If Dwarf Fortress sells millions on Steam, its creators will give the money away

You can add Australia and New Zealand to that list too.

Both have amazing public/private systems, where everyone has access to public healthcare, and if you want to pay the extra money, you can go private. They also have (very affordable and fair) health insurance if you want that extra security.

The public hospitals are fine in both countries, you'll get the critical care you need, when you need it. There aren't people dying of cancer because the government can't afford treatment. Sure, it's a bit slow for non-essential and elective treatment (e.g. a hip replacement or other corrective surgery), but it does get done eventually and as I said you can always go private, which is a lot cheaper than the USA, as they have to compete with free healthcare.

I'm really not sure why you keep quoting total taxation as some kind of negative point regarding countries with universal healthcare and functioning social welfare systems? Quality of life, both for individuals and for the whole population is a much more important measure.

Proves my point. He burned it in front of a freelance reporter and filmed it. Then released a film about it.

Sacrifice a small pile of money to try making a bigger pile. There are smarter ways, but making more was the intent.

If it wasn’t the intent, it would have been done in private.

As far as I can see, no private insurance would take me - it is a clear loss. Furthermore, it does not seem I would qualify for Medicaid nor Medicare (from reading the wikipedia article). As for employment insurance - in the USA I would certainly not be employed except the company is uncharacteristically nice. Because in the USA, you can kick anyone out, especially someone who just spends months in the hospital. Or is that not true? So how do you imagine I would be insured then?

Again, I have to ask because I don't know, but are you saying all the news reports of where exactly the above happens to people are fake? There were many reports where people DID HAVE some insurance by their employers, but when it came to a long and expensive treatment, insurance refused to pay, or they lost their job very fast. Would you say these issues do not occur, or occur very infrequently? Are the people on this board, who say they are afraid of losing their insurance coverage due to job-loss wrong?

If you propose that I get treated and the costs are written off, that still means I would have to declare bankruptcy and ruin my live further. Because it's not that I do not have any money, or minimal savings. It's just that the extend, complexity and length of the treatment leads to costs that can not be payed by a normal person, including pretty much any normal percentage of the costs.

And then, personally, I'd also doubt that I would actually receive that treatment if I can not pay. You say people you don't let die, but this is a multi-year treatment and it would be apparent after the first week that I can not pay for it. There is a difference in long term health and survival by the quality and frequency of long term treatments over many years. Would a private, for business organization really do this for my benefit? Like, experts would treat me for years in a top institution in the country, even though I pay nothing? Really? Or would they rather just do the minimum to get rid of any immediate danger and then release me?

And where do you see the advantage? Here, I still got the best treatment you could ask for (top experts, newest equipment, good facilities), and I was able to continue my life without being bankrupt.

These are the ones I have 20 years of experience with. Want more stories? I have friends working in healthcare, you wouldn't believe what they say.

If you're arguing that you'd be fired because you got sick in the US, that's not likely accurate -- certainly not accurate in terms of any professional job. Every company I've worked for has short term and long term disability insurance along with health insurance as well, and while most of the US is right to work it's also not normal to fire someone just because they have medical issues.

Yes, as we've seen in the last few days, nearly everything you see in the "news" reports from the US is heavily biased. There are no longer any unbiased media who report facts -- they all report the bias they want to push, and this particular bias is very popular among a large sector of those who want the US to convert to a socialist economy (which not coincidentally lines up with most of the US media's political views).

Don't base your ideas on wikipedia. Here's the source: https://www.medicaid.gov/medicaid/eligibility/index.html. Bottom line, if you don't have the money to afford medical care you will almost certainly be covered by medicaid -- now even including pre-existing conditions. In that regard, the US already has the socialized medicine system people want -- those who want it changed simply want all private insurance removed because they don't like its existence. It's not properly socialistic enough that some have good private insurance and others have public insurance. Of course those arguing this the loudest are congressmen and women covered by one of the best insurance plans in the country.

Your experience -- treatment by top experts and such in a socialized medical system is highly a-typical. You would likely not get that anywhere else on the planet, including all the other socialized medicine countries. It is not normal for socialized medicine to provide that level of care anywhere.

There are a lot of caveats to all of this, it doesn't all work perfectly. None of what I'm arguing is meant to claim the US has a perfect health care system -- we don't. There's a lot of room for improvement, but let's have the discussion from a foundation of facts instead of left-wing talking points.