[robocat]

> Objectively speaking the capitalist market has failed in this area

Objectively speaking the non-capitalist systems have failed in this area too. The UK’s NHS is not capitalist and it is surely isn’t succeeding better than the US healthcare system.

You can find countries where “socialist” healthcare works, but you can also find capitalist healthcare that works.

[Matl]

> Objectively speaking the non-capitalist systems have failed in this area too. The UK’s NHS is not capitalist and it is surely isn’t succeeding better than the US healthcare system.

The NHS has been effectively privatized as much as the Conservatives could get away with. It is constantly underfunded. It is not an example of a system the government wants to make work. In fact making it not work is the goal.

Yet when a family member of mine needed a life saving operation, they got it promptly and it didn't send them into any debt, whereas in contrast there's something like 50k preventable deaths a year in the U.S. due to lack of healthcare and people of poor means actively avoid visiting the hospital, so the NHS still works better for the vast majority.

Yes, for us in the tech industry and for elective procedures it's not so great, but that also perhaps isn't what regular people need.

[robocat]

> 50k preventable deaths

I love that term. If you prevent death one day, only for them to die the next, is that one preventable death? What if you do that five days in a row? Death is not preventable.

Extra years of quality life, I can get on board with. Especially because it sounds more manipulable, so you are more wary about it’s meaning.

To put 50k/annum in perspective, 3.5 million people died in the USA in 2021.

It’s a difficult area to come up with numbers for: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34045778

> people of poor means

Don’t poor people get some free healthcare in the US - although relatively how good that care is compared with other countries I don’t know. I thought it was the middle class that lose everything.