# Humor me. Why is State funded Education Universal in the US but State funded Health Care is not?

**URL:** <https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-me-why-is-state-funded-education-universal-in-the-us-but-state-funded-health-care-is-not/658912>\
**Category:** Great Debates\
**Created:** [May 21, 2013, 10:02am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-me-why-is-state-funded-education-universal-in-the-us-but-state-funded-health-care-is-not/658912 "2013-05-21T10:02:26Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 1\
**Showing post:** 27

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**Author:** ![septimus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/septimus/32/410_2.png) [@septimus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/septimus)\
**Post date:** [May 21, 2013, 5:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/humor-me-why-is-state-funded-education-universal-in-the-us-but-state-funded-health-care-is-not/658912/27 "2013-05-21T17:03:56Z")

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> [@XT](#):
>
> … it’s worked well enough for decades that folks are confortable with it the way it is.

By now, costs of employer-provided health insurance are often $10,000 per employee-year, or even [$15,000 or more](http://www.commonwealthfund.org/News/News-Releases/2012/Dec/Employer-Health-Insurance-Premiums.aspx). Most of this cost is usually “invisible” to the employee. Can you imagine the shrieks and consternation _in America_ if these costs were broken out in the paycheck-stub and called a “tax”?

In another thread, self-identified right-wingers identified the problem with UHC as “free-loaders”:

> [@Pros and cons to universal health care](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/pros-and-cons-to-universal-health-care/634194/11):
>
> I consider myself right wing, and it’s not my thinking. Morality really has nothing to do with it. If you create a system of benefits, whether it’s health care or anything else, where there are free riders, there is emphasis on the periphery of where you define who is eligible for free stuff to just say to hell with it all and join the free riders.
> 
> Free Riders also don’t recognize or constraint themselves with the amount of consumption they use in any system. If my car repairs are completely free to me, I’m taking it in for body work when I notice a minor scratch by my door handle. If I’m paying out of pocket, I let it go.
> 
> Free Riders are a basic economic problem in any system. Morality has nothing to do with it.

That private-insured people have exactly the same propensity (or lack of propensity) to “freeload” as public-insured people do, seems to be beyond the grasp of right-wingers. Or, more likely, it really is a matter of morality: People without money don’t deserve the things money can buy.

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