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Comment by Karishma1234 | Hacker News Reader

When government pays for your healthcare some civil servants who look at you as merely statistics make that call to keep you alive or to let you die. In that sense the money spent is actually controlled.

In USA there is this weird concept that "all lives matter more than anything else" and hence doctors spend millions.

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Well it's a concept, but it's applied very hypocritically. It seems mostly about social status. "All lives matter more than anything else but some lives don't matter very much at all" would be more accurate. Some people get millions of dollars in treatment (they're wealthy or have employment with a company with good insurance) while others die slowly for lack of a few bucks for a prescription (they already lost their jobs due to previous illness, mental illness or addiction, or just got unlucky with timing).

Politicians in certain states and in the federal government are doing their best to make sure people without jobs can't get help with affording treatment as well. Frankly to claim that we in the US care more about lives than those in other developed nations with rational disbursement of healthcare funding is just wrong.

Sorry if you weren't implying that, but I think you were.

The person who has lost job or does not have a good job is not likely going to have much of a life either even if he is cured. If he has hope of having a good life he might as well borrow some reasonable money.

This might sound evil but what is really evil here is the US government and FDA that has put regulations which essentially say you will either get best possible treatment or none.

It is not clear to me why the prescription system is so ridiculously regulated. Not clear to me why people having opioids is such a big deal and why we can't have more of health workers giving minor treatment instead of just doctors.

In country like India there will be lot of quacks who are not real doctors and yet serve in villages where no real doctor would work.

That happens in the USA too, except the bureaucrats are in large insurance corporations vs. large government organizations.

Yes and I find it surprising that people demanding socialised medicine in USA somehow think giving complete monopoly to government over medicine will not screw things up.

They look at other countries and see how much better it is? There is a reason why it's in demand ;)

And the above case precisely shows why they might be terribly wrong.

Except for those of the uninsured who are left to die.

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