this post was submitted on 24 Jan 2025
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I'm hostile about your repeated and fallacious claim that healthcare isn't free, when the truth is that the healthcare is free, but earning a salary isn't. You're charged for the earnings about certain thresholds, and you're not charged for the healthcare. I contradicted you in only two of the many places you posted the same nonsense right wing talking points, and then you start complaining about my two versus your many.
Username checks out.
You have a lot of entitlement and nonsense. Healthcare is free on the UK.
And nonsense. Healthcare is free in the UK. Roads are free in the UK, apart from a handful of toll roads and bridges.
Electricity is not free. I pay for that. Earning a salary is not free. I pay for that. Internet access is not free, I pay for that. But the healthcare is free. I can visit the doctor as many times as I like, I can have the most insanely expensive operation and I won't get charged a penny.
At the theme park, the rides are free after you've paid admission. You can go on as many as you like until you decide to go home or the park closes. The food isn't free, you have to pay for that. At the hospital, you don't have to even pay admission, and you absolutely don't have to be a taxpayer, all the healthcare is free. But the car parking and the food aren't free (unless you're an inpatient), you have to pay for those.
No I didn't pay already - I've paid far less in tax than I've had spent on me in hospitals. I didn't pay. Children don't pay. Pensioners don't pay. People on universal don't pay. Not even billionaires pay for healthcare unless they go private. No one pays for healthcare in the UK apart from the government. It's free.
Yes, absolutely the government is funded by taxation. But taxation is paid according to income, it has nothing whatsoever to do with whether or not you use healthcare. The healthcare is free. Earned income is not.
No, free healthcare has NOTHING to do with being a taxpayer or not - everyone gets it - no one checks your taxpaying credentials when you enter the hospital, that would be monstrous. The healthcare is free. Taxes are charges on income, not charges on healthcare. The healthcare is free, the income isn't.
Your country has publicly funded healthcare that is free at point of service.
Yes. It's free.
At point of service, yes. But not entirely. It's still paid for lol. Which is the entire point that the person you've been replying to was trying to make.
This is a silly distinction. Do you insist that the supermarket relabels its "buy one get one free" offer as "buy one get one free at the point of purchase"? Do you call free refills "free at the point of dispensing"? When the theme park says that after you've paid admission, the rides are "free at the point of embarkation"?
They're making a right wing talking point to try and make free healthcare sound expensive, when in fact free healthcare is free for the patient and less expensive for everybody than private healthcare, because the profit motive doesn't drive efficiency, it drives profiteering.
Healthcare is free for everyone in the UK. Taxpayer or not, rich or poor, you can have a much healthcare as you need at zero cost to you. Free. That's what free means. It doesn't mean no one is paying. It means the patient isn't paying. Did you think I thought that hospitals grow on trees? Of course I know that the government is paying for it, that's WHY the healthcare is free. No charge. Unlimited. Free.
Taxation isn't a change on healthcare AT ALL. It's a charge on earnings, and claiming that free healthcare isn't free is entitled nonsense from higher rate taxpayers. They pay tax. They don't pay healthcare. No one does, unless they go private, because the healthcare is what's free.
I think you're assuming their intent is to make it sound expensive and that it's a right wing talking point, but they've already said in their comments that they agree with a publicly funded healthcare system and are actively for it. They've also said their reason for wanting to use another word besides "free" to describe it is to explicitly deflate the right wing talking point that it's being called "free" when it's really not. If you call it publicly funded or something else besides free that gets more at the essence of what the thing is, then the right wingers can't use the point that it "isn't free" against you and the public discourse around it will then have to shift.
Relentlessly parroting right wing talking points to stop right wingers making them is an implausible absurd and counterproductive strategy. I don't buy it at all, sorry.
Do you think that because the supermarket is paying for my buy one get one free box of cereal, it isn't free, or do you think for one minute that people who call it free don't realise that they're still making a profit?
We're not all morons, and we don't need anyone to say that taxpayers fund the government every time we like something they do, we're not five and we do understand, but the one thing we do know is that you don't pay for your healthcare, no matter how much you need or how often, no matter how little tax you've ever paid or ever will pay in your life. Healthcare is free in the UK. Free. No charge.