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Comment by nate_meurer | Hacker News Reader

Food and clothing are actually an argument against you here. Sure we waste a lot of both, and yet food insecurity is rare in the First World, and lack of clothing is pretty much the least significant part of poverty. Plus, government-forced redistribution reliably increases prices overall due to the increased costs of logistics and administration. There is no free lunch.

If you want to argue your point, you have to address the real fiscal burdens on modern societies, and the real drivers of debt across the West. The biggest components of government debt are medical care and pensions (including Social Security in the US). These are the things that are bankrupting us, not food and clothing.

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Pensions probably ought to be reduced/readjusted in accordance with life time expectancy, or some other maths that actually ends up in the green somehow while still allowing those who cannot take care of themselves to live a decent life. I've seen enough rich pensioners (my own grandmother among them...) to come to that conclusion.

The US spends an inordinate amount on healthcare since the system is covered in leeches (17~% of GDP compared to 10~ in Europe).[1] If a significant part of US debt is caused by healthcare costs, then that sounds like a political own-goal. That's not to say the costs in Europe are insignificant. We can probably do better here too.

[1] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/26746...

The US healthcare system is incredible compared to socialized systems if you can afford it. That's at least part of the reason it represents 17% of GDP. The same procedure I needed had a 2 day wait time in the US and a 10 month wait time in Canada.

“If you can afford it” is not efficient. It’s merely priority queue vs FIFO wherein it is decided that some folks get to skip lines based on some arbitrary merit.

If it were efficient it would clear the queue with max throughput. This is not so.

Are you getting faster or better outcomes in America than when taking _private_ treatment in Canada, or do you need the treatment in Canada to he public for your claim to hold?

I imagine that you can pony up to be seen in two days in Canada too, and also that the single-payer system keeps those private practice honest, so you'd pay less for your fast turnaround than in Freedonia. I may be wrong, of course.

If you have the money, you can get excellent healthcare in almost any civilized country. You're free to pay for your treatment in Canada, too.

The US has (without much debate) the absolute best healthcare on Earth if money isn't an issue. There are so many more experts in so many more fields with access to so much more cutting edge technology that...well rich people travel to the US to get care.

Yeah, what does it matter that the best healthcare, only available to the globally rich, American or not, is in the US? A much better measurement of a given country's healthcare system in more meaningful terms is average outcomes of the whole population, like life expecrsncy, child mortality rates, etc.

I'm trying to take your comment seriously, but it's very difficult. My partner is a physician in the US. People are ending up in ERs because it takes a year for them to see the specialist who could have prevented the same problem.

"If you can afford it" is true everywhere. You can also see a specialist in just about any country in a couple days if you've got the money to fly there; often cheaper and faster to travel outside the US to get care, depending on what you need.

"Public" healthcare in the US is a joke. Insurance costs more and covers less every year.

you are a funny man. i live in the one of the wealthiest areas of the US, c with good healthcare: specialists are very hard to get. service rationing is everywhere. we are losing doctors.

your argument is ideological, not rooted in reality.

The whole point of the article was that disabled people cannot afford it. That's why we need to socialize medicine.

no, it's not.

The real fiscal burdens on your society are your military spending and the interest on the debt you have already taken on.

Interest and military and take a distant third and fourth place respectively. Here are the rough proportions of the top US federal budget expenditures according to the Treasury Department:

- Healthcare (Medicare and Medicaid): 24%

- Social Security: 23%

- Net Interest on Federal Debt: 15%

- National Defense: 13%

And I'll point out that the enormous bill for the interest on debt is a pretty good reason to avoid ringing up so much debt in the first place.

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