Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

Comment by codegeek | Hacker News Reader

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"People need a lot of things. You’ll die without food long before you’ll die without health care, and yet few people say we need to “take the profit motive out of farming”."

"Why is health care Special"

I tell you why healthcare is special. You cannot buy healthcare at the cost of food. I can buy ramen noodles and survive for cheap. Sure it is not the best but I won't frikin die. But If I get cancer and cannot afford a 100k Bill (yes, I know a family member who got that bill) , I will die. See ?

Again, people are talking about making Healthcare a right in America is mostly due to the fact that it is too expensive and difficult to deal with. If that was not the case and healthcare becomes as cheap as food, I bet people will stop the whole "healthcare is a right" movement. I would.

EDIT: Read this fun fact [0]. The average cost of health insurance is $17,500 PER FAMILY . Now this means that you may get covered for diseases such as Cancer but that does not mean you won't get a huge bill even after insurance. Now imagine you had no insurance and you get cancer. Compare this to average cost of food [1] for a family of 4

[0] http://www.ncsl.org/research/health/health-insurance-premium...

[1] http://www.cnpp.usda.gov/sites/default/files/CostofFoodFeb20...

The average American can live a relatively healthy lifestyle off of $10/day in food expenses preparing their own meals (unless you live in high-cost regions). The majority of cancer diagnoses occur after 50 years of age.

Assuming you start earning an income at the age of 20, if you stuck $10 under your mattress daily (the same amount that you could for relatively healthy meals) you would have $109,500 by age 50. Switch to health insurance (found a plan in my state for $129 that does provide for cancer coverage - your situation may differ) and throw the rest into a dollar-cost-averaging investment account and the situation is even brighter.

There's a difference between "too expensive and difficult to deal with" and "I have no plans in place to deal with it nor the desire to implement them". And while that makes sense (most humans are hungry at regular intervals and sick at irregular intervals and thus budget accordingly) you shouldn't pretend like the average citizen is ever prepared for anything outside of their routine - with the exception of buying "gifts" for themselves, which they are more than capable of budgeting for.

I think our system is far from perfect, but if you're going to pretend that the cost of food dramatically outweighs the cost of paying for health care I really worry for your health due to lack of nutrition.

Try to eat ramen noodles for the rest of your life and see how your health goes. Most health issues today are directly related to diet. However, processed food and snacks are much cheaper (ramen noodles) than healthy alternatives. McDonald's is a lot cheaper than going to the store and cooking a meal. So no, food is not cheaper when you try to compare it against healthcare.

I used ramen noodle as an example. There are plenty types of food that you can buy for cheap. Are you really telling me that for a family of 4, your grocery bill will be $1500/month ? That is the average cost that I was paying out of pocket for a good plan (with low deductibles etc). And yes, I have kids which makes it absolutely critical to have a really good plan.

My grocery bill for 4 of us goes about $500/month and that too when we are not really into coupons and stuff.

I wasn't arguing healthcare, I was arguing your analogy. Food is a right but so is air. However, the quality of it drastically affects your health. 2 major points...cost of healthcare is insane, and paying $500+ on food is a car payment which is a lot for families which children in central and southern U.S. Often highly processed food is pretty cheap in which you are able to buy higher quantities of but is not so good for your long term health.

I hear this argument continuously, but it does not convince me. You imply that McDonalds is bad. Why is it so? Mostly because it's very calorie dense, not because it's actually bad for you. In that respect, McD does its job very well, too well even, but it's not the food itself that is bad, its over consumption.

How bad are ramen for you anyway? Consuming it as a large part of your diet, within your caloric intake and getting the rest of your needed vitamins from different sources (fruits, supplements even), would you get sick with time? Why are certain foods labeled as "bad" automatically? t seems this gets repeated Ad nauseam but most always, the accusation is unsubstantiated.

Are you trying the imply that eating a double bacon cheeseburger with a coke and fries is healthy for you?? I do agree with you on consumption, but when was the last time you heard of someone having health issues because they over ate on fresh fruits and vegetables? In my comment I was more referring to farm fresh compared to the highly processed food that is much cheaper.

It is encouraging for me to see my opinion on this reflected in your comment, I find it very worrying that it is so common for people to seemingly blindly accept the popular narrative on this issue. (Well, I guess I find it worrying if people seem to blindly accept the popular narrative for any issue, really).

> You cannot buy healthcare at the cost of food.

The two industries aren't even remotely close to be able to make a comparison like that. Why not let healthcare operate as a free(er) market?

Because then you get to spend $300 on an Epi-Pen compared to (an already outrageous) $80 or so in the UK due to "patents"

you may say that patents are crimping the "free" market but who is really going to vote to delete those from health care ?

And even if they were removed, there are many other ways the big companies will stifle competition to keep profits high.

Sometimes something bigger than a corporation needs to step in and this IMO is one of those times/places

Isn't the Epi-Pen an example of what happens when a market isn't free? IIRC they have a monopoly provided by...the government.

It's not just patents but regulations.

Any Epi-Pen competitor has to be FDA aproved, that takes years of investment.

The government the gets to decided if the product gets to consumers.

It just recently killed a competitor so Epi-Pen can raise prices.

That's not true -- for any given health situation, there is a range of options, with different resource costs and different health benefits and risks (some strictly worse in all respects). It's not like Moses comes from the mount with tablets that say "the only way to treat that condition is with this resource that happens to cost exactly $100k".

(Obvious caveat about what options you can consider in emergencies.)

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