Look, I’m not some anti single payer guy. In fact given the option I’d bet on it being the best of the options.

But it’s just untrue that you paid $0 to have a kid. You don’t know how much you paid & that’s ok. But it’s a valid criticism of single payer.

Further it is also true that the US system has deep flaws but it’s fundamentally untrue that the many Americans get the full boat costs of a birth. So comparing your $0 cost & a $15k outlier is largely a futile excercise.

The article says that people in the U.S are not having children because of prohibitive costs, 15000 dollar bill from a hospital was mentioned somewhere. Various Europeans said they paid 0 in their country, somebody said that even in Europe you pay and the cost is approximately the same (the implication being that you pay a bill, not a tax) which is quite the lie and prompted me to join the people saying hey, we pay 0 (implying not getting a big bill all of a sudden that you might not be able to afford at that particular moment)

I'm pretty sure every other person reading my initial comment understood huh, the government pays for it and he pays his taxes. But you seemed to need to make a gotcha argument about it which again, given how human conversation is structured and the literal impossibility of defining everything down to constituent atoms in every communication it is generally assumed that people in good faith take some things as given which is why in response to your taxes comment I was sarcastic because who among us is so lightheaded that they don't understand taxes exist and are used to pay for things the government provides us?

I don't think the people who upvoted the comment thought I had made a brilliant refutation of your point about taxes, I think they just thought what is this guy with taxes on about - because that's not what the point under discussion is and you would have to be rather obtuse to think it was. That's ok, I certainly have my own issues that I am thickheaded about, but really people do know taxes pay for the births in European hospitals.

As to whether it is fundamentally untrue that many Americans get the full boat costs of a birth, I don't know. I do know the article seemed to think they were getting enough of a boat that they were sinking. Hence all of us Europeans saying, he we're doing swell with the kids and all started up. I don't think that's such a futile exercise.

You can't call people names on this site and claim to be "appropriately civil". And his point isn't a gotcha argument. The Dutch system might be better, and it's probably cheaper overall given what a terrible deal health care is in the US, but it isn't free, and there's a significant economic tradeoff to it. I don't know why it takes you four paragraphs to try to wiggle out of that observation; it took the other commenter just a few tens of words to make his point.

I don't think I did any namecalling.

As far as that goes referring to Danish people as Dutch could also be considered less than civil.

Maybe it takes me a lot of words because I am an especially prolix person, sorry, I hadn't realized how damaging verbosity was to your feelings. I do realize however brevity is the soul of wit so let me cut it down:

Everybody knows that taxes pay for hospital costs in Europe. The context of the conversation was being charged money at the birth of a baby, which people in Europe are not. To say that I paid 0 at the birth of my children was not an untruth but the exact truth. That I have paid taxes in the past and will pay them in the future does not change that.

Given that I was accused of lying, I think I maintained the appropriate level of civility.

Given your hectoring tone here, your insults to my nationality, complaints about my wordcount, and accusations of wiggling I worry I've been too civil.