I keep wondering why Americans don't demand (and vote for) access to a good healthcare system. It's one of humanity's greatest inventions! Such a privilege. I've been paying for other people's healthcare for a long time, and when I need it, I'll be entitled to it in turn, without going broke.
Nobody is immune to propaganda. And Americans have over half a century of it villainizing socialism, radicalism, and apparently now, empathy.
Because Americans are lazy, apathetic, and housebroken.
And astoundingly stupid. I forgot the stupid.
People are so used to health outcomes being “you get what you pay for” here that the idea of care being little to no cost MUST mean it’s substandard. Even before the big conspiracy pushes against the covid vaccine a problem for providers was that people were extremely suspicious when it was free.
In this day and age, it should be perfectly normal. Especially since it helps avoid a lot of problems down the line when you don't treat it. But then again, I don't understand the obsession with guns either (although Red Dead Redemption 2 made me realize that it's a matter of life and death).
Mind you, I needed it three years ago, and thankfully we have a good healthcare system because I would never have been able to pay for treatment while repairing my house. And my wife, who has a rare disease, what would have become of her if we had been born in the richest country in the world? 😬
For me, that's the fundamental problem. What good is democracy if public policy can be bought? More generally, there is a failure of democracies. Here in France too, no matter how I vote, the result is always the same.
It’s a global issue. When one takes the time to zoom out, most governments in the western world are catering to the same handful of wealthy individuals and it’s largely ruining society as a result because they’re competing to win capitalism at our expense.
And American politicians will sniff at state-provided healthcare as a COMMUNIST idea that has no place with the income-driven 'Murkan society. Then they go on to make the voters feel guilty at wanting such an outrageously commie thing in their lives. 🙄
It’s not communist. You just have to be willing to die for it. As a military brat, my housing and healthcare was provided. My family still shops at government run grocery stores. My college was paid for through my mom’s GI bill. They have the set up but it’s only for the military.
Fair enough. But still, the point remains: the politicians will justify that as "taking care of our troops and their kin". For everyone else tho? "Oh no icky socialist commie stuff BAD!" Not exactly fair is it?
Not at all and a lot of people who have experience with what the government does for the military would agree since the government knows what basic income for damn near every city should be, how to run grocery stores and provide medical care for free. They just don’t want to do it for everyone.
And it only makes sense, in my opinion. We, as the human species, thrived (and over-thrived unfortunately) thanks to mutual assistance within the groups. That's one of the decisive traits evolution gave us, we should be doing just that: help each other selflessly.
Lobbying by private health care is what is keeping America from public Healthcare.
I agree with you, but hooooo boy, you probably just opened a can of worms. Most Americans want better/universal healthcare, but the healthcare industry is for-profit and they use their billions to convince the gullible that that's communism, which we've all been raised to believe is bad, m'kay?
They bribe our politicians & scare the less-educated among us into thinking anything that helps all people is automatically corrupt & bad. It's happening in real time. The destruction of our public institutions is being bankrolled in part by companies & billionaires whose profits are most at risk.
The US is (almost) uniquely built on a flavor of religion that is heavily into sin/punishment and the Just World fallacy. Millions of Americans sincerely believe that anyone who is sick and/or poor must have brought it on themselves, or angered God, and therefore doesn't deserve help.
in the interim, mind telling people that because I, a disabled person, cannot actually do anything about it, if they want to make my suffering less dogshit, they could read my essays on docseuss.medium.com, and if they think my essays are good and that I don't deserve to suffer, to tip me?
I mean, I do personally
Let's say "enough Americans".
We vote for healthcare reform all the time. The problem is that in the US voting doesn't translate to good policy.
American Individualism is one of the most harmful lies that’s a part of the American Zeitgeist. People really believe that everyone should “pay their own way”, which just serves to empower the most profit motivated people and organizations. America: The Eternal Adolescence
I was walking through Minute Man Park (where the first battle of the American revolution was fought) last year and stopped to read a sign. It was about a barn raising for a colonist that the community came together to work on. Rugged individualism is a crock. We were founded on community.
Because America isn’t run by voters at any level. It’s an artifice to cover the fact that studies showed a decade ago that the biggest indicator of change was money and there’s no money to be made from a better healthcare system. I mean there is, but it’s not immediate so it doesn’t count.
We've been demanding it for decades. It's an extremely popular policy. The one reason we haven't voted for it is because it's never been on the ballot. We've never had the opportunity to vote for or against it. Our leaders do not represent us.
Even when a popular policy does make it onto the ballot, it's enshrouded in such deceptive wording that it's clear to anyone with a functioning brain that a deliberate attempt is being made to mislead the public into voting against our own interests.
There was a bill on the local ballot to assist homeowners in installing solar panels to power their homes at their own discretion. The way it was worded heavily implied the lie that this would cause everyone else's power bill to go up.
Another year, there was a proposal to construct a new coal firing power plant. (We had always been proudly hydroelectric.) The trick this time was to make as though the coal plant would be built anyway, and was already set to power another town - we were simply voting to be connected. All lies.
This city contains multiple universities so it leans progressive anyway, and in both cases we were able to get the word out so that enough people didn't fall for the deceit. But these are just mundane examples of how far our "democratically elected leaders" will go to undermine democracy.
Effectively, the US is not a democracy, hasn't been for decades, and perhaps never was.
A good third of eligible voters in the former USA don't even bother to vote and another solid bloc of voters habitually vote against their own interests out of party loyalty, racism, or just plain stupidity. Health care doesn't even seem to register as an issue anymore. We're a failed nation.
People REALLY do not like the idea of their hard earned tax dollars being spent by bureaucrats on people they don’t think deserve free healthcare like illegal immigrants, people that can work but choose not to, the homeless, drug addicts. Not a sentiment I share but that’s basically why.
Yes, this discourse is becoming increasingly common in France. However, I like the principle of community. That's what this world is, whether they like it or not.
Also most working age adults have their healthcare through their employers so the only big group of working adults without healthcare are free lancers or small business owners.
We have healthcare for the elderly, children, the very poor, disabled and vets it’s the big group of people without full time work or free lancing that’s the big issue.
And every one of them who objects completely ignores that the expensive health insurance that they pay for - even with some of it provided by employers - does actually pay for healthcare for those they would not want to have their "hard earned $" spent on. Because that is how insurance works.
There is no way to demand anything. Protest, scream, write letters, sign petitions. It does nothing. Insurance companies give campaign donations. The status quo feeds the system.
So let's rewind the film. Why can these companies literally buy policies in a democracy?
Because campaign finance reform would have to be passed by the people who benefit from the system as it is. That would require a revolution.
Yes but when did it start?
Its always been a problem but it got unmanageable in 2010 when the supreme court ruled corporations were people & could donate to campaigns. Corpos then flooded politics with money. This disincentivized politicians from listening to people in favor of the companies that profit off this awful system
This is aided by the fact that sitting politicians can legally use the government to insider trade on the stock market so they own stakes in the insurance companies that lobby & bribe the politicians to prevent single payer If you fight not only will the corpos pay to replace you but also your peers
And the infuriating thing is everyone in government HAS access to free healthcare for life. They are literally just denying it to their own populace because they consider them a resource to squeeze money out of or betray them to greedy corporations for a payday
It’s largely always been that way but it’s gotten exponentially worse since the 1980s.
Private health insurance started in the 1920s and 30s. Before that patients just paid everything out of pocket. I'm sure the influence of insurance companies started at the same time.
Before Reagan, it was realistic to think that the USA would have a health care system. Nixon nearly supported one in a “grand bargain” type of thing. But Reagan came to power by casting suspicion on nearly every aspect of government but the military. His heirs control both parties.
The last real legislation that passed in the USA was health insurance reform, nearly 15 years ago, which cost every ounce of Obama’s soft power (and spirit, and energy) and the racist electoral backlash led to the fascist USA of today. Propaganda still paints that as a government takeover.
In addition to the propaganda-cultivated cultural barriers (Reagan deregulated the airwaves), our Supreme Court has legalized most political bribery under the theory that it is “free speech.” Even our most liberal politicians are dependent to some extent on corporate funding.
Add to this the global far-right surge that unfortunately is victimizing yall over there in Europe, too. Fascists oppose universal health care because they don’t want the people they’d rather be dead to have it.
And because "capitalism good". (Read with sarcasm).
Multiple factors: Health care has been so expensive for so long that people think universal care would bankrupt the country and price regulation would bankrupt the providers. Mindset of only people who work deserve healthcare and those who don't is because of laziness and not because of health issue
The overall distrust of government ran institution in general. The mindset of individual responsibility that everyone should only take care of themselves and getting help from other do more harms. Money in politics from private insurance and medical company to prevent any legislation.
There's a very long and complicated list of reasons why it's not that simple. The most basic reason is the same as everything else: money. Doctors don't make the ultimate decisions about a person's health...the insurance companies do. And they'd never allow a national healthcare system.
Have you seen the people living here? We've got a rigged system to start, and then the people without outsized influence think science is evil and vaccines cause autism.
It has to do with the stigma of anything relating to a socialist idea and there’s too much money involved in private insurance. I wish we lived in a time where we had universal healthcare
and America has the best doctors and scientific research in the world.... but its people have no access to good health care... when youre old or lose your job, you suffer
Many Americans are convinced that people with universal healthcare hate it and wait months to see a doctor, before dying due to inadequate treatment.
Yep! Anti-universal healthcare propaganda is and has always been literally killing people.
While I definitely agree with everything said about Corporate Speech and our obsession with individualism, there's also a lot of racism and white supremacy at play. A lot of white people are willing to die themselves as long as it means a Black person or immigrant doesn't get a thing.
We're in the process of dismantling what little social safety net we have just because it might make some immigrants suffer along with us.
Decades and decades of propaganda against the bogeyman of socialism. Even the mildest form are full blown communism, to hear it told...
*forms. Dammit.
Recently saw a post on a local subreddit where someone (very obviously American) asked if there was a cheaper (private) insurance for his partner instead of paying an additional 3.5% of their gross salary to co-insure. Which would've been.. 150 euros per month.
Astonishing how they have labelled it as socialist evil. If you listen to a republican, the worst thing the Nazis ever did was provide cheap health care.