Originally Posted by woj

you pay for it via taxes, but you don't pay for your own healthcare, the healthcare costs are shared among everyone...

so for example your neighbor is morbidly obese, leads sedentary lifestyle, smokes 2 packs per day, and drinks a 12 pack of beer per day, and as a result his healthcare costs are 3x of yours, by sharing healthcare costs with him (like you do in the UK) you would be subsidizing his poor lifetime choices...

when viewing from his point of view, there isn't much incentive to improve his health, his healthcare might cost $5k/month, but who cares? he isn't paying for it, so incentive to improve his health is reduced...

so you get fucked, and he doesn't have much incentive to improve his health.... lose-lose for everyone involved...