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Comment by grecy | Hacker News Reader

> the US prices are subsidizing the rest of the world's (ie. really only first world countries) "free" healthcare.

I hear that touted so often, and I've never seen a shred of evidence to support it.

Also, if it's true - why aren't US citizens rioting in the streets about it? Surely they don't want their tax dollars paying for other countries to have more affordable healthcare than they do themselves!

Just take away the profits of big pharma and health insurance companies in the US and let me know how much cheaper the entire thing would be.

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> Just take away the profits of big pharma and health insurance companies in the US and let me know how much cheaper the entire thing would be.

It would certainly be infinitely cheaper, yet, all that money would be diverted to funeral directors.

> It would certainly be infinitely cheaper, yet, all that money would be diverted to funeral directors

Strangely enough in plenty of countries that money goes towards actually providing care for people, or in fact, the people just get to keep it for themselves because it's all so much cheaper.

Your argument is like saying tons of people will be without internet if everyone uses much cheaper municipal broadband, despite the evidence proving otherwise.

The complexity of providing online connectivity is many several order of magnitude lower than solving complex multi-factorial health related problems, often with each case being unique, or affecting only a handful of people on earth.

A better analogy would be to expect wired internet connectivity at the top of the Everest summit for $19.99/month with free installation fees. Even this would be orders of magnitude below the complexity of the rare disease treatments.

> The complexity of providing online connectivity is many several order of magnitude lower than solving complex multi-factorial health related problems, often with each case being unique, or affecting only a handful of people on earth.

And yet, many, many countries around the world with significantly lower GPDs and GPD per capita have had it figured out for decades now. It's a solved problem.

Are you saying the USA can't do what other countries have been doing for decades?

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