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Comment by jaccola | Hacker News Reader

Some would say having a choice of which healthcare to pay for, the ability to choose a provider, the right to not pay for healthcare (maybe you value an extra holiday more than being able to go to a GP) is a good thing.

I'm from the UK, everyone I've met in the NHS has good intentions but the system itself means the standard of care is very poor. I have no option to go elsewhere with my £'s if a receptionist is extremely rude to me or a doctor won't listen.

Not to say the US system is perfect, just that adding even more government intervention (and associated plunder) by making healthcare universal, is perhaps not the answer.

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"I have no option to go elsewhere with my £'s if a receptionist is extremely rude to me or a doctor won't listen."

In the UK, private healthcare is very much an option if you have the £.

The £'s I give to the NHS I cannot instead take to other healthcare providers.

That’s not inherent of universal healthcare at all. In Austria, you can go to a different doctor if you wish.

It's easy, in this discussion, to get into the weeds and be distracted by details (like lots of people have by your "no option to go elsewhere with my £'s" remark).

If you want free at the point of healthcare, clearly you are better off in the UK than in the USA. If you want to pay for better care (like, well off middle class, not millions) then you're still better off in the UK than in the USA because we don't have perverse incentives for healthcare insurance, so the cost is lower even when you include the price of NHS services you aren't using. And if you're paying literal millions for healthcare then you ought to be paying for others' healthcare even if you aren't using it in principle.

Does it make logical sense that public healthcare should work better? That's irrelevant because, empirically, it does.

>Not to say the US system is perfect, just that adding even more government intervention (and associated plunder)

Uh huh. Because companies that have the explicit purpose of making as much money as possible don't "plunder". Why do you think it is that the US spends more public money per capita than many other countries and yet still has worse healthcare outcomes?

> I'm from the UK [..] I have no option to go elsewhere with my £'s

One of these is an obvious, outright lie. I wonder which.

They are both true. The £'s I give to the NHS I cannot instead take to other healthcare providers.

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