"Medical debt is a uniquely American phenomenon, a burden that would be unfathomable in many other developed countries."
"Nearly 60 percent of people who have filed for bankruptcy said a medical expense 'very much' or 'somewhat' contributed to their bankruptcy."
https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2019/03/hospital-...
Some events are extremely rare and extremely expensive. We shouldn't expect every individual to have enough savings to pay for every eventuality.
Sharing that risk allows nearly everyone to live better.
The question here is whether that insurance should be provided by a profit-making corporation or a government agency.
Though the US system of private insurance is badly broken, evidence from other countries shows that both approaches can work.
So the question should be - can we as a society afford decent late 20th-Century-standard care to every person? The answer is yes, we can, but we don't.
Not sure that changes the relevance of the usury discussion, even if you personally are insulated from medical bankruptcy.
Payday loans:
> In fact, U.S. consumers borrow almost $90 billion every year in short-term, small-dollar loans that typically range from $300 to $5,000, according to a 2018 report from the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). [1]
> “Right now, 80 percent of payday loans are taken out within two weeks of a previous payday loan.” [1]
Much smaller by comparison, but yeah, the moral context is still there and it's egregious.
[0] https://www.magnifymoney.com/blog/mortgage/u-s-mortgage-mark...
[1] https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-02-14/expensive...
(edit: not in the UK, which is rapidly sailing away).
This is proved untrue with minimal searching online. Here's one example: https://www.msn.com/en-gb/money/other/just-when-you-thought-...
Also search "payday loan $EU_COUNTRY" to see some pretty insane rates (>1000%).
So yes, it was 'unfair' to farmers to charge interest because it's pretty much required, but also farmers had a vested business interest in getting money lent for low interest rates.
It should be noted that the reasons we borrow money today is different than why it was done in the past.
In the past, the "average" person was usually a farmer, and if they needed to borrow money, it was probably because their crops had failed and they needed to money to buy food to feed themselves. It was unseemly to lend money to someone who, without it, would die.
Borrowing money nowadays is usually for mortgages and consumer spending. Very different situations, with different moral contexts.
Of course some people do still need money to survive, which is where payday loans tend to come in, and I think a lot of people find them distasteful--and the fact that people in our society may need to use them also a sad reflection on our society.
So "usury" was/is considered morally wrong not because of the charging of interest, but of the moral context under which it used to be done. There are of course 'usury laws', but they reflect the idea that charging more than x% interest unseemly because there should be no need for it (to produce a reasonable ROI).