Julia Roberts reveals Martin Luther King Jr paid the hospital bill for her birth | Hacker News Reader

Julia Roberts reveals Martin Luther King Jr paid the hospital bill for her birth

cnn.com

24 pointsTomte32 comments

Finally, I don't have to leave HN to get my Julia Roberts news!

Births should be free. At least the government should pay for it, least for the first few. After all, the kids are would-be tax payers.

It should just be scheduled to be deducted from the child's tax return once they turn 18. Once they're an adult, make them pay for their own birth. /s

Well. There is a reason why married and families with kids get tax breaks. It is government gently prodding the common folk towards having progeny.

It’ll be better if hospital births are funded under universal healthcare paid for by taxes from everyone, including the mother birthing the child.

I think most Europeans would be shocked by the cost of having a baby in the US. See 'A typical American birth costs as much as delivering a (UK) royal baby' [1]

[1] https://www.economist.com/graphic-detail/2018/04/23/a-typica...

Is that right!? Wow, I'm honestly surprised it's that low. As an American, I totally would have expected it to be at least double that, but most likely more. I haven't had a kid yet, but my wife had outpatient surgery a couple of years ago to remove a cyst. I hung out in the waiting room and we were out of there before lunchtime. Our insurance was billed nearly $100,000. We (thankfully) have good insurance (tied to my employer, of course), and we hit our annual out-of-pocket max with that one operation.

There are two points here.

1. The actual cost

2. What is charged

As a father of two here in the UK and one birth requiring serious surgery I have no clue at all what the cost was. Why? Because our National Health Service did not send me a bill because the charge was zero.

Cost? All the medical staff were going to be paid anyway, all equipment was there and powered on, all drugs used were already budgeted for. So the 'cost' was all part of the service.

No. Some of us aren’t communists and would rather have less government control over our lives.

Now watch the communists downvote me.

you dont know what a communist is

A good enough start would be someone who sees an humane act of community and brotherhood by a Christian minister, and their response is that the state should confiscate everybody's money to pay for it after laundering it through bureaucracy instead.

Most of us aren't communists.

Those god-forsaken Canadian communists.

Don't repeat lies over and over to try to make a point.

You should really write down a list of countries in which the government passes on the full cost of childbirth to a citizen. See what the anti-communist block looks like these days.

You’re going to hate this: Not only does Australia and New Zealand cover the full cost, all with tax payer money. They then take even MORE tax payer money and give it to the parents as a thank you for having a child.

And when you find out that a tax credit and ‘handing out tax payer money’ are the same deal, you’re going to flip.[1]

https://www.irs.gov/credits-deductions/individuals/child-tax...

Better it be private corporations who jack up prices and whose sole motive is profit.

Unironically yes.

Nice little dystopia you're advocating for there.

Says the guy who wants governments making his health care decisions.

Yeah, I tend to trust doctors more than corporate executives when it comes to my health.

FYI - the article you're commenting on is literally about a family who couldn't afford healthcare and had to rely on charity. So this communist dystopia you think /will/ exist actually /does/ exist here and now, under capitalism.

I’m a card-carrying, money-loving capitalist, lol.

Universal healthcare is not communism…They have that all across capitalist countries in Europe, Asia, the Middle East, and even Africa.

You can still be a capitalist and a powerful, centralized, managerial state. That's called fascism.

So I can equate a fully deregulated market-based libertarian society with anarchy?

Unironically, yes. That's exactly how anarcho-capitalists see it. To them, Anarchy just means "no coercion/state", it doesn't mean a lack of structure, delegation or coordination.

Agreed. I'm with you. If one is going to point the "communism" finger at universal healthcare, then you ought to point the same finger at firefighters, first-responders, police, and roads, amongst other things.

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