[izzylan]

So then lets say a healthy 22-year-old graduates from college at the top of their class. Life's looking up for them. They've already got a job lined up that starts in two weeks and they're excited and energetic about entering the workforce and living on their own as adult.

Then suddenly, some random guy in a mustang doing 150 in a 30 jumps the curb and runs over our optimistic 22-year-old, and continues speeding into the distance. A random onlooker witnesses the event and calls an ambulance, who rushes them to the hospital. Thanks to the hard work ICU doctors and surgeons spanning days, our 22-year-old miraculously lives, but is in bad shape. They're never gonna walk again, and they're gonna need weeks of physical therapy just to retrain the fine motor skills required to write and type.

All of this, for a variety of factors is gonna cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. On top of the massive hospital bill they're about to be saddled with.

I take it that our now not-so-healthy 22-year-old should just go fuck themselves then? They've never paid a dime into the system so why should they be entitled to health care?

[mothballed]

>I take it that our now not-so-healthy 22-year-old should just go fuck themselves then? They've never paid a dime into the system so why should they be entitled to health care?

No, no one is entitled to the labor of others, not in this scenario where they are 3rd party to the damages. That doesn't even remotely make sense no matter how bad of a sob story you attach to it.

[izzylan]

This isn't actually a sob story, and I'm not saying he's entitled to labor of others. What I am asking is how your proposed system handles a case such as this.

And while it may be an edge case, these are large, broad systems that directly impact the lives of millions of living, breathing people. Such systems must be robust and well-examined.

And I'd also like to ask what a society would look like, that invests so heavily in the education of it's young generation, and relies on them to bring innovations and new ideas to the table, only to cut them down the moment they need any sort of assistance. It certainly seems to me like a huge waste of resources.

What if healthcare was just an investment in our society? Our young 22-year-old gets healthcare covered not because he's entitled to it but because society is invested in his well-being in order to continue existing and improve itself. Because the ROI of the young being kept healthy and able to work and pay into the system is greater than the cost of the ICU doctors and surgeons and wheelchairs and physical therapy.

[mothballed]

The voluntary way of capturing future ROI with present investment is loans (or if you don't care about ROI, donation). Now I'm not saying that is necessarily the only option but it's the one you're gunning for based upon your economic argument.

Based on your criteria it's the most textbook case for an individual loan imaginable, your argument is the 22 y/o needs a loan for some healthcare, that he can more than pay it back, and that both parties will benefit. In the absence of charity, some kind of trade, family or friend assistance, then in any rational market (US market is regulated to hell so no guarantee it works there unless you free that market) it's a no brainer and as sure as an apple will fall from a tree, someone would be happy to make that trade although the kinetics and packaging might be up for debate.

I don't see how you can possibly presuppose a requirement for public assistance, in that scenario, in order for the health care to happen. Public assistance is only economically necessary to complete the health care if there is negative ROI and all donation or voluntary options are exhausted.

[ThrowMeAway1618]

>No, no one is entitled to the labor of others, not in this scenario where they are 3rd party to the damages. That doesn't even remotely make sense no matter how bad of a sob story you attach to it.

Absolutely! We should just Brian Kilmeade[0] those folks too, since they're just a burden on society, right?

[0] https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/columnist/2025/09/17/...

[mothballed]

It's interesting to me you jumped right past charity, loans, work-trade, or any other variety of options and instead went straight to your preferred method of doing things -- either violence (tax man with guns) and if not that you question if they should be executed.

I'm just advocating putting the violent methods aside.

[shadowgovt]

If no one is entitled to the labor of others, why would we engage in charity?

Work-trade when it's someone's health is slavery, so we're going to go ahead and pull that off the table.

Loans are, more or less, how we've gotten into the awful state we are currently in in the US with unpayable medical debt.

I propose an alternate approach: medical care is a civil service that you can voluntarily provide, like fire prevention or undrafted military service. If you do, you are paid the rate the society agrees to for the work. We all pay for it with taxes. If we want more of it, we raise taxes and incentives. This removes several perverse market effects and sets up a minimum standard of care divorced from individual circumstance to level out the effect of bad luck a bit.

This is, more or less, a model that many countries are currently enjoying.

[mothballed]

>If no one is entitled to the labor of others, why would we engage in charity?

Because some people want to help others beyond what they're forced to do. There is a long history of charitable health services in the US and worldwide, you might rightly ascertain they can't possibly provide all of medical care, nonetheless it's non-zero enough to dispel the notion it can't be provided in the absence of an entitlement.

> medical care is a civil service that you can voluntarily provide,

Civil services are funded by people working to pay their taxes. Work-trade when it's someone health is slavery, so work-trade when it's to not have to go in a tiny cage dragged away by an IRS agent has to be slavery too, especially when you consider the health implications of that.

Therefore the public / civil service options are tossed out by your own criteria.

Loans, again, if those aren't allowed you can toss out any government option because that's a huge part of how the government is funding itself.

Using your own criteria only charity or cash payments would be allowed. Not sure I agree with that one, but that's what you're leaving us with.

[shadowgovt]

I think if you're arguing "taxes are slavery" you are coming from a vantage point that is far too libertarian to have a constructive conversation. We can probably just short-circuit that by saying "The only way people in the US get jailed for taxes is by committing fraud; we correctly left debtor's prison in the past" and be done with that, yes?

Taxes aren't slavery; they're how we operate modern, functional, post-feudal societies (and whether they are actually "paying for" services or are "redistributing supply and demand more equitably by curtailing the spending power of the ones who have too much so that the ones who have too little can have access to resources at all" is an implementation detail for macroeconomists and operators of fiat currencies).

You do raise the interesting question of funding it by buying bonds though. I don't see an issue with that; the argument against loans is a practical one, not a theoretical one ("the private debt incurred upon patients is, in essence, an involuntary one-sided loan granted to them, and we've seen that lead to massively unfair outcomes"). Voluntarily loaning the government money seems to work great and is miles distant from involuntarily-accrued (or accrued under duress; "sure, that procedure is optional because you always have the option to die") medical debt.

[UncleMeat]

People say that charity should happen instead of taxes. Will you commit to giving all money from future tax cuts to charity?

The practical reality is that charity does not meaningfully solve these problems at scale.

[mothballed]

Of course not. At scale you basically need to remove the government from the situation, they're the one regulating health care into a gigantic blimp. Once health care is completely deregulated and the costs drop you won't need to spending anything close to "all [future] money."

Now if you offered me a deal, I could substitute all my taxes, or even everyone's taxes, for charity, yes I would take that in a heartbeat. In all likelihood I think I would probably donate about 10% of my income to charity if there were no taxes, but the government is so terribly ineffectual it might actually beat the 20-30% I pay now.

[UncleMeat]

Have you though? There have been tax cuts in the past. Did you take your savings and give to charity?

[ThrowMeAway1618]

Oh noes! I've been Poe's Law'd again!

Mercy, mercy me!

Or are you just spouting ridiculous tropes? Charity? Work-Trade? Loans? Paid by whom in that scenario?

I'd expect you're more in line with Kilmeade than McCain. Why don't you just admit it? It's all out in the open now, no need to hide any more. You'll be broadly lauded for your economic smarts!

Please.

[mothballed]

Your thesis is that people so broadly support additional tax money going to fix the 22 year old that it could be legitimate law, but somehow so few support it that charity or other alternatives (if the very people that support it weren't forced by law) would be a ridiculous trope?

You're defeating your own argument.

[ThrowMeAway1618]

No. My thesis is that we can reduce total healthcare spending by having a single-payer system that covers everyone.

It's not additional tax money, it's money that doesn't need to go to corporate jets and huge pay packages for the C-Suite and large dividends for the shareholders of insurance companies, healthcare providers, pharmaceutical companies and medical equipment manufacturers.

And the tens to hundreds of billions we save on that can pay for that 22 year old.

But we can't have that, now can we? Better to Brian Kilmeade 'em, eh?