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Comment by majewsky | Hacker News Reader

A pretty large part of this story is titled "why the US healthcare system sucks".

I find it so strange that <100% of Americans are not for everyone having healthcare in a system that doesn't potentially bankrupt a person. It just seems so strange.

America can't afford universal health care - doctors get paid too much. The average doctor's salary here is over 300k USD. The average doctors salary in Europe is almost one-third of that..

Here implying I don’t live here. I really don’t think doctor salaries is the problem with outrageous health car cost. I could be wrong but seems like admin overhead and over prescribing treatment is a big problem from my small point of view.

Edit: also people wanting it and the financials of it being practical are entirely coupled together. My point was I don’t see how someone can not be for the idea of health care for all.

Doctor salary accounts for only 8.5% of healthcare costs in the US, lower than most other Western countries. https://jacksonhealthcare.com/media-room/news/md-salaries-as...

Germany: 15%

Australia: 11.6%

France 11%

UK: 9.7%

US: 8.5%

we have a collective paranoia based on several totalitarian governments aroundnthe worls throughout history. this fear influences our attitude toward putting government in charge of many things.

we also have strangely intimate relationships to our doctors. we stick with them even when were not sure theyre doing their best for us. we fear an "anonymous" doctor who doesnt know us personally.

these fears are exploited with imagery like "death panels," where faceless government bureacuracies let people with uneconically feasible conditions die untreated.

to reverse this requires stories of success from Europe told without smugness. many memes are tonedeaf humblebragging about euro healthcare that instantly turn off americans.

> "death panels," where faceless government bureacuracies let people with uneconically feasible conditions die untreated.

We prefer the private "Free Market" death panels. (Health Insurance), which effectively do the same thing. But you get a choice in who will deny you cover if you ever go over a limit or could not afford you cover.

> we also have strangely intimate relationships to our doctors. we stick with them even when were not sure theyre doing their best for us. we fear an "anonymous" doctor who doesnt know us personally.

What does that have to do with the issue? Germany has mandatory healthcare insurance, and I'm still free to choose my GP and specialists.

> without smugness, many memes are tonedeaf humblebragging about euro healthcare that instantly turn off americans.

Lol, that's honestly pathetic - I hope it's not true.

A good idea is a good idea. You are talking about public policy here.

Have you ever watched someone try to persuade others to their opinion? Are people perfect evaluators of facts and reason completely impervious to the negative affect of the persuader?

Or is it more common people go along with a emotionally-resonant personality and dismiss their reliance on facts and figures based on intuition?

You can be sure when I buy computer parts, numbers are the bottom line, but what if an ad for, say, an SSD offered a great price and excellent performance. Would you still buy it if next to the price tag, it said that if you did so, you're pathetic?

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