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Comment by AuthAuth | Hacker News Reader

>Socializing healthcare isn’t going to get an huge portion of the population out of their cars and get them walking as a primary or secondary mode of transportation

You would think so but once healthcare cost becomes a government policy issue people complain about its spending and they are forced to try and bring that cost down. One of the ways they did that in my country was to promote biking to work and build bike ways.

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Did I mention the 100° summers or the fact that people usually live 20+ miles from where they work?

I agree with you generally on the incentives, but it took us 70 years to paint ourselves into this corner, and we’re not going to get out of it because of a third-order incentive.

Thats not every where nor is it everyone. Im not saying it will specifically be bikes but the government will be incentivized to have a healthier population. It could be higher tax on cigs, or sugars, it could be more annual leave it could be any number of wellbeing policies.

But it is many places. You can't just magically hand-wave away the fact that the demographics between these places are wildly different, and that changes the burdens on the systems in place.

From a political philosophy standpoint, this is exactly why many people oppose a single-payer healthcare system. When the government is paying for everything it creates a financial incentive for an intrusive nanny state. We can argue about the positives and negatives, and maybe we would be healthier overall, but many Americans simply don't want the government telling them what to do.

https://press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/R/bo413854...

We are getting the "intrusive nanny state" regardless of financial incentives of a given healthcare system. That ship has sailed. It's a goal, not a side effect.

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