In the interest of pretending you're coming at this in good faith, it should have been very obvious to you in context that I of course meant free at point of use. You suddenly pivoting to assuming I meant healthcare in the developed world was LITERALLY FREE involving thousands of volunteer doctors and drug manufacturers is so obviously absurd that for you to genuinely make that statement means you are either woefully ignorant and uninformed or deliberately making a strawman argument.
You don't seem woefully ignorant to me so I assumed the latter.
My point was, 25 years ago it was still the case that the US was spending more money JUST IN TAXES than Canada, the UK, Germany, France, Australia, NZ, or anyone else that was providing universal coverage. Before even talking about private costs in the USA.
Therefore to me the idea that such a system could possibly be considered cheaper, by any economic reckoning or fuckery whatsoever, doesn't really stand to reason.
As a reminder, 25 years ago was 2001, not like, 1982