alt Hacker NewsA consequence of universal healthcare that people don't talk about much is that it turns unhealthy citizens from an individual cost into more of a collective one. So it makes sense that countries with universal healthcare regulate in favor of their citizens as opposed to their food industry, because they're paying for the consequences more directly.
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This is both an argument in favor of universal healthcare, and my favorite argument for why the US should not implement it without first changing a whole array of perverse incentives.
That doesn’t seem to be working in the UK. We are nearly as bad as the US for obesity.
Nonsense. This is essentially a bottom-up process, not the result of government regulation.
It has to do with culture and wealth. Europe is getting fatter and richer.
This is like thinking medieval peasants or sub-saharan Africa are skinnier because of their robust paternalistic governments
Not that this affects the political calculus (where perception may as well be reality), but the cost burden specific to universal healthcare is actually opposite this intuition.
Things like obesity, smoking, and alcoholism all kill you before you can get too old. Healthy citizens end up using far more of the far more expensive end-of-life care, to the point where it outweighs the extra healthcare the unhealthy citizens use in their youth.