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Comment by adventured | Hacker News Reader

How can you claim universal healthcare, with 12% [1] of the population not covered by any form of health insurance?

The US system has very little in common with European style universal healthcare. To say nothing of the extreme cost most Americans still pay for their health insurance, or the bankruptcies that are still overwhelming in the system.

Universal healthcare that bankrupts millions of people? That's an inherently ridiculous premise.

[1] http://money.cnn.com/2015/04/13/news/economy/obamacare-unins...

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The US system is just mandatory national insurance, which is also the model found in some European countries, for example Switzerland. Single-payer is not the only way to achieve universal healthcare, nor even the only way it's done in Europe.

Maybe it doesn't work as well, but that's down to the details, not because it's inherently different in how it works.

Universal! = free or total.

If you test positive for AIDS you can after the fact buy health insurance long before you need significant medical care. That implies a defacto basic level of coverage for long term chronic conditions which is by far the largest issue.

PS: As to the 11.9% figure, that does not include large numbers of people with significant access to health care that’s not based on insurance. EX: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ryan_White_Care_Act 'improve availability of care for low-income, uninsured and under-insured victims of AIDS and their families.'

The VA also provides a lot of free healthcare for people without insurance. Not to mention prisoners getting free healthcare.

If universal is not total, then we've always had universal healthcare. Oh, and you might want to inform all dictionaries they have the incorrect definition of universal.

The legislation signed by Obama is not universal healthcare in any sense. Maybe universal health insurance, but certainly not healthcare. Insurance does not make healthcare affordable.

Universal is all people. (x axis) Total as in covering all conditions. (y axis)

"Universal health care is not a one-size-fits-all concept and does not imply coverage for all people for everything." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Universal_health_care Note from that page: "The Swiss Healthcare system and US Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act are based on compulsory insurance."

PS: Hospitals are required to treat some life threating heath conditions like gunshot wounds without asking about payment. So, that also counts as a limited (some conditions) form of universal (all people) heath care.

Arguably, free speech would be universal but not total as there are limits on nonpolitical speech.

Edit: IMO, the implementation was terrible, but it's still a huge improvement.

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