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Comment by sytelus | Hacker News Reader

If you have good top tier employer, chances are that you have pretty good insurance. Medical insurance is actually a criteria for lot of people for which employers to work for. This however probably applies to more skilled workers who have such choices. In single-payer, your employer no longer provides insurance. So everyone gets same plan and you are stuck with it.

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A top tier employer in Europe may still offer private health care insurance.

When my father had cancer treatment, he sometimes asked for the public hospital (shared ward, less lonely when he was feeling OK but had to spend days in a bed) and other times the private hospital (doctors and nurses had more time, but the treatment was the same and he had a private room).

Cultural difference. In my country everyone gets the same standard of healthcare. If you think you think you deserve special treatment just because you're rich you can fly to the US or Singapore. Strangely enough most rich people don't.

There is private health care in the UK and Germany. Presumably others, but not all EU countries.

Yup, the idea for for profit driven healthcare sounds bad until you consider the alternative which is cost minimization driven, the easiest way to cut costs is to not provide service

It’s the same doctors regardless... insurance companies are cost minimizers as well.

Indeed. My understanding is that US hospitals will inflate their bills because they know the insurance companies will turn over every stone to find ways to drive the bill down.

This in turn bites those that try to pay directly, as they end up with sticker shock.

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