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Comment by ops | Hacker News Reader

Why should I be responsible for his medical care?

Morally: Because he's a human being.

Financially: It's a lot more efficient for society to cover all health care that's proven to be cost-effective regardless of who needs it or why. Putting gates on who is allowed to receive benefits costs more than it saves.

I tried to make it easy to read between the lines of my comment. I wasn't talking about his medical care. I was talking about everyone's medical care. And regarding that, there is a quote that has turned into somewhat of a meme that goes "I don't know how to explain to you that you should care about other people." Either you care about people in this situation or not. If you don't care, nothing I'm going to say will convince you to care.

Even people who generally care can reach a point where they don't want to, or simply can't. Stuff like the distractions of their own problems can prevent them from seeing larger societal solutions.

The tax payers are already on the hook for it if he is awarded damages from the city.

And the tax payers will pay for it if he runs out of money to pay too and it becomes emergency care and eventually a bad medical debt.

I think the idea would rather be that you would pay 5 cents a year towards his medical care, rather than have to pay all of it.

Oh good, so if everyone pays 5 cents a year we can all get millions of dollars of medical care. I’m not good at math, but makes perfect sense to me!

gee, the comment I responded to said "Why should I be responsible for his medical care?" in the context of a lawsuit where the 'his' under discussion got injured.

Then I said "I think the idea would rather be that you would pay 5 cents a year towards his medical care, rather than have to pay all of it." meaning that while the settlement for the lawsuit might be millions of dollars it will in fact not end up impoverishing the parent poster.

But for some reason you seem to think that it was about some other situation than the one under discussion here? I hope this summary has clarified the chain of very short messages for you, so that you no longer need labor under this evident misapprehension.

Why should I be responsible for your education?

This article is about a adult man who was on drunk, on drugs, and driving an electric vehicle on a public sidewalk. How is this comparable to public education?

You shouldn't be personally, but collectively as a society we should try to look out for each other as a general moral rule, instead of a "me first" pure capitalistic mindset.

Same reason that we try to help the homeless, the less fortunate, etc.

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