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Comment by saagarjha | Hacker News Reader

Any plan like that is going to have a portion where you convince the part of the country openly hostile to it that you're not bringing in socialism.

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seems like its an education or media-bias problem more than a healthcare problem.

If a majority of the poor in America are not educated enough to understand how public healthcare will benefit them and the country, or are educated enough to understand but not educated enough to realise media outlets have a politcal agenda and might not be reporting accurately, then public healthcare is still not going to happen.

(and they might not want socialism, but it seems like they dont understand that democracy has problems too. and healthcare is the living example. but again, it circles back around to being educated enough to understand that democracy is good, but it isnt perfect, and no system is)

See, even someone who should know better gets the argument confused. Socialism is not opposing democracy. Much of Europe is more socialist than the US and have democracies as strong or stronger than the US.

Too true! I'm college educated but (in my defence) not American, so I'm not surprised I got the details confused.

> and they might not want socialism, but it seems like they dont understand that democracy has problems too

Isn't the contrast between capitalism and socialism? It seems like I could have democracy with either.

Of course it doesn't help the conversation that Americans use term socialism differently than Europeans or Marx himself did.

Or convince them there is nothing more wrong with socialism than capitalism and the world needs more balance and nuance.

Having the gov decide who gets what care is incompatible with a free society. Alfie Evans is a striking example.

A "free society" doesn't require that parents be given free reign to torture their children. You may wish to argue whether that's what was happening, but that's the reasoning the state gave for their actions. If you'd like to argue that a free society does require this, go ahead, but I don't think most people agree.

The Alfie Evans case could well have had the same outcome with fully private care, since it was a case about the rights of the child rather than about funding for treatment.

(Besides, we can probably find a lot more cases of dead children in the US where they were simply denied or unable to afford coverage ...)

I agree. Thanks. It was a mistake to use his case as an example of my concern.

In the US the doctors would have done exactly the same thing: they would have proposed a treatment plan; the parents would have disagreed; the doctors would have gone to court and probably would have won.

But in the US there would have been the additional funding step: the parents would have had to get insurance companies to pay for futile treatment, and no compnay would do so, or the parents would have had to crowd-fund this treatment.

Here, for anyone interested, are some of the legal documents (in date order) around the Alfie Evans case. They clearly show that parents have a right to a family life and to care for their child as they see fit, but that this right isn't total because the child is also human and has his own human rights. The paramountcy principle mean that the rights of the child come before the rights of the parents.

Please note that because of the involvement of the Christian Legal Centre in some of the court cases there's been a lot of misinformation spread about the case.

I know that there's nothing I can say to change your mind: you have an ideological viewpoint, and that's okay. But I think you should at least acknowledge that your opinion is not based on fact.

https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC...

https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWCA...

https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/eu/cases/ECHR...

https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC...

https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWCA...

https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/eu/cases/ECHR...

https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWHC...

https://www.bailii.org/cgi-bin/format.cgi?doc=/ew/cases/EWCA...

https://www.supremecourt.uk/docs/in-the-matter-of-alfie-evan...

I accept you are correct about the paramountcy principle. I have read about the case in the last hour, and realize I was wrong to equate it with murder.

The details make me uncomfortable (with the court decision), he had an offer from a qualified intuition for help.

Thank you.

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