Hacker News Reader

Comment by ThrowawayTestr | Hacker News Reader

Why is the United States the only country on Earth where free healthcare doesn't work?

Good old American Exceptionalism.

The US' healthcare model is not unique, and almost no countries have zero-cost-to-consumer healthcare systems (and none of them are free -- they're just paid by taxpayers instead of consumers). "Free" healthcare is the exception rather than some kind of international norm you incorrectly make it out to be.

The first step to reforming US healthcare is actually understanding it, and understanding some international designs. Lying about it doesn't help.

Not a single soul on earth thinks single payer healthcare is free. 8 billion people, not one of them thinks it.

They mean “free to the consumer at time of service”, which it is. Nobody is lying, everyone agrees, it’s just you who doesn’t understand.

The vast majority of those 8 billion people do not have single payer healthcare. A lot of Americans get confused on this, because we're the only country in the Anglosphere that doesn't do single payer, but it's far from universal globally.

I didn’t say they did. I said they understand that free healthcare is not literally free, but comes from taxes. Do not underestimate them, they understand very basic things.

> Not a single soul on earth thinks single payer healthcare is free. 8 billion people, not one of them thinks it.

You are incredibly optimistic about a large swath of the population's understanding, unfortunately.

> Nobody is lying

There are plenty of people in this discussion making statements of fact that are false. Call it whatever you want.

No, they’re not false, you’re just misunderstanding. When people say “free” healthcare they do not literally mean all healthcare is zero dollars. They don’t mean nurses earn a wage of 0 dollars an hour.

No, they mean free at time of service, which they are.

Don’t believe me? Great, then ask them, without doing word gymnastics to try to trick them.

Should medical equipment cost 0 dollars to produce? Should doctors not earn any salary or wage? They will say no, 100% of the time.

> No, they mean free at time of service, which they are.

I don't think that's true France, Norway, New Zealand, or Switzerland. (And that's just developed nations. The GP's claim was every country other than the US.)

People wouldn't be externalities if healthcare costs money. Next thing you know you would have to pay attention to the environment or god forbid the food. It would eat away the budget for overthrowing countries and bombing children. Watch them elect a democrat to do the bombing next round and a new republican after that. It sounds like a joke but it isn't funny.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com