alt Hacker NewsI generally agree (and sympathize with your wife), but let's not present an overly rosy view of government run healthcare or single-payer systems. In many countries with such systems, extensive therapy simply isn't available at all because the government refuses to pay for it. Every healthcare system has limited resources and care is always going to be rationed, the only question is how we do the rationing.
Replies
Every healthcare system has problems, yes. However the spectre of medical debt and bankruptcy is a uniquely American one, so, IMHO, even if we moved to single-payer healthcare and every other problem stayed the same, but we no longer shoved people into the capitalist fuck-barrel for things completely outside their control, I think that's an unmitigated, massive improvement.
Government run healthcare can be done well or it can be done poorly. I’ve lived under both kinds and I would take the bad over America’s system. In Japan, I had to have a ton of cardiac work done, and it was done faster than I’d get it here.