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Comment by mschuster91 | Hacker News Reader

This is one of the pseudo-"arguments" I absolutely hate to read.

The problem with America's healthcare is not the military, foreign aid or wars. It simply is not.

The problem is the insane amount of waste in the US healthcare system. Y'all already spend much, much more per capita on healthcare than everyone else on earth by a wide margin [1], but get markedly lower returns in life expectancy [2].

Y'all need to cut the waste and middlemen out of your healthcare system, take that money and invest it into prevention (especially: fight against obesity - the US has a serious problem there costing a lot of money and causing a lot of suffering [3]), and you would get far better returns.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_hea...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expe...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Obesity_in_the_United_States

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Americans will never be able to "solve" obesity at a national level in their free liberal "business first" world. After all obesity is a consequence of the biggest industry of all, the fast food industry. And a lot of profits are predicated on sick fat people from fitness to dieting to health care and pharmacy.

There are very little profits to these giants if the population was slim and healthy.

The counter argument is that the free market also allows lots of money to be made on anti-obesity drugs which incentivises them to be researched.

Maybe we wouldn’t have had GLP-1 (at all or as quickly) without the huge market that is the USA.

Not saying I fully buy this argument but it is at least plausible defence of libertarianism.

Who cares about those companies, whole industries can come and go as markets dance their daily dance.

The fact is, every single country on earth figured this out better than US. Which ain't so bad, but the stubbornness to even admit a failure due to some primitive patriotism or whatever and fix it is quite something. Well, you do you.

It's not stubbornness.

It's simply the outcome of a system that puts private profits before public good (in this case health, but you can see the same thing play out in other sectors too such as education).

Everything is working as designed.

The waste is a byproduct of a many-layered insurance system forced between patient and provider. Everyone in the chain wants their pound of flesh. That problem will exist until the government provides a managed alternative and takes corporate profit out of healthcare.

And that all comes down to the appetite for social spending. It's patriotic to funnel $tn to arms suppliers but only a Commie would want health, dental, mental and social care free for all.

It's not a pseudoargument, it's pointing out the madness in US public spending. This money was available to blow stuff up, kill kids in another country. Why not spending something similar to improve the US domestically.

> This money was available to blow stuff up, kill kids in another country. Why not spending something similar to improve the US domestically.

Because there is already more than enough money in the US healthcare system. Just shoving in more money will not help anybody at all.

I think we're possibly saying the same thing in different ways but the only way you take the money going to insurance companies and debt collectors is by providing a service that doesn't rely on them.

Getting there is the hurdle. Forcibly nationalise insurers and their hospital networks? Price capping all the things? Doesn't sound very American.

That leaves competition. To fund that, you need tax revenue. Eventually people will pay that tax instead of insurance but it's infrastructure, so it's front-loaded.

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