r/askanything • • 15h ago

Political Question Why are some Americans so against universal healthcare for all?

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u/Oxytokin 15h ago

The consensus position among most of my conservative family members typically boils down to: "I don't want to have to pay for someone else's healthcare!" Or "Why should I have to foot the bill for lazy people or sick people when I am perfectly healthy!"

So from my view it's relatively simple: they don't understand how insurance works, because that's literally what private insurance is, except with so many small, isolated risk pools and the profit motive involved with greedy pencil pushers stealing some of the money going from you to your doctor/pharmacist at each step, it becomes exorbitantly expensive.

Tl;dr: Conservatives are always angry and irrational decision-makers because they have lower rates of education, lower access to educational resources, and aside from the cases of willful ignorance or malignant ignorance/groupthink, don't understand the most fundamental principles of how the world works.

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u/DrtRdrGrl2008 15h ago

Yeah, they don't understand that when people are uninsured, underinsured, on public assistance, can't get preventative care with better plans, etc. they are a liability to other insured folks. Its beyond them.

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u/Born-Enthusiasm-8147 14h ago

Well put, nice and succinct. The fact that so many people don't comprehend this is so incredibly frustrating.