Hacker News Reader

Comment by subjectsigma | Hacker News Reader

Natural consequence of socialized medicine. If I’m paying for your healthcare then I (and by extension the state) get a say in basically every aspect of your life.

Time to ban alcohol, marijuana, Tylenol, fatty foods, sugar, candles, campfires, fireworks, food coloring, bicycles, playgrounds, cars, cell phones, and anything else that might be harmful

View on HN

In the UK tobacco is heavily taxed and those taxes bring in more money than the cost on the healthcare service.

Interesting - do you have a link about the financial accounting around this?

I do not have the specific info/ref to hand, but at one point some years ago, smoking brought in something of the order of nine times as much into the NHS as it spent on smoking related illnesses. I was very surprised by this.

Even so, the NHS's goals are rightly such that greatly reducing the harm done by smoking is preferred over keeping this revenue. Unlike a tobacco company that would not factor harms external to the organisation into the profit and loss calculation.

If you google it, revenue is at £8 billion (Office for Budget Responsibility) and in decline, and NHS spending is at £2.6 billion in England, so the bulk of it (NHS England).

You can not put a price on human suffering.

Tylenol is much less dangerous than, say, Advil. It’s only issue is one of overdose which is common to all drugs.

I think you might be missing the point I was trying to make

Don't worry they're working on banning most of those. The UK has a sugar tax and will ban fires (God forbid people are energy independent!)

You could throw in skate boards, pornography, slate roofs, criticising government policy and the policy, gluten, and chewing gum.

Enjoy setting up a GoFundMe if you ever get cancer.

Let us look at the cancer survival rates in the US vs countries with socialized medicine. I know for a fact when the business elite of my Euro country gets cancer they fly to NY. They don't pay taxes either tho so I guess it works for them.

The other natural consequence of socialized medicine is rationing. In Canada the waiting time for treatment is often months or years[1]. That GoFundMe might give you a higher survival rate.

[1] https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/article/more-than-23000-canadi...

Wait until you see how many people die from waiting for medical care they care afford in the US!

> Natural consequence of socialized medicine.

improved health outcomes?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com