...implementing a healthcare policy cooked up by conservative think tanks in the 1990s.
The rest of the developed world shows that anything short of national healthcare system is an expensive mistake.
The rest of the developed world shows that anything short of national healthcare system is an expensive mistake.
Of "the rest of the developed world", only one country (the UK) has a "national healthcare system", and even that's a bit of a stretch, because England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland all have different systems.
Canada runs healthcare at the provincial level. France, Germany, Spain, the Netherlands, etc. - all of those countries use private systems that cannot reasonably be called a "national healthcare system", unless you're going to stretch the definition so far as to say that countries like India (and the US) also have national healthcare systems.
England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland makes 4 countries, just FYI.
This handy graphic explains in case of confusion: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/28/Br...
...yes, that's the point. When people talk about "the NHS", as they usually do on HN, they're conflating four different systems (or, more commonly, thinking only of NHS England).
The point, in case you missed it is that nobody outside the UK has what can reasonably be called a "national healthcare system" in this context.
But their choice of doing so was guided by right-wing ideology. The Democratic Party is a center-right party. You might not be able to single out any one party for this problem, but you can certainly indict those who further this kind of thinking in the face of its demonstrable moral and economic failure.
Yes, removing this reduces costs - by creating a category of people who can't get insurance at anything resembling a price they can afford, and therefore either have to suffer, go bankrupt, die, or all three.
And then, when coverage was revoked, why would any other person insure this new cancer patient?
[1]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03...
> The House voted 219 to 212 to approve the measure, with every Republican voting no.
[2]: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/12...
> Vice President Biden presided over the 60 to 39 party-line vote, ...
This is in line with my original point - since when did facts become so malleable?