UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes | Hacker News Reader

UK to permanently ban future generations from buying cigarettes

nypost.com

38 pointsivewonyoung135 comments

Somewhat related HN discussions from a while back when New Zealand sought to do the same [1] [2]. Worth noting that it was later scrapped [3].

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33970717

[2]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33967454

[3]: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2024/apr/19/new-zealand-sm...

I never smoked in my life so one would assume I would be in favour of this. The health data is clear. At the same time I can not stand governments constantly interfering into regular people's life. I think at some point there has to put a stop to this - the idea that governments can control people like little slaves is just outrageous, even if the alleged use case is logically compelling or appears to be that way. By the same token governments can say "you can only use the internet if you ID".

Also, as some point out this is "liberty" - well, I don't see how a restriction can be about "liberty" at all. It is the opposite of it; having a use case that seems logical still does not make a strategy about it good.

They also permanently banned coke,meth and other drugs since the inception of law, guess how that turned out?

"The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that 8.7% of people aged 16 to 59 years (around 2.9 million people) reported using any drug in the last 12 months for the year ending (YE) March 2025; there was no statistically significant change compared with YE March 2024"

I believe limiting people's liberty is an ineffective option opposed to education.

> guess how that turned out?

My guess is that significantly fewer people use drugs than would have used drugs if they were not banned.

> "The Crime Survey for England and Wales (CSEW) estimated that 8.7% of people aged 16 to 59 years (around 2.9 million people) reported using any drug in the last 12 months for the year ending (YE) March 2025; there was no statistically significant change compared with YE March 2024"

Are there some significant changes to policy during that time period? I don’t see how this factoid is related to whatever argument you are trying to make.

They're pointing out that 2.9 millon people take drugs (extrapolating from the people surveyed), and law says that should be zero.

This law will attempt to ban cigarettes. Estimate how many people will buy them and smoke them illegally. The number will not be zero.

The number does not have to be zero for this to still have a net positive effect on society.

How many people's lives have been ruined due to them getting caught with drugs? Your "net positive" just focuses on using force to make people not have self agency to what they do to their bodies.

You know what would really solve crime and drug abuse issues? If we just gave people lobotomies at the age of 16. They will all be nice and complacent and due what they're told by the state.

False Dilemma fallacy

Yeah, murder is illegal too, but still the number of murders is non-zero. Maybe we should just legalize it?

Sarcasm aside, if the goal is to reduce consumption, criminalization does work. Repression, though, does come with its own can of worm (an euphemism, yes). It's up to the citizenry and its representatives to decide if the trade-off is worth it.

At the cost of how many people's lives that get jailed for doing drugs/smoking and not hurting anyone? Telling people what they cannot do in the privacy of their own homes is a massive invasion of pri... Ohh, well England is par for the course when it comes to that at this point.

There are less harmful ways to get addicted to nicotine that will continue to be legal for people affected by this legislation.

You think education is effective? How much educating do they need to do about meth being bad before people stop using it?

I merely suggested that it is an better alternative as opposed to restricting people's freedom (and setting a precedent that the government can just simply choose to ignore people's rights).

Also criminalization of something always leads to its romanticization to some extent. Look at the rap scene. There is always a rebound effect.

There is, but we've tried educating people against smoking, and it hasn't worked. I agree with you that we shouldn't limit people's freedom, but I don't believe that education works better than criminalization, when we're talking strictly about effectiveness.

there is also a strong question as to whether smokers are actually a net cost to government or not. They draw decades less old age pension, have decades less medical visits, etc. I am extremely unconvinced that a large cancer related medical cost now has a higher net present value than a stream of government pension payouts, health costs, etc for decades ended with a large medical cost for some other reason. This is the correct comparable for smoking vs non smoking if you are contemplating limiting peoples freedoms and i dont think it holds water.

The net effect of smoking on healthcare and welfare costs. A cohort study. https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3533014/ (Finland, 2012)

So the answer is smokers are cheaper so its stupid for the government to dump on smokers like they have been?

If your government requires its people to be dead, it is by nature a foul and evil thing.

thats one wrong way to interpret it, yes. The right way is a government choosing criteria to determine how much it should interfere in your personal choices and in that context net cost to the government is a reasonable metric to consider, although not the only metric

This gets easier to answer once you consider that, unlike an alcoholic, a smoker directly harms others around him, not just himself. And that's just on top of all the indirect damage.

And then, even as for strictly the damage he does to himself, cancer is far from the only risk.

> guess how that turned out?

Well, I don't hear colleagues at work saying they're going for a "meth break", so... pretty well, I'd say?

I get the apparent logic of phasing cigarettes into unlawfulness over decades. But considering this is so one-sided in terms of curtailing liberty for one generation,[1] it would have been interesting if they also got a privilege that us oldies are cut off from. Just as a perk to offset things.

But whatever could that be? Twenty-year 5% discount on vegetables?

[1] But this youngest generation also gets the privilege of never having easy access to cigarettes.

> [1] But this youngest generation also gets the privilege of never having easy access to cigarettes.

Being an island, it's probably slightly easier to control smuggling, but if there's money to be made, people will be smuggling in cartons. Anyway, getting an older person to buy cigs isn't difficult, and they're still legal for the majority of the population. I doubt smoking will become immediately attractive, but if the ban sticks around, probably in a decade or so tobacco will be a niche hipster rebellion, then become poser-cool, then totally normalized again.

"being an island" doesnot, in fact, make it easier to inhibit smuggling. One reason, the sheer number of small, unstaffed seaports and the volume of small fishing vessel traffic does in fact make it easier for unobserved ingress of materials under the guisd of small commercial and noncommercial fishing and small to midsize shipping. (see Scotland as major import of currently illicit drugs and undocumented refugees)

Adding another globally common and less regulated substance to the list of extrajudicial desireables simply equals a performance bonus and being low aquisition risk (already shipping other goods from places that grow tobacco and make cigs) as an incentive for the already very profitable and active operators of these networks.

From my perspective this would simply make being a smuggler easier and more profitable and be a value uplift for corrupt enforcement and a net reduction in collectable taxes... moving the revenue from comsumption tax books to black market coffers.

> "being an island" doesnot, in fact, make it easier to inhibit smuggling. One reason, the sheer number of small, unstaffed seaports and the volume of small fishing vessel traffic does in fact make it easier for unobserved ingress of materials under the guisd of small commercial and noncommercial fishing and small to midsize shipping. (see Scotland as major import of currently illicit drugs and undocumented refugees)

I mean, sure, that's true, but is it more difficult to smuggle by walking or driving over an imaginary line or getting a boat and crew and crossing the water? I don't see water as being the low-effort option.

They're about the same in practice .. with a boat having the advantage of being able to unload tonnes of goods outside a national limit in open waters for pickup by fisherman where heavy incoming tonnages by truck or aircraft are a little more constrained in respect to transport path (roads for haulage) and drop offs (typically airfields, air drops are relatively rare (but not unheard of)).

I totally agree that tobacco is a harmful substance. I'm not sure if I agree that a government should try to legislate citizens' habits.

Including for heroin or other hard drugs?

I look at it, not as legislating people's habits, more as a private company wants to sell these things in our country, but there is a clear, measurable negative effect on society as a result (and in the case of cigarettes there is no positive effect whatsoever that may offset the negative).

I would call that an easy ban. You can't sell that shit here legitimately. I'm a little surprised the attempts haven't been more widespread.

I wonder what possible gap there is for things that can be illegal to sell, but you can buy them from international sellers and use them in the privacy of your own home? (and health insurance won't cover related complications).

In the US I tend to agree (given the current pay to live system is constructed) but in the UK with single payer insurance this seems more palatable.

I’m curious if a “free society / libertarian” middle ground would be limiting access to NHS for those that choose to continue to use known harmful substances. I’d posit that many would object to that the way “death panels” were politicized when the Affordable Healthcare Act was passed though.

It depends?

AFAIK healthcare in UK is tax funded, and smoking with its long list of damages to the body, takes a portion of that taxpayer money which could be used on something underfunded, like mental healthcare.

This is the country that legislates butter knives and naughty words.

Do you live in the United Kingdom?

Americans want to legislate bathrooms.

You can still get addicted to nicotine, they're just banning a very specific delivery mechanism.

The article here just links to the BBC report that was discussed here at the time:

Smoking ban for people born after 2008 in the UK agreed (172 points, 413 comments)

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47847240

It's going to make for an interesting future age verification problem; For a few years it'll be easy, because it's still only going to be asking people under say 25 for proof; but then in a few decades it's going to be people trying to figure out if there customer is over 40 say.

All legit customers will be long dead by then.

True, but I think most people get addicted to smoking when young, and are less likely to just decide to start smoking at 40, especially when vaping is an option.

Why would it be difficult? ID says 2009 or later and you can't buy? I would imagine checking age for tobacco becomes easier

[dupe] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47847240

Censorship and restrictions for regular people.

What, specifically, does banning buying cigarettes have to do with “censorship”? Or are we just saying words now, because they seem emotive?

Look at the root of censorship and then do a Google search. https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/censoring

Wow, lots of libertarian absolutists up this morning.

Guys, that's all well and good as a philosophy, but you need to integrate your views into the world around you too. When you live in a society that has _decided_ to collectively shoulder health care costs, and assume responsibility for everyone's health, you also may need some ground rules. I know it sucks, because _you_ may have just been born there and you don't really have a choice in what society you live, so that means care needs to be taken, but it doesn't mean there can never be any cost-of-entry.

> When you live in a society that has _decided_ to collectively shoulder health care costs

Look, I found the problem!

Democracy is the problem?

To a large extent yes, but more specifically the decision to collectively shoulder healthcare costs is the problem.

Why is it a problem? Why should the ability to afford healthcare determine your ability to access it?

I'm genuinely curious as to why you think it's reasonable for the less financially well off to die.

Why should I ever have to pay for someone else’s healthcare lol, that seems wild to me

The ironic part to me is you're making an argument similar to one the libertarian absolutists make - society can't shoulder healthcare costs because then it'll need to start taking responsibility over how healthily people live their lives. Without even taking a position on good or bad of it, if the "you also may need some ground rules" is going to stick, why not also bring in mandatory exercise and ban people from sugar and alcohol too? Be a big win for healthcare costs and do people the power of good.

I actually quite like your comment, it'd be interesting to have the stats on whether the downvoter objected to your tone or if they made the logical inference that this argument undermines universal healthcare and didn't like that.

> why not also bring in mandatory exercise and ban people from sugar and alcohol too

I literally said "so care needs to be taken" and you hit me with a slippery slope argument?

There isn't really a slope here. If we take your original comment for the justification, then what is your argument for why sugar or alcohol are OK and cigarettes not? Alcohol and cigarettes are basically the same category of goods.

Exercise is maybe a slippery slope because it requires enforcing a positive action, but if we're going to force people to be healthy anyway, why not? In a practical sense, not a theoretical one? If you've got theoretical concerns, why doesn't that apply to cigarettes?

For me the answer is easy: alcohol and sugar in moderation do not have negative effects. They may have few positive ones, and there's the easy argument that 'in moderation' is a rule followed by exactly no one, but cigarettes have no 'safe' level of consumption. Heck, passive smoking can cause lung cancer. You can't passively absorb sugar or alcohol. Sure, alcohol can lead to putting other people in danger, but there are existing laws around that.

Literally nothing in the world would be less fun or good or enjoyable if cigarettes simply no longer existed (unless you're already addicted, and the day that cigarettes disappear will be the first day of the rest of your longer life).

That seems to be a completely different argument. pkulak was saying this was about the cost of healthcare in a society that has decided to handle such costs collectively. If you want to make an argument that this is about the minimum possible harm done by cigarettes that's a bit of a non-sequitur.

Although I will say a minimum possible harm argument is weird on practical grounds. Members of my family have smoked in the past, its done them some theoretical tiny amount of damage that is so close to 0 as to be the same thing. That doesn't require the police to get involved. The harm done by the amount of work to earn the taxes and pay the police was probably greater than the damage done by the smoking.

> Literally nothing in the world would be less fun or good or enjoyable if cigarettes simply no longer existed

That seems ridiculous. Obviously there are people who smoke for pleasure. I know several. You can't just tell them that they aren't having fun and pretend that counts.

I guess they should ban all the chippies too. Everyone is unhealthy in their own way and that’s the cost of doing business. Socializing healthcare does not require banning unhealthy behavior. It turns out that money does in fact grow on trees and they can make more because it’s fucking fake and it always has been. How are we going to pay for this!?! You literally create money. Governments do it all the time for missiles .

Cigarettes don't grow out of the ground to be able to be deep fried. Some private enterprise manufactures them for sale.

Just ban the sale of them in the country. They offer no positive for society or humanity whatsoever. Chippies at least have their origins in actual food sustenance.

If some new slow method of societally expensive suicide hit the market, it would get banned quick smart. Cigarettes have only stuck around so long because of legacy and well funded lobbyists and PR / marketing types that have been happy to lie at the cost of millions of lives.

Nice, let's defend that.

> If some new slow method of societally expensive suicide hit the market, it would get banned quick smart. Cigarettes have only stuck around so long because of legacy and well funded lobbyists and PR / marketing types that have been happy to lie at the cost of millions of lives.

> Nice, let's defend that.

Many discussions about freedom are just marketing and corporate interests in a trench coat.

I guess this is my favorite bug bear now.

Privatise the profits and socialise the costs. It's the American way!

Let's hope it recedes back to the US sooner rather than later. Let this be the first domino.

Have you seen Demolition Man (1993)?

Wow, lots of statists up this morning.

Guys, it's all well and good as a philosophy, but maybe you should take a second look and reconsider that the state just keeps creeping more and more into your private affairs and is very glad when you believe them when they say things are "for the children" and "for the public good". One day you might find yourself in jail for sharing a meme that is critical of the government in any way.

It's an interesting experiment and we have all the time we need to see the results.

Entirely absurd and unacceptable, like so much coming out of the UK these days.

I mean drugs are also banned, and how does that work out?

if you get caught buying/using/… you go to prison

I dont think you can hide with smoking cigarettes almost anywhere, the stink is far too strong, characteristic abd outright repulsive.

Also, you normally dont go to jail by using drugs... what a clueless comment

cut up a line of coke at a public place, preferably next to a police officer and see how that works out for you :)

That's possession rather than use, usually being high is not a crime in and of itself.

Cannabis is a way stronger smell and it is used everywhere regardless of the laws against it.

... and nothing of value was lost.

Cowardly way to legislate.

I cannot fathom the twists of logic necessary to justify such a specific and arbitrary prohibition

I think its an attempt to cut back on health system costs, disguised as well meaning measure. Up next alcohol bans. One might not even numb oneself while beeing a slave to the "allways right" generation vampire.

Yes, the government has concocted a dastardly conspiracy to cut health system costs by reducing access to a known cause of illness.

If only we could impprison them all. Beeing in prison reduces almost all life risks, even that of incarceration.

Alcohol was always an important cultural symbol (drinking wine as a Christian, for example). This is not the case for tobacco, especially highly artificial one.

Tobacco is inherently bad for one's surrounding as well.

https://keepitsacred.itcmi.org/tobacco-and-tradition/traditi...

So my point stands; it's not a cultural symbol like alcohol is for Europeans.

Correct, and since the UK has an Established Church, and does not recognise “freedom of religion” as understood in the USA, banning tobacco entirely is reasonable.

Good luck, Canada.

Smoking related illness costs the UK more in healthcare than the tax revenue it collects.

No twist needed, it's really fucking logical.

Could one make a similar argument for banning sugar?

One could, but it would be a much harder sell politically. The pro-smoking voting block is much smaller than the tasty-food voting block.

Sure, except sugar in itself isn’t bad. It’s products with excessive quantities of sugar. Various laws restrict those, including the promotion to children:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/restricting-promo...

Of course. The government has bought and paid for your health. It is only by the gracious largess that we have been allowed sugar at all.

Nonsense. Did people already forget the prohibitionism? Did people already forget the war on drugs? I remember liberals were talking about drug decriminalisation 10 years ago, has everybody turned into a puritan nowadays?

Also, very hypocritical argument when alcohol (and gambling) are very accepted in British culture. I'd like to see the numbers showing that the few people that still roll their own cigs at 15 pounds a pouch cost more to the NHS than all the alcoholics in Britain.

Smoking ban is, as usual, Labour going for the low-hanging fruits to scrape the votes of the elderly that are likely to be swayed by these empty arguments, just like the Online Safety Act. One thing's for sure: Barry, 63, would not like if alcohol and gambling were regulated in any way.

I'm not a smoker any more, hate the things and can't stand the smoke, but I sure am glad to have left that island of short-sighted yet heavy-handed politics.

The Prohibition was actually very effective and reasonable. Especially considering the rampant alcoholism of the time.

Also, Singapore seems to have conclusively won the war on drugs. I would not mind those policies in San Francisco.

Alcohol consumption increased and stronger beverages became more popular but sure it was effect and reasonable yeah

I like cigarettes. Cigarettes aren’t addictive. I’m pro drug decriminalisation and pro banning cigarettes. They’re not mutually exclusive.

Kids vape now anyway, so it’s a vanishingly small proportion of people, who would be able to get their fix anyway via a far less harmful source.

It’s a foul product that belongs in the past.

Let's not forget this is a policy that Barry, 63, wouldn't be affected by - only young people (let's say it's Nicolas, 30 ans). Barry, 63 loves voting for parties that fuck other people and make their lives miserable, but not him.

Raise taxes until it balances!

You assume that there is a balance point. There is an unlimited demand for healthcare. Additionally the more money you give to a failing system, the worse it gets. It’s a positive feedback loop.

Cigarettes being $15m a cancer stick is more amusing to me than an outright ban.

Life is not a balance sheet, Christie Malry.

https://www.nice.org.uk/guidance/ng209/resources/impact-on-n...

> Smoking-related illness is estimated to cost the NHS £2.6 billion a year

https://www.england.nhs.uk/2019/01/nhs-long-term-plan-will-h...

> Alcohol-related harm is estimated to cost the NHS in England £3.5 billion every year.

If we look exclusively at numbers, prohibition would save money. If that's all we care about, try that out - oh, the Americans did, and it wrecked their country and filled it with gangsters, because no amount of trying to stop people drinking actually stopped people drinking, and normal people having to pretend they weren't going to drink, but secretly really really needing it and finding criminals to supply them with drink built out an entire parallel black economy and gave gangsters huge amounts of money and power.

If we're looking at saving money, maybe just kill the long-term disabled and elderly? Easy win for saving money! That's all that matters, after all.

It’s also cheaper to euthanize people rather than treat them. It’s just logical.

It’s logical if you regard people as cattle

There's little logic to it because prohibition is a fashion, and politics is the dressing up of self-interest in flashy clothes while telling the public they like it. This is not the first ban on tobacco in Britain, and it probably won't be the last.

This is the logical conclusion when you socialize healthcare.

If you’re pro NHS / single payer, you *must* support this. As well as banning drugs, sugar, extreme sports, unprotected sex, and other high risk behavior. Anything short of this just doesn’t make sense.

We can just tax the rich to cover the cost of our personal decisions. Which is their fault anyway because I wouldn't have gotten diabetes if they didn't shove that junk take out food down my throat.

Now to take the last logical step like Canada and suggest assisted suicide to the high cost patients.

Only those who have become high cost patients due to choosing to put themselves at risk for years.

Admittedly I have only read of Canadian Healthcare, but, that is not what I have read. Terminal patients and the elderly are offered death as a treatment. Cancer patients are the most common. About 5% of deaths in Canada are from the MAID program.

I assume you’re being sarcastic but just in case: the goal of single payer healthcare isn’t to spend the least amount of money on healthcare. The goal of single payer healthcare is to guarantee everyone a minimum quality of life. You can believe that the minimum quality of life includes the option to engage in unprotected sex and sky diving.

I’m not being sarcastic. If you live in a society that chooses to force people to pay for other’s healthcare costs, you must support banning high risk behavior.

Not out of frugality. It’s a simple issue of fairness. 5% of the healthcare consumers will result in 95% of the costs. Why is it fair that the 5% that choose to engage in high risk behavior are subsidized at the expense of the 95% that choose not to?

Society is by definition “forcing” people to carry the burden of other’s choices. You’re drawing an entirely arbitrary line at direct taxation. Why is it “fair”? Because society isn’t zero sum. We each give and take in different ways.

Not sure how much a skydiving soda drinking drug user “””gives””” to society haha

Your perception of drug users is woefully out of date. The most “valuable” members of society by your metric (contributing tax dollars) are using a lot of drugs. The U.K. upper middle class are snorting so much coke.

Sorry I don’t believe this

You must not be living in the U.K. then.

https://theweek.com/health/britains-cocaine-habit-use-of-the...

Why not?

Personal anecdotes and bias. I’ve never met anyone successful who regularly consumes drugs as serious as cocaine. At worst it’s marijuana, with minor experimentation with harder substances in college or on special occasions.

I can’t believe someone with so little life experience would speak so confidently. You don’t know any successful drug users?

Not habitual and not anything harder than marijuana no. I don’t believe that I have little life experience, I live in a wealthy part of the United States and my circle’s median income is in the 300s, so I think I have a pretty solid impression of the type of habits successful people engage in and don’t engage in

"Regularly" is doing a lot of work here. Plenty of rich and successful people dabble in drugs. People with any level of wealth who can function normally in society while habitually and regularly using any substance are pretty obviously much less likely to develop a habit in the first place.

I agree with dabble. That’s not what the parent comment said though

You are already paying for other people's healthcare costs, whether it's private or public!

If you pay for home insurance (you kind of have to unless you own your home outright or are renting), you're paying for other people's fire or water damage. And one day they might pay for yours.

If there's a lot of fires or water damage, everyone's costs go up.

That’s a consensual transaction that I choose to engage in. Doesn’t apply to single payer or the NHS

If you are housed, you are almost certainly paying for home insurance, even if you rent.

1. Many landlords don’t require tenant’s insurance. 2. If you choose to get a mortgage you have to pay for homeowner’s insurance yes. You have the option to not get a mortgage if you prefer.

Notice how in both of the above, there is no third party forcing me to pay for anybody’s bad choices.

Your landlord has insurance on the property.

You are paying for it with your rent, just like you're paying property taxes.

He’s welcome to pay for home insurance if he likes. That doesn’t mean I’m forced to pay for it. It’s like saying that I’m forced to pay for other people’s education because the Starbucks provides it as a benefit. Not really lol

It's not a perfect analogy because of factors that affect individual policies, such as the replacement cost of the home, moving next to a fireworks store, moving into a flood zone, etc. You pay more when your home is more at risk.

What is this comment? Yes, society curtails behaviors?

We wear helmets and seatbelts?

Insurance is entirely about paying a small amount so that the costs of being on the wrong side of bad luck doesn’t pauper your citizenry. A single payer system wildly reduces the amount that has to be paid, while increasing service outcomes since now you can negotiate with drug companies.

I would happily pay for that kind of system as well, because I am happy to ensure that the rest of the nation is better off.

Close! Insurance is a transaction I consent to engaging in, but a single payer system is not that.

But… wait… what? Based on you what you say… why do you put money into an insurance system? It sounds like you want to make the most rational choice, but you are working off of a model of insurance that doesn’t make sense.

The maximally effective version, with the least cost, and greatest coverage is one that distributes costs across the largest pool of individuals. Which is a single payer system.

I put money into an insurance system to diffuse risk away from myself.

> The maximally effective version, with the least cost, and greatest coverage

It would be even more effective to just enslave a bunch of people and force them to pay for my healthcare, but I don’t advocate for that because it’s immoral and unfair.

Taxes as they currently exist are a bandaid on wealth inequality. Getting rid of rich people parasitism would be a better way to balance the budget than either right-libertarian principles or taxing commoners for their stress relief like tobacco.

Though judging by the amount milords in the article I suspect that is far ways off.

Wealth inequality is a nonissue. Nobody has ever been able to provide me with any evidence to the contrary.

Not an insignificant amount of ink has been spilled on this over the centuries. So I guess you will never be convinced otherwise.

Not until someone provides evidence for it no

Not really: you want to prevent people from being passive smokers, and add sufficient taxation on cigarettes.

You are wrong. The swingeing taxes on cigarettes already cover the healthcare costs and the smokers die early saving even more money.

> smokers die early saving even more money.

I thought cancer care tended to be pretty expensive. Not sure that your math is so clear cut.

There's good news there too. Smokers don't just die of cancer. They also suffer from a variety of other fatal conditions.

Why must I do anything of the sort? As with all things there is a balance to be found that does not necessarily mean zero.

I can both support healthcare that’s free at the point of access (this distinction is important, because the NHS is not strictly speaking a “single payer” system, as both National Insurance and tax revenues from e.g. alcohol and cigarette sales are used to fund it) and individual liberty, even if that increases the cost of healthcare delivery. The NHS is not evidence of an authoritarian regime, it is evidence of the state playing a role in maintaining baseline standards of health, largely for the purposes of maintaining a healthy workforce.

Americans have such a wildly warped worldview in my experience.

The 5% of high risk healthcare consumers will result in 95% of the costs. It’s not fair for the 95% of low risk people to subsidize the remainder.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com