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by piedpiper_ 3389 days ago
> Yes. Ideally, that's what governments should do: require citizens to act in our collective and long-term best interests, not only their own.

That's starting to sound a lot like Marxism where the value of the individual is less so than that of the collective (Government / State).

I'm sorry but no thanks. Who determines what our best interest is? The only person on this planet that can determine my best interest is me. If I'm incapable of doing so for myself then that is too bad.
1 comments
seanmcdirmid 3389 days ago
It's starting to sound like civilization. When we live together, I don't want to subsidize your poor decisions.

If you want to live your life alone in a forest somewhere, you can pay no tax and make all your own decisions.

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piedpiper_ 3389 days ago
What does this have to do with healthcare? Is it a right or a privilege? Your answer to that question makes it clear why we likely disagree.

Healthcare is a SERVICE that someone PROVIDES to you for MONEY. It has a tangible COST. It is not a RIGHT which is something that WE as a COLLECTIVE have determined WE individually possess (liberty, right to bare arms, freedom of press, right to assemble, etc)

That is the bedrock issue behind all the arguments on this topic and why (despite idealistically admirable), universal healthcare will likely never happen...

To make it clear, personally I am not opposed to doing everything we can as a society to bring the cost of healthcare down and make it available and affordable to as many people as possible. But to guarantee blanket coverage for ~325M people is not realistic.

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sobani 3389 days ago
To add on to the comment of seanmcdirmid

Adding up the population[1] (in millions, rounded down) of all countries in Europe with universal healthcare[2], except the 144 million from Russia, which is mostly asia anyway, I get to 484 million people covered by universal healthcare.

This includes countries like Germany (81M), France (66M), the UK (65M), Italy (60M) and Spain (46M), which should alleviate the fear of 'small European countries can do that, but not a state as big as California'.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_European_countries_by_... [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_univers...

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seanmcdirmid 3389 days ago
But there are more than 325 million people covered by socialized medicine in the EU. Why is that unrealistic?

Heck, it could even help our economy, because you probably don't buy your own health insurance anyways, but get it from work. Take away that burden from the companies, and it could actually make them more competitive.

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