<story><title>Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits</title><url>https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21740873-argument-universal-health-care-clear-getting-there-difficult-says-john</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ordinaryperson</author><text>Universal health care is a euphemism for the poor and sick getting their medical care subsidized by the wealthy and healthy.&lt;p&gt;Morally, caring for the sick seems like the right thing to do, but it&amp;#x27;s like when I hear Bernie Sanders call for &amp;quot;free college education&amp;quot;: he doesn&amp;#x27;t mean free, he means the wealthy subsidizing it for others.&lt;p&gt;Universal health care implies just distributed costs, but the focus should be on bringing down costs so the payments don&amp;#x27;t have to be so astronomical.&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;p&gt;-Nurses could do a lot of things doctors do now, and for a lot less money, but MDs refuse to cede any authority.&lt;p&gt;-Medicare should be allowed to negotiate drug prices.&lt;p&gt;-Hospitals should pre-publish costs upfront before you accept care rather than saddle you with 100K in bills later on.&lt;p&gt;All of these things would help bring down cost but for political reasons we don&amp;#x27;t do them. Instead it&amp;#x27;s just about making wealthy people (which, for the record, I am not) pay more to cover for it.&lt;p&gt;Even if caring for the sick is just it shouldn&amp;#x27;t be accomplished just by a wealth transfer (to be fair, the ACA had some provisions to bring down the cost of care, but not nearly enough).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>arcticbull</author><text>There&amp;#x27;s some serious mental gymnastics going on here to justify that the US spends 2x the next country per capita on health care expenditure and still doesn&amp;#x27;t manage to pay for all its citizens. Especially when the federal government has already taken all its worst customers (the old) and thrown them into a socialized pool (medicare) without anyone to balance out the risk.&lt;p&gt;Wasn&amp;#x27;t there a writeup recently that wealth distribution isn&amp;#x27;t materially distinguishable from luck? [1] Your argument that the healthy&amp;#x2F;rich subsidize the poor&amp;#x2F;sick is tantamount to saying the unlucky should fend for themselves. That&amp;#x27;s an easy argument to make if you&amp;#x27;re lucky. Your luck may turn at any moment, and then if it does, you&amp;#x27;re SOL.&lt;p&gt;Further, if the moral argument falls flat for you, the self-centered argument is that if someone is too poor to get their horrifyingly contagious disease treated until its too late and it spreads to you, you&amp;#x27;re still sick, and you may still die, cover or no cover. It&amp;#x27;s why the fire department is socialized -- if the fire spreads to your house, it still burns does it not?&lt;p&gt;Especially as you argue you&amp;#x27;re not particularly well off necessary, you should be the strongest advocate for yourself, and therefore, for socialized medicine.&lt;p&gt;The world is moving there -- at least towards a two-tier system -- and this argument is on the wrong side of history.&lt;p&gt;[1] &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.technologyreview.com&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;610395&amp;#x2F;if-youre-so-smart-why-arent-you-rich-turns-out-its-just-chance&amp;#x2F;&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.technologyreview.com&amp;#x2F;s&amp;#x2F;610395&amp;#x2F;if-youre-so-smart-...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;[EDIT] I also wanted to throw in there the self-centered argument for socialized higher education. If you believe in the value of a college education, then you believe it will increase the productivity of that individual. A more productive individual makes your country more competitive, boosts GDP, moves the markets higher relative to that of other countries. This in turn benefits the wealthy who likely hold equities. Speculative, of course, but the argument seems consistent to me.</text></comment>
<story><title>Both in rich and poor countries, universal health care brings huge benefits</title><url>https://www.economist.com/news/special-report/21740873-argument-universal-health-care-clear-getting-there-difficult-says-john</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>ordinaryperson</author><text>Universal health care is a euphemism for the poor and sick getting their medical care subsidized by the wealthy and healthy.&lt;p&gt;Morally, caring for the sick seems like the right thing to do, but it&amp;#x27;s like when I hear Bernie Sanders call for &amp;quot;free college education&amp;quot;: he doesn&amp;#x27;t mean free, he means the wealthy subsidizing it for others.&lt;p&gt;Universal health care implies just distributed costs, but the focus should be on bringing down costs so the payments don&amp;#x27;t have to be so astronomical.&lt;p&gt;For example:&lt;p&gt;-Nurses could do a lot of things doctors do now, and for a lot less money, but MDs refuse to cede any authority.&lt;p&gt;-Medicare should be allowed to negotiate drug prices.&lt;p&gt;-Hospitals should pre-publish costs upfront before you accept care rather than saddle you with 100K in bills later on.&lt;p&gt;All of these things would help bring down cost but for political reasons we don&amp;#x27;t do them. Instead it&amp;#x27;s just about making wealthy people (which, for the record, I am not) pay more to cover for it.&lt;p&gt;Even if caring for the sick is just it shouldn&amp;#x27;t be accomplished just by a wealth transfer (to be fair, the ACA had some provisions to bring down the cost of care, but not nearly enough).</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>DanBC</author><text>&amp;gt; Universal health care is a euphemism for the poor and sick getting their medical care subsidized by the wealthy and healthy.&lt;p&gt;You might have a point if the US system didn&amp;#x27;t cost taxpayers more for worse care. The US government pays more per capita for health care than other systems, but doesn&amp;#x27;t provide universal coverage.&lt;p&gt;&lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ons.gov.uk&amp;#x2F;peoplepopulationandcommunity&amp;#x2F;healthandsocialcare&amp;#x2F;healthcaresystem&amp;#x2F;articles&amp;#x2F;howdoesukhealthcarespendingcompareinternationally&amp;#x2F;2016-11-01&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.ons.gov.uk&amp;#x2F;peoplepopulationandcommunity&amp;#x2F;healthan...&lt;/a&gt;&lt;p&gt;Universal coverage provides more levers to control costs.</text></comment>