You know, these "communists" the American right panics over are really just asking for that. I don't know what state your in, but getting your rent and tuition covered is an extreme rarity in your country. Student loans take an average of
20 years to repay at the cost of
$200-300 a month. Going back on that first link, that's a majority of your additional earnings for getting a degree. The poorest families simply aren't going to have the money saved to send their kids off to school, and the ones in the poorest school districts likely don't have the academic backing to even get accepted into post-secondary education. It's not like these poor families simply have the money to move to a better school district either, not to mention the higher cost of living in such an area.
Economies of scale is part of what makes everything in America so effective. Farming subsidies keep your food cheap, a large consumer base is what keeps your economy and currency so strong, and you have enough large cities to produce a lot of innovators. Sure,
330M people sounds like a scary number of people to treat, but there are already
59M people covered by Medicare, 70M covered by some form of Medicaid, and 12M covered by the VA. Consider the fact that universal health care works well in other countries with large populations such as Japan (126M), Germany (83M), the UK (68M) France (67M), etc. (Note that Germany and France also provide free post-secondary education.) You could also adopt a system like the one we have in Canada, where each of our provinces has their own universal healthcare system that meets federal standards. Part of what makes the US health care system so expensive are billing and insurance-related costs. $504B of the $1.1T spent on health care administration is deemed in excess according to
this report. It's no wonder that Americans spend
by far the most per capita on health care, without universal coverage to show for it. Economies of scale work in other parts of American life - there's no doubt that making health care more efficient by monopolizing it under the government will do it too, as has been demonstrated by many other countries.
When asking yourself why the left wants government involved in this and that, you could look to capitalist principles: some markets are more efficient when run by monopolies. Having a single buyer of health care (or other) goods can use its clout to drive down prices. Economies of scale mean that manufacturers of health care goods can streamline their production line, knowing that they'll have a reliable buyer that isn't going anywhere. It isn't any more socialist to want to use capitalism to guarantee health care for your citizens than it is to enforce the law with a state police force or to protect your property with municipal firefighters. Social programmes are what keep your roads paved and your borders secured. Why not use them to keep your people healthy and educated? Could that not also be seen as an investment in your country's future?
For good measure, here are my results:
This test is kinda shit, honestly. There's no sense of how weighted the questions are, nor can you rate how important the issue is to you. It paints me as a literal commie pinko goober, but even
Sanders and Corbyn (
Labour) are too left for my liking on some issues. Their mapping of
the latest Canadian election is pretty ridiculous too, given that the NDP and Green platforms were like 95%+ identical, and with which I was in near complete agreement. 2/10 would not compass again