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Regular reminder that "healthcare" is not a monolithic thing. It's usually a question of "how much healthcare". Bandaids and aspirin are "healthcare". So is a novel $1M treatment. There is a huge, huge spectrum in between. One could have access to and be able to afford vast swaths of types of healthcare, but some folks want to say, "...yeah, but if they don't also have this, then they don't have 'access to healthcare'." One simply cannot put everything in a single bucket and then make a judgment as to whether people have 'access' to that entire bucket. One must necessarily start thinking about types and gradations of healthcare.
One example I like to give is what the medical response "should" be to someone who has a bit of soreness in their wrist. Something feels "not quite right", but it doesn't necessarily have any other significant indications of anything major going on. For the vast majority of people, the answer should probably be some form of, "Maybe heat/ice/whatever (I don't actually know or care what details), maybe an OTC painkiller if you want. Come back if it gets worse or doesn't get any better after X weeks." But if you're an MVP quarterback and you're nearing the playoffs, they might want to do an MRI and this and that and this and that (again, don't know, don't care about the details). Determining any information about the likely progression, whether it's likely to get worse if they play in the next non-playoff game, maybe tailoring what you do in hopes to shave even a week or two off of the full recovery time is immensely valuable to them. What is the One Monolithic "Healthcare" in this situation, such that we should ask whether it is very available and almost everyone can afford it? There is no such thing.
Of course, I never claimed there was such a thing, or that it was relevant to my argument that there is only a single level of healthcare.
Is your point that since caviar is expensive, poor people should starve? Or that you don't want caviar to become cheap because then poor people could eat it and somehow that makes you lose? Because otherwise I don't see how it relates to mine.
I didn't view my comment as a counter to yours. Just that it's something to keep in mind about the inherent difficulty of evaluating whether a system has achieved the goal of, "healthcare is very available and almost everyone can afford it".
Absolutely not. I don't see how that would make any sense.
This would also make no sense.
Oh, okay, yeah that makes more sense.
I don't think anyone would need to stop at considering the specific goal achieved; the healthcare that the absolutely poorest westerners can get by showing up to a hospital today, even americans, is orders of magnitude better than that which kings and emperors could get only a few centuries ago. We all want to see that trend continuing, and it will continue to be a treadmill, one on which I hope everyone agrees on the direction, even if they disagree on speed, technique, etc...
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