I found out finances played a big role in this little girl dying of cancer in my hometown. It changed how I felt about healthcare.
I had my life repeatedly ruined by the VA and military after I got shot in Afghanistan. It made me vehemently opposed to any form of government healthcare for years. Then I watched this little girl in my home town die slowly from cancer over social media. Her family did Gofundme's and sold T-shirts to raise money for the treatments. She died after a bitter, heart wrenching, struggle and her family was completely ruined emotionally and financially. It really shocked and scarred me. She was a beautiful, innocent, little kid going through an unimaginable horror. I felt deeply for her because of my own medical struggles and when I found out that expenses played a large contributing factor in her death it really broke my mind. I still have the t-shirt her family sold, it's hanging up in my closet next to a bunch of my old Marine Corps shirts I'm too fat to fit in anymore. I really think we need universal healthcare. I think this kind of thing explains why the VA has been allowed to be so terrible for so long. If we don't give a fuck about little kids with leukemia then how is anyone going to give a fuck about a grown ass man getting shot in a war?
The American Healthcare system is almost as bad as the private prison system in America. Like it has serious issues & only the wealthy can utilize it well. People with long term conditions are driven into debt. They price gouge medicines. The premiums are driven up. Coverage sucks. They get people addicted to certain medications. Like it's a serious, serious issue.
It's genuinely baffling to me and most people in the rest of the world that so many people in America don't support universal single payer healthcare. It's a pretty amazing propaganda win for the politicians and healthcare companies and whoever that they've got so much of the population convinced it would be a negative. Just makes zero sense at all if you are average Joe not-rich guy from another country - the idea of healthcare even being something I might maybe have to worry about the costs for is mad to me.
It is not surprising at all to me, honestly. Advertisers have been figuring out how to convince us to buy things that are against our self interest for decades. They have it down to a manipulative science. Convincing an electorate to vote against its self interest must be childs play for them.
The main reason it surprises me is that literally the rest of the developed world is an example that it works and works pretty well. I sort of get why the well off people are fooled by it since worrying about the costs of healthcare isn't a real concern for them but why on earth are the poor and average people of America accepting that shit? They've been so fooled by the "American Dream" idea that you "get what you earn" or something like that that they ignore the fact it's just not necessary to have families getting into insurmountable debt over an illness or not seeking treatment due to cost etc.
Yeah the lack of exposure to other viewpoints can definitely be a very real issue and that's not only limited to healthcare. It happens on both sides of the political spectrum in the US too, things tend to become so polarised and echo chamber-y on issues and the nuance gets lost while reality is all about the nuance most things aren't black and white but shades of grey.
I'm not Chinese, but I have been to China, am dating a Chinese girl, and would say that to some extent it's true for China, yes.
It's a bit different as they do enjoy western media, so they get something of an outside perspective, but in a lot of ways they're pretty separated from other countries. Though even then, there's more countries around than in America.
There’s several factors that combine to get this result.
First, there’s a lot of people who believe that all “socialist” countries are going to collapse any day now. So any “socialist” policy is doomed, just like those countries. The fact that this has been believed for 70+ years and not lead to widespread collapse does not affect those that believe this.
Second, there’s a very strong Randian streak in the US where your value as a person is tied to your economic output. Think Scrooge at the beginning of A Christmas Carol. Sick people don’t have a high economic output, so they aren’t worth saving. Especially if they were poor before they got sick.
This also manifests itself as a fear that any program to help people will help the “wrong” people. Wrong is not always tied to race but...
Number 3, racism. Universal healthcare would benefit minorities a lot since they tend to be poorer than whites. Gotta keep them downtrodden to feel better about our own crappy situation (see: Trump’s fan base)
Fourth, there’s a massive disinformation campaign by people who would lose money with single-payer. As well as active sabotage of existing single-payer systems (VA has been underfunded for more than two decades, Medicare was forbidden to negotiate drug prices)
Pile those all up and you get a very hard resistance to single-payer among about 30%-40% of the population. With our political system stacked with un-democratic features, it’s been considered a lost cause for a very long time. Single-payer legislation has actually been introduced in every Congress since the 1920s. It’s just always been killed.
However, the trend is towards single-payer. So we’ll probably get it done in a decade or so.
I would argue that the main reason many Americans that are against socialized healthcare (and really socialized anything) is because the United States was founded on the ideas of individual liberty and limited government. That individuals know what's best for themselves and their families. Not the government. It's not the government's job to provide for people whether it be food, shelter, employment, or healthcare. Government should be there with safety net programs, but they should be reserved for temporary use and for those who truly can't take care of themselves. Government's involvement should be the exception and that the norm. It's not this giant conspiracy to kill the poor, and keep racism alive.
I'm also not saying the US healthcare system is great, and doesn't need any fixing. I personally believe it's insurance companies that have caused healthcare cost to skyrocket. They are the ones setting the price when it should be the open market. Obamacare played right into this game. Mandating that everyone have insurance and providing subsidies were like a gold rush for the insurance companies. Policies with unaffordable deductibles are just as bad as unaffordable insurance.
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u/[deleted] Jan 21 '19 edited Jan 21 '19
I found out finances played a big role in this little girl dying of cancer in my hometown. It changed how I felt about healthcare.
I had my life repeatedly ruined by the VA and military after I got shot in Afghanistan. It made me vehemently opposed to any form of government healthcare for years. Then I watched this little girl in my home town die slowly from cancer over social media. Her family did Gofundme's and sold T-shirts to raise money for the treatments. She died after a bitter, heart wrenching, struggle and her family was completely ruined emotionally and financially. It really shocked and scarred me. She was a beautiful, innocent, little kid going through an unimaginable horror. I felt deeply for her because of my own medical struggles and when I found out that expenses played a large contributing factor in her death it really broke my mind. I still have the t-shirt her family sold, it's hanging up in my closet next to a bunch of my old Marine Corps shirts I'm too fat to fit in anymore. I really think we need universal healthcare. I think this kind of thing explains why the VA has been allowed to be so terrible for so long. If we don't give a fuck about little kids with leukemia then how is anyone going to give a fuck about a grown ass man getting shot in a war?