't felt the full cost of seeking insurance independently. Plus the overturning of the personal mandate means young people are once again free to simply not get insurance which is often a bad decision overall, but can end up saving a healthy young adult some money. There is still something very wrong with the healthcare system in the US, it just isn't a problem that has hit Gen Z particularly hard yet.
- WalterBright 4y ago
  > There is still something very wrong with the healthcare system in the US Government interference with the free market.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    I would take straight up communism health care or ancap pay-or-die unregulated over our current bastardized system that combines the worst aspects of both.
    - WalterBright 4y ago
      Really? I remember a thread on reddit about the HBO series Chernobyl. A lot of posters who lived through it commented. One I recall said that root canals were free in the USSR, but you didn't get any anesthetic. Another commented that the hospital stay was free, but you had to bribe the nurses to take care of you. Having had a root canal myself, it's "no thanks" to free communist health care.
      - notch656a 4y ago
        Order of preference [not an exhaustive list] 1) Unregulated ancap pay-or-die (or charity) 2) USSR style salute Lenin on the way into the doctor's office 3) Our system
curo 4y ago
I've heard this so often yet we left the UK for no other reason than the healthcare. My wife was pregnant and the experience from 0-7 months was so terrible, we flew to the US to have the child. Post-operative outcomes and survival rates in the US are far better than in the UK and many European countries. Statistics about better birth outcomes or higher longevity is best attributed to healthier lifestyles in Europe/UK and to lower stress (shorter work weeks, etc). While healthcare in the US can be very expensive, we paid 8k GBP for our NHS immigration surcharge and an additional 5k GBP in NHS-specific taxes (for 2 people, 1 year). A 1k/m health plan in the US (for two of us at the time) gave us 10x better health care. Yet Americans and Brits alike sing the praises of the NHS vs US healthcare. I chalk it up to shoddy journalism and folklore.
- bawolff 4y ago
  I don't think anyone disputes that us healthcare is better if you have the money.
  - ghiculescu 4y ago
    According to GP it’s the same price as the UK.
  - thegrimmest 4y ago
    So then healthcare in the US isn't "worse", it's only worse on average. Why would the people with money ever want to change the status quo?
    - bawolff 4y ago
      Because in most democracies the median is what you optimize for, not the extremes, since poor and rich alike only get 1 vote each. Additionally there are knock-on effects where lack ofgood average healthcare tends to reduce ecconomic efficiency as sick people are bad at working.
  - collegeburner 4y ago
    then you can understand why those of us with better healthcare and money don't want to take a downgrade to a "universal" system that is better for ppl with no money but worse for others. most middle class ppl in America have decent healthcare as a job benefit so most of us don't want to change. this is why "if you like your doctor you can keep them" was an essential talking point for passing obamacare.
WalterBright 4y ago
Healthcare costs increased in step with inflation until 1968, when the rate increased dramatically and never slowed down. What happened in 1968? LBJ's Great Society massive efforts at free medical care started. The same thing happened with college tuition. Government attempts to reduce its costs resulted in greatly expanded costliness. The most expensive things in the world are government provided "free" stuff.
- xadhominemx 4y ago
  The US has less government provided care than any other industrial country and by far the highest costs in the world
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    The US cost far less before the government got involved in it.
  - s1artibartfast 4y ago
    You are mixing up care and spending
- geysersam 4y ago
  How does this rhyme with the fact that many countries have well functioning, tax financed healthcare systems?
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Just because it's "free" doesn't mean you aren't paying plenty for it.
    - geysersam 4y ago
      > tax financed Of course people still pay. It's not provided by magic fairies. However, it's not automatically inefficient just because it's publicly funded.
Kaze404 4y ago
I took a sabbatical month between jobs, living in a (somewhat cushy) emergency fund, and while we were traveling my partner got sick with something and had to be rushed to a hospital. I called an ambulance at 7AM, and by noon she was back in bed, medicated and feeling much better. We didn’t spend a single dime, not even on the medication, and it’s crazy to me to think that if we were in the US that experience would’ve basically bankrupt us for no reason other than bad timing. It’s in these moments that the fact that I’ve paid an absurd amount in taxes over the years just… disappears.

hot_gril 4y ago

I always see the healthcare cost to consumer compared to other countries, but that isn't the true cost to society if the govt is subsidizing the rest. AFAIK the US healthcare is still truly more costly. Monopolies or something, idk.

willcipriano 4y ago
The US government spends more on healthcare per capita than any other OECD nation. We are just being robbed.
- hot_gril 4y ago
  That still mixes a lot of factors in, including how often people need care and what kind of care is provided. Better to compare the same procedure/drug/etc in the US vs elsewhere. I think in the US it's usually more costly that way, especially when it comes to drugs.
- ekianjo 4y ago
  > healthcare per capita than any other OECD nation. You also need to mention that the US is not like any other OECD nation. It also happens to he the nation with the largest innovation in Healthcare, and not just by a little. By Far.
  - acdha 4y ago
    Which is heavily paid for by taxpayer-funded research, so Americans are paying for it on both sides.
    - mattkrause 4y ago
      Heavily is something of a stretch: the NIH is a fairly small part ($40B) of the federal budget ($1,600B discretionary + another $4,000 mandatory spending). It's about 0.5% of the total budget, which works out to about a dollar a week for the average taxpayer. On top of that R&D spending has a huge multiplier: a lot of that money supports small, high-tech businesses, which in turn hire people...etc
      - acdha 4y ago
        I never claimed it was a huge part of the federal budget, only that NIH and NSF provide a large fraction of basic science research. It’s always tricky tracing that to actual treatments but the drug companies tend to fund development of promising candidates from taxpayer-funded basic research more than doing that basic science themselves, and a lot of their R&D goes to tweaking existing drugs which might make them more effective/convenient but definitely protects the company’s margin against generics.
  - ceejayoz 4y ago
    Yep! Innovative billing practices, and innovative marketing! Actual R&D is a distant second. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-pharmaceutical-companies-are-spending-far-more-on-marketing-than-research/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2015/02/11/big-p...
  - Barrin92 4y ago
    there's no discernible innovation in healthcare, at least if you go by any actual metric that would indicate that. Life expectancy in Cuba is higher than in the US, infant mortality in the US is higher than in any peer country, drug death rates are higher than in most if not all comparable nations, and so on. The pharmaceutical industry might produce innovations concerning some rare diseases or whatever, but there's no discernible reason why that is, or should be paid for by the public healthcare sector.
- missedthecue 4y ago
  Americans also consume a lot more healthcare. And doctors and nurses earn 2x more than in other countries. An NHS nurse makes something like $33k a year. In the US it's going to be $60-70k before overtime.
  - notch656a 4y ago
    I'd be curious to see what portion of US health care goes to salaries of licensed health care workers, and how the relates to labor costs of various middle men and administrators, as well as regulatory compliance people.
    - telchior 4y ago
      Administration costs have gone something like 4x since 1980. The specific share they take is probably dependent on the niche, but like universities, a huge portion of cost is siphoned away to paper pushing.
    - Gibbon1 4y ago
      When you go to the doctor ask them if they think they are making more or less than your deductible for the visit.
      - notch656a 4y ago
        The only time I've seen a doctor since I've been responsible for health insurance was when the police took me there in handcuffs against my will and without a court order or any legal basis. Obviously on that occasion I refused to provide insurance. I've never been to the doctor voluntarily as an independent adult or paid a deductible for my healthcare. Can you explain how the deductible relates and is useful for figuring doctor's pay?
        Gibbon1 4y ago
        When you see a doctor when you have insurance you have to pay an out of pocket fee. Because economics teaches us that patients needs skin in the game otherwise people will abuse 'free healthcare'. This makes total sense if you're an economist. Because well if you are an economist you are an extremely stupid person. Now if you're an accountant you'd take 20 patients a day X 250 working days a year X $50 and get $250,000. Which is close or more than a doctors take home.
SQueeeeeL 4y ago
It actually just is, if we're talking about purchasing power of an individual, which is pretty much the only thing the average person cares about
- hot_gril 4y ago
  It matters when you're talking about policy. Subsidizing healtchare doesn't fix the problem of anticompetitive behavior among the suppliers, or pushing unnecessary treatment/drugs.
buildartefact 4y ago
The US federal government also spends more per capita on healthcare than almost every other nation.
- nightski 4y ago
  Median after tax income per capita in the U.S. is really high as well, almost at the top.
  - acdha 4y ago
    Less so after you correct for all of the things which we have to pay for out of pocket: health insurance, copays, drugs, etc. but also things like education, childcare, retirement, transportation, and often housing. I’ve known a number of people from Europe or Asia and all of them commented on how they thought they’d be making more here based on the raw income numbers, and how much more stressful it was here because you had to do more work yourself to get the same or lesser quality.
    - nightski 4y ago
      A lot of those things are based on life circumstances. If you have a large family in a major metropolitan area making the median income then yeah you might be worse off. If you are a tech worker in a small city or town then it can be quite lucrative. You have a lot of control over these variables, especially when younger.
      - notch656a 4y ago
        >Less so after you correct for all of the things which we have to pay for out of pocket: health insurance, copays, drugs, etc. but also things like education, childcare, retirement, transportation, and often housing. You end up paying for those things in other countries where you're provided them but not directly charged for it. The difference is in the USA for most of those if you don't pay you simply don't get the service, while in other countries you get the service but the tax-man may come and put you in jail if you don't pay for them. It's an individual choice but I prefer getting to pick (at least a little bit) how to spend that money personally rather than the government entirely deciding for me, although I can see how someone coming from a place where government does all that would find it uncomfortable.

gruez 4y ago

Not saying that healthcare spending isn't an issue, but it doesn't seem like a major contributor to the problem of gen Z being poor. They're not exactly at the age where most of them are racking up huge healthcare bills from chronic illnesses.

ceejayoz 4y ago
Their salaries are suppressed by the cost of insurance premiums, typically paid by their employer.

zbuf 4y ago

You might find this video interesting from a UK perspective, I suspect with a mix of overlap and difference to the USA: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuXzvjBYW8A https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuXzvjBYW8A David Willets draws comparison of "boomers" to other generations, and includes what is paid into healthcare vs. what is consumed in a lifetime.

ekianjo 4y ago

> In the US, healthcare is effectively a collection of cartels Not just in the US. For example there's a huge glasses cartel in France with specialists that are protected by the government and make pairs of glasses cost 500~1000 USD with very little reimbursement, while in Japan private companies (that actually compete against each other's) let you have glasses for 60~70 USD all included. You are literally better off flying to Japan from France to shop for eyewear.

rhexs 4y ago
Might be tricky if you don’t speak Japanese though. Do they have multilingual optometrists that cater to tourists? I suppose Tokyo is big enough you can probably find one of anything.
- QuarterReptile 4y ago
  French people are rich enough to be proficient English speakers, as are people in Tokyo. Seems like it'll probably work out. I spent about a week in Japan, split between Tokyo and Nagasaki, and had no problem, having not even tried to learn any Japanese, except that I couldn't get the right train stop because I couldn't even recognize the characters, much less read them.
  - missedthecue 4y ago
    Apparently Japan has fewer bilingual citizens than even the USA.
    - Bilal_io 4y ago
      > than even the USA. The US has a lot of immigrants, so I wouldn't count it as a country with a low percentage of bilinguals.
      - missedthecue 4y ago
        Citizens?

Macha 4y ago

Honestly, glasses there sound like they're only double what they are here which as far as comparing US healthcare costs normally go is practically reasonable. Usually I'm hearing about the same thing costing 10x or more.

notch656a 4y ago

Healthcare in the US is hilarious. I got a bill when Border Patrol forcefully took me to the hospital to "search" me, despite not consenting to the search and them having no warrant or court order at the time care was rendered. That's right, you can be billed in the US if you never consented to have care, refused to even go to the hospital, no psych hold was in place, never had any emergency at all, and some healthcare workers touched you against your will without a court order nor being under arrest. I complaint to the state nursing board and they said this is all good and dandy. Name one other country where you can bill care to someone who refused it while being psychologically stable and being alert and oriented to deny consent, and no court authorized the treatment.

slg 4y ago

This is all true, but I am guessing the article skipped it because rising healthcare costs likely impact Gen Z much less than the population overall. Obamacare has allowed children to stay on their parent's insurance for much longer. All of Gen Z is still young enough to qualify for that, so as a generation they haven't felt the full cost of seeking insurance independently. Plus the overturning of the personal mandate means young people are once again free to simply not get insurance which is often a bad decision overall, but can end up saving a healthy young adult some money. There is still something very wrong with the healthcare system in the US, it just isn't a problem that has hit Gen Z particularly hard yet.

WalterBright 4y ago
> There is still something very wrong with the healthcare system in the US Government interference with the free market.
- notch656a 4y ago
  I would take straight up communism health care or ancap pay-or-die unregulated over our current bastardized system that combines the worst aspects of both.
  - WalterBright 4y ago
    Really? I remember a thread on reddit about the HBO series Chernobyl. A lot of posters who lived through it commented. One I recall said that root canals were free in the USSR, but you didn't get any anesthetic. Another commented that the hospital stay was free, but you had to bribe the nurses to take care of you. Having had a root canal myself, it's "no thanks" to free communist health care.
    - notch656a 4y ago
      Order of preference [not an exhaustive list] 1) Unregulated ancap pay-or-die (or charity) 2) USSR style salute Lenin on the way into the doctor's office 3) Our system

curo 4y ago

I've heard this so often yet we left the UK for no other reason than the healthcare. My wife was pregnant and the experience from 0-7 months was so terrible, we flew to the US to have the child. Post-operative outcomes and survival rates in the US are far better than in the UK and many European countries. Statistics about better birth outcomes or higher longevity is best attributed to healthier lifestyles in Europe/UK and to lower stress (shorter work weeks, etc). While healthcare in the US can be very expensive, we paid 8k GBP for our NHS immigration surcharge and an additional 5k GBP in NHS-specific taxes (for 2 people, 1 year). A 1k/m health plan in the US (for two of us at the time) gave us 10x better health care. Yet Americans and Brits alike sing the praises of the NHS vs US healthcare. I chalk it up to shoddy journalism and folklore.

bawolff 4y ago
I don't think anyone disputes that us healthcare is better if you have the money.
- ghiculescu 4y ago
  According to GP it’s the same price as the UK.
- thegrimmest 4y ago
  So then healthcare in the US isn't "worse", it's only worse on average. Why would the people with money ever want to change the status quo?
  - bawolff 4y ago
    Because in most democracies the median is what you optimize for, not the extremes, since poor and rich alike only get 1 vote each. Additionally there are knock-on effects where lack ofgood average healthcare tends to reduce ecconomic efficiency as sick people are bad at working.
- collegeburner 4y ago
  then you can understand why those of us with better healthcare and money don't want to take a downgrade to a "universal" system that is better for ppl with no money but worse for others. most middle class ppl in America have decent healthcare as a job benefit so most of us don't want to change. this is why "if you like your doctor you can keep them" was an essential talking point for passing obamacare.

WalterBright 4y ago

Healthcare costs increased in step with inflation until 1968, when the rate increased dramatically and never slowed down. What happened in 1968? LBJ's Great Society massive efforts at free medical care started. The same thing happened with college tuition. Government attempts to reduce its costs resulted in greatly expanded costliness. The most expensive things in the world are government provided "free" stuff.

xadhominemx 4y ago
The US has less government provided care than any other industrial country and by far the highest costs in the world
- WalterBright 4y ago
  The US cost far less before the government got involved in it.
- s1artibartfast 4y ago
  You are mixing up care and spending
geysersam 4y ago
How does this rhyme with the fact that many countries have well functioning, tax financed healthcare systems?
- WalterBright 4y ago
  Just because it's "free" doesn't mean you aren't paying plenty for it.
  - geysersam 4y ago
    > tax financed Of course people still pay. It's not provided by magic fairies. However, it's not automatically inefficient just because it's publicly funded.

Kaze404 4y ago

I took a sabbatical month between jobs, living in a (somewhat cushy) emergency fund, and while we were traveling my partner got sick with something and had to be rushed to a hospital. I called an ambulance at 7AM, and by noon she was back in bed, medicated and feeling much better. We didn’t spend a single dime, not even on the medication, and it’s crazy to me to think that if we were in the US that experience would’ve basically bankrupt us for no reason other than bad timing. It’s in these moments that the fact that I’ve paid an absurd amount in taxes over the years just… disappears.