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Comment by CodeMage | Hacker News Reader

> Voters in the US are already paying for healthcare for all

I've been living in the US for almost 7 years, and this is news to me. As far as I understand, Medicare only applies to people who are 65+ years old, and Medicaid only applies to families with certain income (relative to family size). What did I miss?

> The USA doesn't (generally) let people die if they can't afford healthcare (people may be driven into bankruptcy, but they won't be left to die), so those costs are all getting paid by the public.

As COVID-19 has demonstrated quite effectively, death is not the only outcome to focus on. Also, driving a person into bankruptcy or otherwise ruining their future is not what I would call "healthcare paid for by everyone".

I am sincerely hoping that I have missed something in your arguments.

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Anyone in the USA can walk into an emergency room to get treatment - the public is paying for that through high hospital fees and direct subsidies.

Instead of waiting for someone with the flu to develop pneumonia and go to the ER because he can't breath, it'd be much cheaper to subsidize his visit to a primary care physician that he can go to before he needs a hospital.

To relate a personal experience, I have a relative that's had drug addiction problems all her life -- a few years back she had a cold or flu, couldn't afford to see a doctor so tried to ride it out at home, fortunately, she called her mom and told her how sick she was. When she didn't respond to the phone the next day, her parents drove across the state to check on her, found her near comatose and called 911. She had some bacterial pneumonia and almost died, she spent 10 days in the hospital, 5 of those days were in the ICU, intubated and in an induced coma. Because she was working and had some moderate income, she had lost her eligibility for state subsidized medical insurance. After taking 6 weeks off work to recover, she of course, lost her job, then she qualified for health care coverage and state disability payments.

The total hospital bill was over $300,000. Since she had no income or assets, the hospital wrote off the entire bill and absorbed the charges.

All of this because the public didn't want to pay $100 for her to see a doctor and get some antibiotics.

Okay, so it looks like I didn't actually miss anything in your arguments.

I think it's fair of you to point out that there are certain scenarios in which healthcare is not paid for by the person getting it and everyone else ends up paying for it indirectly. I also think it's fair of you to point out that it's handled in such a way that it creates a byzantine system that ends up costing us all a lot more than it should.

But that's a long long way from claiming that "voters in the US are already paying for healthcare for all", in the context of the current discussion. "Voters in the US are paying for a byzantine system that handles extreme cases that happen because of the failure to have a proper healthcare for all" is as far as I could go with your arguments ;)

It would have been more accurate if I had said "voters in the US are paying more than what it would cost to provide healthcare for all".

But the point remains -- voters don't want to pay for it, but they are already paying for it, many just don't realize it because when they pay $500/month for healthcare insurance, they don't see the $900 that their employer is paying or the public subsidies to hospitals.

I think the previous poster may be referring to use of emergency services by people without health insurance. Which is an indirect tax to voters anyways

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