Hacker News Reader

Parking, Roads, Gasoline, Pollution, etc... We so heavily subsidize people's cars for no reason. For the cost of all of it we could have free healthcare and amazing public transportation then lower taxes with the left over money.

View on HN

Um... Just US healthcare spending is 17.3% of GDP. $4.5 Trillion per year. No way this works.

A large part of that is inflated health care costs. US citizens have to pay more than twice as much on average. Some services such as ER visits can cost 10x as much. US spends twice as much per capita than UK but get much less from it. Also keep in mind that the amount spent on roads is only a fraction of the total cost of cars in the USA.

Cut out the middle man (insurance companies and their profits) and you can get this number dramatically lower.

Simple solutions do NOT exist.

There is a litany of "middlemen"; Drs, Corporations, Hospitals, Insurance, Pharmacies, Drug Companies, marketing, Lawyers ... ALL have a stake in something.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com