The author's discussion of healthcare seems a bit off, or at least misleading, to me. I'll freely admit I'm not an expert and my understanding is that the healt

The author's discussion of healthcare seems a bit off, or at least misleading, to me. I'll freely admit I'm not an expert and my understanding is that the healthcare system in the United States has all kinds of perverse incentives and lack thereof, etc. That said: The author (and others) mention people getting surgery and the like for free. This doesn't seem accurate to me: doctors and nurses must be payed, medicines acquired, hospitals run, etc. The cost may be collected differently (taxation vs. insurance or at time of service) and various systems may be more or less efficient. But except in rare edge cases, no system is free. Speak of medicine, yes, drugs are more expensive in the US than elsewhere. My understanding is that there are multiple reasons for this, including that some countries with nationalized healthcare can negotiate in bulk, Americans have more to spend, and the insane cost of R&D is primarily recouped in the American market. The rest of the world quite literally has subsidized pharmaceuticals. Edit: which is not to say that drugs are not in fact unusually expensive in the USA. But it is misleading to blithely imply that other countries are less messed up because they have cheaper pharmaceuticals. Finally, the snarky comments about profit seem a bit off the mark. Do we believe that the food industries in other countries are not interested in profit?