The Counter-Spin on Hysterical News of "Finland Government Collapses Due To Universal Healthcare"

Certain articles (which we won't dignify with a link) are circulating to the effect that "Finland's government has collapsed due to the burden of its universal health care system, and Bernie (and company) are foolish for citing Finland as a model for the US to follow!"

We're not confident that this is an accurate read, which isn't surprising, given that its biggest progenitor is the not-so-known-to-be-balanced pundit, Mike Huckabee. (Instead, see, e.g., this).

In reality, it was the center-right government that resigned (not "collapsed") -- notably (and totally lost on right-wing fear-mongers like Huckabee), there is no parallel to this dynamic in the US (ie., quitting for failing to pass reform, rather than digging in and doubling down on rhetoric).

Even more to the point, Finland only spends about 8.6% of its GDP on health care, which is drastically lower than the US, and indeed, is lower than the OECD average (literally all of the OECD spends less than the US, in fact); see this report for the details.

In other words, the real question is more like "why hasn't the United States economy and government collapsed yet?" due its health care expense burden, not "why does anyone do universal health care, since it's going to lead to inevitable collapse?" There's simply no support for this proposition -- virtually the entire OECD has dramatically better health care expense efficiency than the US, and most are avowedly "universal" systems, if not much closer to it.

We'd submit that, actually, the U.S. government and economy is collapsing (much more genuinely and severely than Finland's), in significant part because of its health care expense burden -- which is mostly due to poor regulatory structure. Even universal health care would be a step up from this, though it is not the only solution, by any means (there's also the lost-in-the-noise question of what qualifies as "universal" anyways -- is it any system with a public safety net for those without insurance? If so, then the US already has "universal healthcare" -- it's just very poorly set up).