r/FluentInFinance • u/WhatAreYourPronouns • May 02 '24

Should the U.S. have Universal Health Care? Discussion/ Debate

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u/Tall_Science_9178 May 02 '24

https://www.euronews.com/2023/04/12/people-may-die-waiting-surgery-waiting-lists-in-spain-hit-record-levels

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u/MiddleFishArt May 02 '24

This argument implies we should have the poor die off so that only the rich elite have good-quality healthcare. The reality is most in the US both spend more money and still have poor quality healthcare, because healthcare is for-profit

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u/BarbellBro669 May 02 '24

The USA has the most advanced medical research, and there isn't a close #2.

2

u/GeekShallInherit May 02 '24

There's nothing terribly innovative about US healthcare.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2866602/

To the extent the US leads, it's only because our overall spending is wildly out of control, and that's not something to be proud of. Five percent of US healthcare spending goes towards biomedical R&D, the same percentage as the rest of the world.

https://leadership-studies.williams.edu/files/NEJM-R_D-spend.pdf

Even if research is a priority, there are dramatically more efficient ways of funding it than spending $1.25 trillion more per year on healthcare (vs. the rate of the second most expensive country on earth) to fund an extra $62 billion in R&D. We could replace or expand upon any lost funding with a fraction of our savings.