Countries with Free and Universal Healthcare | Hacker News Reader

Countries with Free and Universal Healthcare

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20 pointskeeganjw4 comments

Unfortunately I think the debate over universal healthcare in the US has probably been setback years _if not decades_ due to all the renewed mistrust in the media and government over its handling (or mishandling) of the pandemic response.

We are at the point now where ~50%-ish of the US population has almost zero trust in government or media at all, and they are not going to look favorably on handing full control of healthcare and health decisions to the government.

My feeling is that universal healthcare in the US is going to be impossible to pass right now, and difficult to even talk about seriously for the forseeable future until trust is rebuilt.

It doesn't help that the govt openly uses funding as legal justification to set regulations for which they otherwise wouldn't have jurisdiction.

Medicare/ medicaid funding already has a stranglehold over providers, to where "voluntary" compliance in order to access roughly half the market prevents any real discourse or competition between what services are offered and how they may be provided.

And of course the other half of that is reimbursement rates, which technically are still based on "market" rates, but are increasingly a take it or leave it proposition. Universal single payer puts providers 100% dependent on the good graces of govt to pay a fair rate, with the only recourse being to go cash-only.

As a non-american I'm starting to get a little bit tired of the american healthcare debate. All we hear is the fact that it doesn't work for a myriad of reasons, but healthcare in Europe and the other countries you guys like to quote is not as good as it might seem at a first glance and universal, state provided healthcare might not be the silver bullet people think it is for the US.

It might not be a silver bullet to solve all of the US's healthcare issues but it could certainly fix a lot. If you combine all the US government's healthcare spending, it spends more per capita than any other country and it still isn't universal or free. I'm not sure people outside the US realize how bad and expensive healthcare can be in the US if you're not wealthy and/or well-insured.

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