RE: Left Leaning Liberals and Proponents of Socialism will often offer things like Free Education for All... Medicare/aid for all, etc.
None of those countries give "free" healthcare either. Governments cannot give FREE anything. They pay for things by taking from citizens or putting them into debt. They have no other product. So I don't care what country it is. It isn't free. So I am calling out the lies of politicians that use promises of "free" services to convince people to vote for them. It is a huge lie.
As to the places with humane health care. As I stated many times in the post. Health Care Insurance is NOT the same as Health Care. In the U.S. the Affordable Health Care Act is purely based upon Health Care Insurance and it is anything but affordable.
Some countries offer health care to all of their citizens. It is not free. It is paid for by their taxes. Depending upon who you talk to the quality of those systems is very debateable. I know people that come to the U.S. from say Canada just because they have trouble getting what they need in Canada. I even have met people that moved to the U.S. due to the taxation to pay for medical in Canada. Though they moved here before the Affordable Healthcare Act (aka Obamacare) and I doubt things look that much different financially now.
Prior to this you could still get healthcare. You might have a debt to pay off, but an ER would not turn you away. Now you have what essentially is an expensive tax and you still are in debt in the U.S. The prices have increased so much the debt actually is worse than it was before this mess.
The specifics of other countries I can't argue. I can tell you governments can't give any FREE services. There is no such thing as a FREE from governments unless we are endorsing enslaving the workers to provide that service, and we still must pay to feed, clothe, and house them so even then it still isn't free.
People are IGNORANT of the fact that a new service is something they STILL pay for. It typically comes in the form of more taxes. So suddenly they are getting less money from their paycheck. Or perhaps it is debt and printing money which devalues the currency and now their paycheck is not able to pay for as much due to inflation. So the people ENCHANTED by promises of "free" end up paying for it. They just generally are so emotionally caught up by "free" they miss the fact of how that is paid for.
It is worse. If people pay for things themselves they pay for things they need, and want. If the government pays for things with taxes then people end up paying for things and services they themselves would never use or need.
There is nothing compassionate about spending other people's money.
The ACA was handicapped by the fact that the entire Republican Party opposes any action to improve the health care system, and half of the Democratic Party is owned by the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, including Obama's chief of staff at the time. It net-improved coverage, but did so by doing the policy equivalent of shuffling around deck chairs on the Titanic.
Other first world countries successfully use insurance-based models in their health systems. Some just run it directly by the government. All perform better than the US system, and for less money.
None of them - no country on Earth - has a successful, humane health care system that doesn't involve taxing somebody in some way. So if you're going to say "the health care system is bad, and taxes are bad", the onus is on you to convince us how it is possible to have a good health care system without government involvement, a notion that would seem absurd to most everybody else on the planet, including health policy experts.
Just a quick note that in Canada, our taxes only pay for a basic amount of healthcare. If you want more than the basic, additional money comes out from both your employer's and your pocket.
Yep I actually interviewed for a job in Edmonton once and encountered that. It was confusing at the time. That was many years ago.