[africanboy]

> someone who has assets to draw down from is, by definition, not poor.

So it is a paid program

Payed by your poverty.

If you end up inheriting money from a distant uncle, you have to pay back.

> you can't give away your money for the sole purpose of acquiring government benefits

That's understandable.

And it's only necessary because the country with the highest spending per capita on healthcare cannot agree that the only reason why they don't create a free universal healthcare system is not because it is economically unfeasible (if it is for Italy, it is for USA, I usually argue that USA could do a much better job than us), but because they fear that without the incentive to become rich and distance yourself from State benefits, the system would collapse.

It's only a cultural problem: nobody wants to rely on the State providing base services because nobody wants to think of themselves as "being poor" because only poor people use public services.

When you come from countries where public figures, politicians, presidents, Queens and Kings and even the Pope go to public hospitals, you can't imagine why it should be a bad thing.

[biggermike]

> If you end up inheriting money from a distant uncle, you have to pay back.

If you inherit money from a distant uncle, your uncle is presumably no longer alive to utilize state provided long-term care and you don't have to pay anything back. You're trying to contrive a counterexample that simply isn't applicable.

[africanboy]

What if he's not dead?

It's not contrived to receive money from your family, it is in fact the most common way on this side of the ocean.

It is contrived to help the citizens of your country in needs and then ask for the money back!

My parents don't have to worry that in their 80s they would have to pay because one of their nephews was born with some condition or preterm.

They only have think about being good grandparents.

When I was born I was put in the incubator for 16 days and have been in hospital for 24 days total. how much would that havee costed to my family?

My parents were nurses, they weren't completely poor so they surely had to pay for it, but not rich either.

Between me and my brother my mom stayed home, in payed sick leave, full salary, all expenses covered, for 36 months.

If they were in USA they'd have bankrupted or given up on having children.

My mom had a pre condition, she already had two miscarriages, I'm quite sure the insurance company would have used that notion to not pay.

Do you realise how ridiculous that system is?

What are the benefits of having such a system, when in the end USA life expectancy is only one year longer than China?

Look at this study.

If the system is so good, why USA ranks so badly?

(this is only one of many, all the international institutions, including WHO, agree that USA healthcare standards are lower than the average western standards and much worse than the highest western standards, despite how much money they pure into it)

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...

[biggermike]

> What if he's not dead?

Then you wouldn't be inheriting anything in the legal sense of the word. That's why it's a contrived scenario -- it doesn't exist in reality.

Besides, the point is moot, as Medicaid nursing home care isn't Medicaid medical care, which is what the original topic was about.

> My parents were nurses, they weren't completely poor so they surely had to pay for it, but not rich either.

The government here heavily subsidizes the healthcare plans of people near poverty (up to 4 times the poverty level), not just the poor.

[africanboy]

> Then you wouldn't be inheriting anything in the legal sense of the word

First of all, the uncle could be Mexican or French.

Secondly, devolving one's inheritance to someone else is completely legal (at least in my country).

> The government here heavily subsidizes the healthcare plans of people near poverty

They are paying for the insurance, not for the healthcare!

I don't know why is so hard for Americans to understand the difference.

So instead of having a State run system to give the people the best healthcare possible, they use a large amount of money to pay private institutions and still have shitty health care[0], while also spending more than anybody else [1]

Isn't it the textbook definition of "idiotic"?

[0] USA healthcare ranks 37th according to WHO study that evaluated 191 countries https://www.who.int/healthinfo/paper30.pdf

[1] https://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2...