What you are ignoring is that government is more involved in colleges in these other countries and they manage to keep it under control. Again, how is the US screwing up whereas everyone else has it working properly? You haven't actually addressed this.
>Healthcare simply has too many hands in the pot. Government pays x amount but it costs hospitals 2x...so they charge 3x to insurance companies to make up the difference. It's insane, but making it "free" may not be what fixes it.
Again....you are ignoring my point...It is working in other countries right now! If making it free does not fix it what will? The only other option is going further in the opposite direction of all the working systems...
>What safety net does the US not have? Over 60% of people paid no federal income tax last year and we have huge numbers of programs to help low income people.
Most programs have very strict criteria (thanks to corporatist Republicans and Democrats) such that you either have to fall into very bad poverty to even quality, wait a tremendous amount of time to get in, and then have to contend with so many criteria that forces you to either remain in a certain state of poverty or else you are kicked out of the program before you have gotten back on your feet. This is no real safety net like what other economies have. This is bolted on garbage to use as a talking point for people like you.
Governments in other countries are more involved in colleges...and they also restrict who gets in. We let pretty much everyone in that wants to go and will give them money to do so...that is a terrible way to run the system.
First of all the reason people are staying home thanks to pandemic unemployment is due to the fact that they were being paid so poorly before with no hope of career advancement that the meager 600$ a week was a leg up. Now that people have gotten a taste of what it feels like to not be constantly treading water, they are not going back to those low paying jobs. This is something the government should have gotten ahead of years ago in the sense of raising minimum wages and adding benefits but have constantly been blocked by anti-government forces. The minimum wage should be close to 23$ today yet we can't even have a discussion on 15$.
Luckily the people are starting to wake up. While government aid has ended in many states people are still not going back to work. There are numerous strikes that are beginning right now or are about to begin and I think this will continue for the foreseeable future. All of this is a response to people who think like you and have been at the reigns for decades.
>We let pretty much everyone in that wants to go and will give them money to do so...that is a terrible way to run the system.
You mean give them loans that are not dischargeable in bankruptcy very different from Europe. Furthermore you point on letting everyone in is 100% false. Are you an American? Its starting to sound like you are not. For example my alma mater which is a third tier technical school has only a ~50% admission rate. Many colleges are less than that. Also consider that only ~30% (going on 40% thanks to the pandemic) of Americans have a Bachelors degree or higher. This system is restricted by who can afford to go or who is willing to bear the burden of years of loans.
Just because people go to college doesn't mean they get degrees...but they certainly rack up the debt. Apply to enough colleges and you will get into one...I guarantee it. My alma mater, a state school had an 82% acceptance rate in 2020. Another local one...Portland State University had a 95% acceptance rate...95%!!!
With college in the US, the specific mechanism seems to be a combination of (a) colleges that have an incentive to raise tuition as high as people will pay, (b) people who consider a college degree important enough that they'll pay as much as they can afford, and (c) government action that greatly increases people's ability to pay, either via subsidies or by expanding the availability of student loan debt.
Compare this to the public K-12 school system, which doesn't have the same split between a seller and a cost-insensitive, subsidized buyer in its funding structure. (This is similar, I believe, to the way college is funded in a lot of other countries.) The cost per pupil in public K-12 school is also rising faster than inflation, but at a much slower rate than higher education. Same country, different funding structures, different results.
One of the biggest debates getting stonewalled right now, is whether or not the US Government should negotiate prices for Medicare.
Making this a "free healthcare" debate is just... missing the forest for the trees. There's a political party that's against even the US Government negotiating for better prices but otherwise keeping the same system.
As if negotiations are a bad thing or something. Look, I'm not liberal to believe in free healthcare, but... surely making the government pay less money for the same services is a good thing?
Since I have to pay for my medical procedures, the fact that the big government has "decided" that its okay to overpay on X means that I __also__ have to overpay on X. I, the small market participant, am relying upon the big guys to negotiate prices and set them more fairly for the rest of the market.
Nominally, this is the job of insurance companies, but no one trusts those guys. (I pay for insurance. The insurance companies negotiate more detailed prices with hospitals). And there's the issue that the government (or more precisely: Medicare / Medicaid) is a "bigger" market participant than any insurance company, so the government's lack of negotiation is probably raising prices on everybody artificially.
Is it? Are they actually paying less...or is the cost being dumped on to someone else? This is like saying people who get SNAP benefits are paying less and everyone wins...except someone has to pick up the cost. Many Medicare costs aren't negotiated and the hospitals are told what they will pay for certain procedures (and again hospitals change the price for others to make up the difference).
I think what they are talking about is prescription drug prices...which even Trump said needed to be done.
Cost compared to what? In a free market situation, everyone gets to negotiate for the price.
It seems insane to be a group advocating for the free market of ideas, only to decide that the free market / negotiation suddenly doesn't work in this case.
If the government negotiates too low, then the other side rejects the deal. If the government negotiates too high, the other side accepts the deal and the government wastes money (but probably less waste than no negotiation at all). You know, like sane people would. Standard free market philosophy.
Government doesn't want to lose services (Medicare / Medicaid promises a set of services), so that incentivizes the Government not to shoot too low on the price. That's the price discovery mechanism.
Healthcare simply has too many hands in the pot. Government pays x amount but it costs hospitals 2x...so they charge 3x to insurance companies to make up the difference. It's insane, but making it "free" may not be what fixes it.
What safety net does the US not have? Over 60% of people paid no federal income tax last year and we have huge numbers of programs to help low income people.