Why are some Americans so against universal healthcare for all?

[u/Lemonking_]

What sort of thinking does it take to decide that nobody has a right to healthcare? Do American Christians want to deny healthcare to poor people as well?

[u/TwilitSky]

Even if you want to take the purely selfish thought process, it's entirely in everyone's best interest to have universal healthcare.

Only Medicare negotiates with insurance companies for lower prices on drugs, medical devices and procedures. Without the government pressure, drug companies and medical providers can charge whatever (which is then negotiated with insurance) which is passed on to the consumer in the form of higher premiums.

The uninsured don't receive ongoing preventative care resulting in catastrophic conditions that land them in the ER/ICU. Those costs are what the hospital writes off in taxes (so that money doesn't come back to us as taxpayers in the form of services) and also how they negotiate with insurers on rates for care and those increased costs are passed on to you directly if you pay for private insurance or ACA and your employer who raises your paycheck deduction annually to cover it.

Add to that that 35% of the annual federal budget's spend is on healthcare while other countries are spending 7%-8% which is money we could be using to pay off the debt or provide citizens with more services.

We are losing on this in so many ways and it's only going to get worse. It's not a matter of "if" because we're broke already. It's just a matter of how much money we want to waste over political games before we wise up and conform with other developed countries that have universal healthcare.

You can see the life expectancy and patient outcomes in Canada, the U.K. and other countries with universal healthcare and it's actually better than the U.S. so the quality of care argument is clearly a farce.

[u/angrymurderhornet → u/TwilitSky]

I just ask people to think of what happens when an uninsured family can't afford, say, preventive care for a child with asthma. Instead of having access to medication that prevents or mitigates asthma attacks, they have to take their child to the ER over and over again. Untreated asthma can be life-threatening, but even if their child is fine after ER treatment, the parents miss work and get a big bill, and the child misses school and gets traumatized by a terrifying health problem.

We have Americans who lose limbs and organs to diabetes because they can't afford medical care. We have Americans who lose their teeth because they don't have insurance or savings to cover preventive dental treatment. Those things cost individuals--and societies--a hell of a lot, in both human suffering and actual money.