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Comment by wqaatwt | Hacker News Reader

There are countries in Europe which have entirely privatized healthcare systems (not even medicare/medicaid equivalents). US tried adopting some of their practices with Obamacare and even that didn’t work out. Singlepayer isn’t really necessary to have a reasonably affordable and accessible healthcare system proper regulation is.

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As successful as Obamacare has been it didn't really do much to lower the cost of healthcare or claw back the billions wasted to insurance company profits. There might be some kind of regulation just as effective as single payer, but we've never seen it anywhere in the US.

> As successful as Obamacare has been it didn't really do much to lower the cost of healthcare

It dramatically lowered the cost to consumers. Further, conflating overall healthcare spend with the portion of spend tied to a significantly lower-cost population is apples and oranges at best and represents a fundamental misunderstanding of healthcare cost in general. It's ok to not have opinions about things you know you don't understand.

"lowered" hasn't made much difference. Before the affordable care act Americans spent more and got less for their money and that hasn't changed. Insurance companies are still stuffing their pockets with billions and denying coverage. Americans struggled to afford the care that they needed before the affordable care act, and they still struggle to afford the care that they need today. The affordable care act was a very small improvement, but it didn't move the needle compared to other nations

> but we've never seen it anywhere in the US.

Well just copy paste the Swiss system (of course that’s not feasible both the “free market” and pro “socialized” single payer supporters would hate it). However they have a heavily regulated, reasonably affordable fully private healthcare system.

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