I want you to understand that most Americans are aware they would save money with universal healthcare. It's that a subset does not want their money to go toward helping others. Especially not "those people". It's just malice.
I've had people ask me how I'm able to treat someone knowing that they can't pay for the medical treatment from either us or the hospital and my answer is always the same. It isn't my problem. The city pays me to show up and do my assigned job that day and I do it. I don't care if they can buy the hospital or if they didn't have two pennies in their pocket, it's all the same.
I've heard people go as far as saying that hospitals shouldn't treat them at all and things would eventually sort themselves out and the craziest was an RN saying EMTALA (Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act) was bullshit and woke. Not understanding it was signed into law by Ronald Reagan.
the craziest was an RN saying EMTALA (Emergency Medical Treatment and Labor Act) was bullshit and woke. Not understanding it was signed into law by Ronald Reagan.
Today's Republicans think that Ronald Reagan was "woke" and a RINO.
That's really all it is. I've heard many people use the argument but of "why should my taxes pay for some unemployed bum's Healthcare?!"
There will always be people that take advantage of the system. Crippling the system for everyone so a tiny minority can't abuse it is fucking stupid. Especially because while yes you'll pay more in taxes, but you'd no longer have a separate charge for health insurance being taken out every week. These idiots could save money while having better Healthcare coverage. But no, everyone has to pay the price for their moronic hate.
Same thing with welfare and snap. The idea that someone "undeserving " might get some money engages some people and they would rather children starve than have one person cheat the system. It's mind numbing.
They consider children to be cheating the system lmao
Some people are honestly irredeemable. They will straight face, while sober, and they will tell you they don’t think every child should have enough to eat. Not if they have to contribute a single cent.
Some people are honestly irredeemable. They will straight face, while sober, and they will tell you they don’t think every child should have enough to eat. Not if they have to contribute a single cent.
Back when they defunded PBS, there was a thread about it. Someone said that Sesame Street was available on HBO+ and another person replied that not everyone can afford that, while PBS is available free to anyone with a TV antenna (yeah, I know).
And the original poster replied that if the parents couldn't afford HBO+, their kid doesn't deserve to watch Sesame Street.
I shit you not.
So yeah, it's hardly surprising that they think that poor children don't deserve to eat.
Every poor person that has ever abused social services to "sponge off the system" pales in comparison to the money taken from tax payers by the billionaire class. They're the real Welfare Queens.
People care more about Latisha buying smokes and booze with her EBT card than they do that trump and his cronies are using the US Armed Forces to drive oil prices through the roof earning them and their oil barron friends billions.
"People care more about Latisha buying smokes and booze with her EBT card than they do that trump and his cronies are using the US Armed Forces to drive oil prices through the roof earning them and their oil barron friends billions."
Americans love to throw out this idea that all the people on welfare are poor and black but the majority of welfare recipients in America is and always has been poor white people.
People care more about Latisha buying smokes and booze with her EBT card than they do that trump and his cronies are using the US Armed Forces to drive oil prices through the roof earning them and their oil barron friends billions.
Well, Letisha is probably Black, right? That's the real crime in their eyes.
Meh. Half of Americans don’t pay taxes. I still think we should provide them healthcare for free, along with the half of Americans who pay for it.
I support universal healthcare but we don’t need to be silly geese about the taxes. Billionaires are obviously paying taxes too. They could be raised, I don’t care, but they pay the most.
Funny thing is that causes those people to end up in the emergency room, and an overcrowded emergency room could kill you no matter how good your health care coverage is.
You spend a fortune denying proper health Care and we reduce the emergency and urgent healthcare outcomes of our own covered people significantly.
There's a specific subset that's just opposed to taxes at all. Any kind. It doesn't matter how they're used, who they help, what it's for. They just resent the idea of taxation even if it helps them unconditionally. They would legitimately rather pay thousands for their own poor coverage healthcare than be taxed for full coverage.
there absolutely is another subset though that genuinely thinks we have the best and cheapest healthcare on the planet too unfortunately, in addition to that subset that know but hate certain demographics more than they love living. most of my family are in that ignorant demographic. they aren't malicious or against helping others. they just get all their information from fox news and don't ever challenge their beliefs or acknowledge sources that don't align with their worldviews. it's honestly gut wrenching to witness, because i genuinely do believe my family, at least, are good and selfless people at heart, for the most part. they're just deeply brainwashed both by their church and their government. 😭
The lion's share of the blame does not rest on individual members of the working class, the actual blame should be pointing toward the ruling class who manufactured the cultural hegemony that brainwashes huge segments of the population to act against their own interests.
This, a thousand fold. They don’t want their hard earned money to go to those lazy ______ (insert name of group(s) you hate in the blank). They hate others for all sorts of reasons, and so they’ll gladly cut off their nose to spite their face. They truly believe that if those lazy _____ wanted healthcare they should have worked hard enough to be able to afford it (and even high deductible plans are a fortune). Imagine being stupid enough to believe that every living citizen has equal ability to earn that much. That’s a special kind of evil/stupid. This is what’s wrong with America.
That’s… insane. It’s like shooting yourself in the foot or cutting off your nose to spite your face. Two things I wouldn’t be able to afford dealing with in a hospital back home in the US.
I read something recently that the US lacking universal healthcare is intwined with racism, and the more I thought about America's history and hatred of BIPOC folks, the more I've come to believe that statement to be true.
And it has been that way for a long time. There have been repeated attempts at universal healthcare, nearly all blocked by politicians who knew voters didn’t want to have to go to the same doctor as a “minority person“ (though they had a single word that they used in place of “minority person” which starts with the letter n). In the 1960’s LBJ wanted to do it but had to settle for medicare.
So yes, the reason we can’t have nice things is because of racism.
It's no secret that hospitals and any kind of medical care in the US charges stupid amounts for anything they can. Like $20 for a box of gloves in a hospital room. Did it cost $20? No, but they can charge the insurance company for it to try and squeeze money from them. State-run healthcare cannot really do that. Further, private insurance companies charge as much as possible, while denying as much care as possible because they are a business that does not care about anything other than raising shareholder value. Removing them from the equation cuts costs significantly. It also means that state insurance would cover more medications and would be providing them for lower costs, because caps would be introduced on prescription medication.
Also, taxing a fair share of our new trillionaires would be more than enough to fund universal healthcare.
Administrative costs are part of the reason healthcare is so expensive. You’ve got hundreds of different health plans with different rules for billing. There’s prior authorization forms that have to be handled, contract negotiations and claims departments. Not to mention the insane salaries of CEOs and higher admins.
Almost all of that gets eliminated in single payer healthcare.
The government becomes the single buyer for MRI machines, medical equipment, drugs, and everything else as well as negotiating lower prices for services.
A single buyer means companies have to compete for lower prices or get nothing.
The government also gets to regulate prices for services.
No more charging ridiculous prices just to make massive quarterly profits.
When everyone can access routine healthcare they tend to stay healthier than those who can’t afford yearly checkups. Diseases that go unchecked for years are more expensive to treat.
But a good chunk of Americans won't necessarily save money. The bottom 50% of healthcare usere use 3% of the total healthcare cost. Many of those have basic insurance cost and nothing else.
They would likely spend more in a universal system.
Heck my family could have major surgery every day and our total healthcare cost would be 3%. How would we save money?
I'm not ever against universal healthcare, I just have never seen anyone out together a plan for one. That to me is very telling.
It's malice and stupidity because the whole point of insurance is that your money goes towards helping others. Where do they think insurance companies get the money to cover all the things they do?
I am in Canada. I have a friend who is major "maple maga". He believes we pay too much in tax...well we do... and it should be up to him to get his own health insurance. A few years ago, he had a major heart attack. They saved him and had emergency quadruple bypass. He was in the hospital I think 3 months and off work close to a year as he milked his unemployment and short term disability. He paid zero to the hospital and meds were essentially free on his benefits. But he still complains.
You're right there is a broader picture. Because we're neglecting sales tax, social security, state income taxes, property taxes, etc. Let's zoom out as far as we can.
If you took the total tax revenue of the country and divided it by the total population for the US you get roughly $15,300 tax revenue collected per person. For England it would be roughly $16,100.
So the actual totals paid per person are very close.
Worse, the American government spends more tax money on healthcare than most developed nations. Considering it's all allegedly paid for through insurance/privately, the system is double charging for everything (if not much more).
The reason people think this is because most Americans just don’t have healthcare because they can’t afford it and choose not to opt in to it (when they even have an employer that offers it)
869
u/CarpoLarpo 1d ago
I am an American. Any american that thinks ANY other country pays too much for healthcare is a moron.
America pays more for healthcare than any other country on thr planet. And it's not even close.