[ars]

> But what about "free healthcare". Don't americans want socialized healthcare over their despised privatized system?

Not really. The internet bubble might make you think that, but actually ordinary people aren't interested.

People with good jobs have health insurance, people without get government subsidized insurance. Either way most people are fine with what they have.

And the issues with healthcare in the US will not be solved by the government being the one to pay. Billing is too complex (i.e. costly), and Dr salaries are too high (compare them to other countries). Neither of those issues are solved by the government paying.

And don't forget how Americans hear stories from other countries about huge waits for care, and they want none of that.

There are zero proposals to make all Dr's employees of the government, on salary, who just take care of whoever shows up. But that might actually work to reduce costs.

[coldtea]

>People with good jobs have health insurance, people without get government subsidized insurance. Either way most people are fine with what they have.

Clearly, all those people who lost everything or even became homeless from some health issue despite paying insurance all their lives must be fictional

[joe_mamba]

How many people per capita become homeless from healthcare in US vs how many people die/suffer from long waiting times in Canada/socialized health systems?

[coldtea]

Quite a lot for the first case apparently (see 1).

The U.S. had roughly 770,000 people experiencing homelessness in 2024. Even if one-third of cases involved medical debt as a contributing factor, that gives 200 homeless people per 100,000 residents with healthcare costs contributing to their fate.

And obviously way more affected if we expand from complete homelessness to a housing downgrade (e.g. from a nice home to renting some appartment or going to a trailer or some motel) to cover medical costs that would have been trivial elsewhere, and even more so for those.

As for "how many people die/suffer from long waiting times in Canada/socialized health systems?", we know in Canada e.g.: 15,474 deaths while waiting ≈ 38 deaths per 100,000 people per year. And that's dying while waiting, not dying because of the wait. A lot of them are heavily impacted/elderly etc and would have died anyway with or without procedure (and the wait time of some of those could be comparable to a typical US wait time, or be totally independent from the healthcare system, and based on e.g. donor list priority, etc.).

To contrast, this report (2) estimates around 200,000 deaths/year ≈ 59 deaths per 100,000 Americans from lack of access / insurance/access-related mortality.

In recent years about 40% of uninsured adults reported delaying, skipping, or not obtaining needed care or medication because of cost. Even among insured adults, about 8% reported doing so. Gallup found 38% of Americans said they or a family member postponed medical treatment because of cost in 2022, the highest level in its long-running survey.

Keep in mind that about 8.2% of the US population that's uninsured (compared to ~ 0 in Canada). And that's not counting the US under-insured, claim denials, and costs that exceed deductibles and annual limits that all heavily burden even the insured in the US. In fact most US citizens with medical debt ARE insured.

1. https://publichealthpost.org/health-equity/medical-debt-home...

2. https://pnhp.org/news/estimated-us-deaths-associated-with-he...

[ars]

Your 1/3 number is complete nonsense. The actual number is Zero of those people are homeless because of medical debt.

People do not become homeless because of medical debt, that's simply not a thing that happens. Nor do people "lose everything" because of medical debt, that also doesn't happen.

If the medical debt is that bad they just don't pay it, or they file for bankruptcy. Absolutely nothing happens in the US if you don't pay medical debt. Nothing. It doesn't even hurt your credit score.

That study you linked should be held up as a case study in lying with statistics. But as hard as they tried to lie if you actually read it closely you will discover that medical debt does not cause homelessness.

[stackbutterflow]

How many ?

[joe_mamba]

Yes, that's what I asked. Why are you repeating it?

[coldtea]

He repeated it because you asked it as if implying it's an argument against "socialized insurance" as opposed to a mere question.

[joe_mamba]

>you asked it as if implying it's an argument against "socialized insurance" as opposed to a mere question

And how did you come up with that conclusion? Are you reading minds? No, I genuinely asked to know, since many factors are important, there's no winner out of the gate.

But since you showed you can't argue in good faith and need to start accusing people out of the gate, I'll leave the conversation here and let you be. Good day.