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Comment by lnxg33k1 | Hacker News Reader

It is a great gesture, but if someone gets to have a spare billion to donate, makes me think that it could be the case to increase taxes and make institutions as vital as school be funded publicly and consistently by governments rather than random act of philanthropy

It’s mad that someone accrued billions and students can’t get 60k for free to study

I consider this kind of events more as a proof of the inadequacy of the system rather than the contrary

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> increase taxes and make institutions as vital as school be funded publicly

studying medicine is not a right. Basic education is - but k-12 schools are publicly funded already.

For each individual perhaps not, but there is a right to healthcare and out of this arises the need for physicians. And I for one would like the talent of the candidates to be the deciding factor, not their or in most cases their parents’ bank accounts. I’m a physician myself with an upper middle class background but if I lived in the U.S. I most probably wouldn’t be because of how cost prohibitive med school is over there. And this leads to all kinds of downstream effects like exorbitant physician later salaries on that render healthcare unaffordable for many and are detrimental to society.

I would also try to spark a thought about the effects that high debt might have on the decisions of doctors, to think that maybe if people weren’t buried by med school debt there could have been a different approach to oxy prescriptions or other pushes from pharma companies

Have countries with public universities suffered the same amount of opioids prescriptions epidemic?

It is not a right, thats why many countries have acceptance tests based on empirical results, not wealth based rights

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