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Admiral Valdemar wrote:Would America ever get a National Health Service like in the UK one day? And if it would, would people living there prefer it?

Never. In America, the superiority of The Free Market in all things is not just an economic theory; it's a religion. Sure, the free market does work really well for certain things, but a lot of Americans seem reluctant to grasp that it requires the possibility of exclusion in order to function.

If you're talking about an essential service which must be available to all people regardless of whether they can afford to pay, then the free market is the wrong way to go about it. The effectiveness of the free market is directly proportional to the power of the buyer vs the seller. When the seller holds all the power and the buyer is effectively held hostage, the free market becomes abusive, and that's the case in health care.

*waits for right-wingers to come in and accuse me of being a commie*

Ah, just as I expected.

The US is more free market than any other Western country from what I recall in economics class with countries like the UK, France, Germany and Canada being all mixed-market centreline, primarily at least.

In the extreme, no side is good, but that's the nature of extremities, a free market is just as horrendous as a purely socialist one so a good stance inbetween works best with systems like health, education and public transport etc. being gov't handled and most everything else having corporate leanings.