From your other replies it seems like you’re unsure you want kids in any case, but if you do there’s a simple thought experiment here: do you wish your father hadn’t had you? If not, it’s reasonable to think your children would be just as grateful to be alive as you are, sick dad or not.

Respectfully, this is why we can’t have an actual conversation about healthcare in this country. What’s objectively a societal good? Medicine? Sure, but I’m not proposing that we stop practicing medicine. Universal access to healthcare, free at the point of delivery? Also good, and a feature of most healthcare systems in the developed world. The specific funding model where the government runs the entire healthcare system through taxation?

I dunno, seems like it gives good, but not great, results, terrible staff morale, and a permanent state of crisis.

Fair, but I don’t think they will, and I don’t think people will stop voting for them forever, as much as I’m looking forward to the next general election. Even under Labour, though, the NHS gave great value for money, but middling outcomes.

The British NHS should be replaced with a system of national insurance. I’m a staunch labour voter, but the current system is subject to endless tinkering by the party of the day, and it’s broken.

In the UK, the NHS is one of the only institutions that attracts broad unreserved support, though, so this is about as popular as “all college athletes should be locked in churches and those churches should be burned to the ground” would be in the US.

Write down on a bit of paper “I want to spend more time with my son, I can always find another job”, then flip it over and write “I’m going to spend my time on work, I can always have another kid” and see how you feel.

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