Sorry - there was zero intention on my part to spark a debate about the costs of healthcare generally. This isn't the thread for a discussion like that.
I was simply pointing out that this virus has turned economies upside globally, appears to warrant the curtailing civil liberties en masse, and caused governments to pump trillions of dollars into rescue packages of all manner. Globally.
It's not about comparing diseases, or the merits of free public healthcare. The necessary steps required to get the world through this global pandemic has changed all the rules. Including really fundamental ones, like "am I free to walk down the street".
Given the costs involved in getting us through this, the lengths governments are having to go to, to get us to the other side of this - it makes no sense to me that a government would ask individual citizens to shoulder the cost of testing for covid. That small cost, in the scheme of what this virus is costing us (not just economically), makes no sense to me, since testing is at the core of getting this pandemic under control.
I'm not trying to be argumentative. But the rulebook has been thrown out the window to try and get this thing under control. And testing, specifically testing, is at the very core of getting this thing under control.
I'm all for free public health - but that's a completely seperate issue to how critical it is to identify where the virus hotspots are, and getting them under control.
The steps required for managing this pandemic are patently different to the rules and policies we apply in our ordinary lives. Given the importance of testing in the battle to get all of our lives back to normal, not offering that for free makes no sense to me. It makes no sense to me that the rule about who usually pays the pathology bill is one of the few rules that a government wouldn't be prepared to shift on.
