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0 pointsremarkEon2y ago0 comments

I think this sentiment is wrong.

The reason we don't have free tax preparation software (or a tax system that doesn't require that) and don't have free health care is because of competence issues. Taxes seems like a different dimension of problem, so let's leave it aside for the moment. Do we really believe that the people that work in the government here (in the US) are actually competent enough to administer a public health care system? I don't. I'd like to be convinced otherwise. Maybe you mean to say that we'd, I don't know, outlay lobbying and redirect that economic activity toward paying market salaries to people who are, in fact, competent enough to administer a public healthcare system.

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3 comments · 2 top-level

mnky9800n2y ago· 1 in thread

I find it a bit dishonest to claim that healthcare cannot be publicly administered because of trust issues when it's cheaper everywhere else and administered publicly even in places with high corruption like Russia.

AnthonyMouse2y ago

It's cheaper everywhere else because it's so incompetently (or corruptly) regulated here. If you can't demonstrate an ability to solve that problem here, putting more of the system under the same regulators seems like doing things out of order.

Pointing to Russia on costs also points to the other side of the problem: Their healthcare system is severely under-funded. That's one way to make it cost less.

nobody99992y ago

>Do we really believe that the people that work in the government here (in the US) are actually competent enough to administer a public health care system? I don't. I'd like to be convinced otherwise.

Sorry for the late reply.

Belief is unnecessary. The US government has been administering Medicare[0] since 1965 -- longer than I've been alive.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medicare_(United_States)

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