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WalterBright 6 days ago

"Free" healthcare always turns out to be the most expensive healthcare.

stouset 6 days ago | parent | next [-]

This take is wildly out of sync with the reality that the U.S., as one of the few developed nations without free healthcare, pays more for their healthcare than all of them while having worse than average outcomes.

The worst healthcare is in reality American healthcare. We pay through the nose for the privilege of getting terrible results.

_zoltan_ 6 days ago | parent [-]

Switzerland has almost the same system as the US, and it works - when my wife needed an MRI, she got referred at around 11am by a specialist, for a call around 1pm to see if she's available that afternoon. She wasn't so they agreed on the next day.

Is it expensive? Yes. Does it work? Absolutely.

WalterBright 6 days ago | parent [-]

I received a CAT scan a couple years ago, about 4 hours after I wandered into urgent care. Before they stuffed me through the toroid, I asked the operator to set the dials to 1988 so I could advise my former self to buy MSFT with everything I had.

The bill was quite a whopper, though Obamacare paid most of it. Of course, my Obamacare premiums are about 4x what they were before Obamacare.

vjvjvjvjghv 6 days ago | parent | prev [-]

I call BS on this statement. And German healthcare isn’t even free.

WalterBright 6 days ago | parent [-]

Of course. And historically, US health care costs rose at about the rate of inflation until the late 1960s, where the curve tilted strongly upwards at a much higher rate, and continues today.

What happened in the late 1960s? The advent of "free" healthcare!

vjvjvjvjghv 6 days ago | parent [-]

Which free health care caused US healthcare to get so expensive?

WalterBright 5 days ago | parent [-]

Free healthcare was part of LBJ's "Great Society".

vjvjvjvjghv 5 days ago | parent [-]

Did it happen?