@elomatreb Well no, but thats because lots of the people who make up said government aren't concerned with it. It doesn't mean they /shouldn't/ be concerned with it. :/

@Angle That's where the presence of a (more or less) tax-funded single-pot healthcare system comes in, because if the pot has to be very large it diverts taxes away from other things so there is an incentive

@elomatreb ...? I don;t follow. An incentive to care about public health? :/

@Angle Prevention is cheaper than treatment, so e.g. taking steps to reduce obesity would, in the long run, require less money in the healthcare system, freeing up money for other things.

(In concrete systems it's not as easy as that since e.g. in the German system the money for the healthcare system isn't directly transferable to the regular tax pots, but still)

@elomatreb Ah, gotcha. I would still think that the government should care about publich health in and of itself? But I guess you can;t rely on that, so structuring the system to add extra incentives is probably still worthwhile. :/

@Angle It all has its pros and cons, e.g. the upside of the even partially privatized German public health insurances is that they actually work and are the most secure of the social insurances in the country (i.e. they will survive the demographic change of the country, unlike the pension system), but the downside is that you sometimes have to fight them to get them to pay for stuff (e.g. they really don't like chronic illnesses with expensive medication)