[UnpossibleJim]

It's a matter of priorities. If we decide these things are important as a nation they don't have to be scarce. We make the best war machines on the planet and spend a lot of money on them. That is more of a priority than the good health of our nation.

[xcskier56]

We spend 5-8x more on healthcare than defense. You have to ration somehow. If everyone use as much of the healthcare system as we wanted it would consume our society.

In the US, we ration by price… “the doctors expensive and I don’t feel too bad so I’m not going to go”. In Europe, they ration via lines… you’ll get your free healthcare eventually.

Either way there are problems, but seems like other countries might be onto something

[hedora]

We pay a lot for healthcare, but that money is not spent on healthcare.

It is an important distinction. For example, about 33% of healthcare dollars go to paying “claims proceesing” people at your insurance company and your doctors office to haggle with each other and produce duplicate paperwork.

If the low end of your estimate (5x) is the correct multiplier, the money that goes to claims processing would be enough to pay for universal healthcare in pretty much any other first world country.

Other things, like absurdly high drug prices, also are not healthcare spending. 90+% of drug discovery research money is spent at universities, and not by pharmaceutical companies. Also, those companies pay more for prescription drug advertising than for drug research.

[jb1991]

It’s a common argument that somehow people who live in countries with good health coverage have to wait a very long time for health services. Things that are not urgent, this can be true. And you can certainly hear anecdotes here and there about more serious problems. But most of the time for the vast majority of people in the vast majority of situations, healthcare is delivered when it’s needed, on time, without dangerous delay. This talking point that somehow elevates the American approach because it is faster is misguided.

[WhatWorkingOn]

A war machine can be built once and maintained for a long time. Medical care is a personal and time consuming process with multiple parties and tests that need to be coordinated across. All of this is expensive because for every person being given that time of day, there's someone else that needs it. There aren't enough hours in the day and smart people in the country to scale up healthcare.

Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is a scarcity of intelligent people willing to devote their entire lives to the study of medicine across specialties.

If you cannot afford it, the US healthcare is terrible. If you have the means to afford it, the US healthcare system is one of if not the best in the world.

[lantry]

> If you have the means to afford it, the US healthcare system is one of if not the best in the world.

That's unfortunately not even the case. Americans spend more money on healthcare AND have worse outcomes.

https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/article-abstract/27843...

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/quality...

https://www.pgpf.org/blog/2022/07/how-does-the-us-healthcare...

[hedora]

> If you have the means to afford it, the US healthcare system is one of if not the best in the world.

This is untrue according to all metrics I have seen (such as life expectancy). Do you have any evidence to back this statement up?

[jrajav]

> A war machine can be built once and maintained for a long time.

This might be true in theory but is somewhat irrelevant here given the gargantuan levels of waste in US military spending.

There is also gargantuan waste in healthcare costs, but those are spread out via insurance, not taxes.

The presence of gargantuan waste in both sectors and the different avenues of spending both make any after-the-fact, simplified explanation of why one costs more than the other kind of moot.

The presence of gargantuan waste should also be addressed before implying that the costs of healthcare are all presumed necessary.

[triceratops]

> Contrary to what we would like to believe, there is a scarcity of intelligent people willing to devote their entire lives to the study of medicine across specialties

Why? Are money and social status insufficient motivators? Or is there another reason?

[refurb]

There is no country on the planet that doesn't have a scarcity of medical resources. In fact there is an entire set of academics devoted to the appropriate utilization of medical resources - healthcare economics.

[moneywoes]

Cuba?

[moneywoes]

Artificial crisis no? Doctors keep split low