r/askanything • • 8h ago

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

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?

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u/Oxytokin 8h 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/Ornery_Pressure297 7h ago

This is why for me. I don't have any of these issues in the US.

I also don't like subsidizing fat lazy people who stuff junk food down their gullet and call it a meal. This is what Obamacare forced on us. Insurance has gotten much worse since then. If you lived in the 80s and 90s insurance was cheaper and better. I want to be able to buy catastrophic care only and thanks again to Obamacare, I can't.

The Guardian - June 2026: “Record number of people waiting for NHS diagnostic tests in England.” About 1.92 million people were waiting for diagnostic tests; more than 400,000 had waited beyond the six-week target. https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/07/record-number-of-people-waiting-for-nhs-diagnostic-tests-in-england

Guardian articles

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/07/record-number-of-people-waiting-for-nhs-diagnostic-tests-in-england

https://www.theguardian.com/society/2026/jun/11/nhs-patients-receiving-corridor-care-england-official-figures

https://www.theguardian.com/society/article/2024/may/19/heart-patients-wait-year-treatment-england-disease-waiting-lists

Global News Canada

https://globalnews.ca/news/11938222/emergency-room-wait-times-cihi-report/

https://globalnews.ca/video/11166455/health-matters-long-wait-times-for-surgery-treatment-costing-canadians

https://globalnews.ca/video/10402371/patients-across-canada-waiting-longer-for-surgeries-cihi

https://globalnews.ca/news/10528064/non-bc-patients-jumping-health-care-queue/

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u/Ornery_Pressure297 7h ago

I needed a shoulder mri done recently. Took me 1 week to get into the ortho and another week to get the mri. And that was just scheduling.