[ExI] Why is “cost of living” such a big problem?

[Ben Zaiboc]

On 07/11/2026 15:29, spike wrote:
> the poor in the USA have access to health care.  If they are impoverished, they can go to the ER and get treated.  They do.


One important fact that you omitted (which seems strange as it's such an important one): They still have to pay!

Someone without the means to pay for an urgent medical procedure can indeed go to certain hospitals and get the treatment they need. But afterwards, /they are in debt to the hospital/. You didn't mention this the first time you talked about it, a while ago, which led me to think that this emergency treatment was free. This time, I checked.
There is no free medical treatment in the US, none at all. Everyone has to pay, regardless of their ability to.

It's not hard to understand that there will be people who will choose to die rather than having themselves and their families saddled with debt that pushes them even deeper into poverty and deprives their children of education (which, of course also has to be paid for, because this is the US).

Both of the times I had a life-threatening condition, I got free treatment on the NHS. The only indirect cost to me was paying National Insurance on my income, for the entire time I was in paid employment, the same as everyone else in the UK. Equivalent arrangements work very well in many other developed countries.
You'll be surprised to learn that medical research is also done in these countries. Astonishing, isn't it?

-- 
Ben
"The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything." - Pablo Casals, via Albert Einstein