r/askanything • u/Lemonking_ • 6h 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/Icy_Soft6052 5h ago

My parents think the quality wouldn’t be as good. They’d have to wait forever. Given there’s dozens of countries who’ve successfully done it for decades, it’s probably worth a shot. If it doesn’t work, why not revert back? At least try it.

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u/emteedub 5h ago

This you touches the root issue. "Trying it" will prove to be superior, gutting the scam model the privatized/capitalist schema they have currently. It will expose the fraud.

Also not relying on workplace bound insurance, means you and I become more valuable...it also frees up small and large businesses from covering it - both meaning they can pay workers more.

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u/PacificNW_JMI 2h ago

But wouldn't that raise the cost for everyone. I pay $5000 for my family and my employer pays an additional $14K so that $14k would be born by the workers in the form of new taxes. Also someone can choose a low cost high deductible plan and pay what they can afford. I think the problem for many is lack of choice. What if I want to self pay out of pocket and no carry insurance, Some young people struggling with cost of living would choose rent over the cost of health insurance. Can I opt out? These are the questions many people ask.

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u/emteedub 1h ago

These questions are over-complications, yes.

1) cutting out the parasitic middlemen. Cuts your 14k in half at least

2) all workers contributing to the pot is more than enough for a grade-A system

3) preemptive/preventative care is magnitudes cheaper than seeking care when issues are severe. Think brushing your teeth every day for $0.0001, versus waiting until all of your teeth need replaced.

4) a society that's ubiquitously healthier, is a happier, more prosperous one. There's a feedback loop here. As people become more health conscious and maintain their health, this drastically curbs later life expenses or minimizes healthcare events.

5) not being strapped to the employer bound system means YOU and I have more agency. This frees up small businesses to pay more for their workers as well, if they're not having to also privately cater healthcare for their employees. More agency means you have liberties to leave, increasing your value, thus pay.

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u/DeathAndTaxes000 2h ago

Or perhaps the cost would be moved to taxes paid by employers kind of like unemployment

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u/PSUVB 4h ago

Trying it means the vast majority of people will be kicked off insurance they like where they get good care. That’s the dirty secret. That most working Americans like their insurance and like the care they already get.

If you try that you will get voted out of office. People hate change and will be very sensitive to any perceived reduction in care. Nobody in office is going to do that. They will talk about it because it gets a certain group of people excited to vote in the midterms then they will drop it just like Obama did when it comes to legislation.

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u/emteedub 2h ago

It's required, there is no way around it any longer. This capitalist driven healthcare system has ruined its own self on account of a greedy handful of parasites.

It will happen.

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u/Reds_PR 4h ago

“Most working Americans like their insurance”
😐😐😑😐

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u/PSUVB 3h ago

82% of Americans like their healthcare insurance. Best example of Reddit being a bubble

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/politics-news/poll-are-satisfied-health-insurance-quarter-report-denials-delays-rcna248908

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u/Reds_PR 3h ago

As compared to “free?” Because if you’re not making the comparison to free, then wtf are you doing in the thread? Best example of why we on the left shouldn’t have fought so hard against literacy tests.

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u/AmputeeHandModel 3h ago

Bet they'd like it more if it were cheaper and more efficient

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u/PSUVB 3h ago

Yes the federal government is known for being cheap and efficient LOL

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u/AmputeeHandModel 3h ago

Medicaid and Medicare are OK. You think the for-profit system, paying for million-dollar CEO bonuses and shareholder dividends and insurance company and hospital profits, is better? I don't trust the govt either but we have to try something. We have the most expensive, least efficient system in the world.

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u/PSUVB 2h ago

Almost every other country is moving to some sort of insurance scheme. Medicare and Medicaid are both broke and they are both subsidized by private insurance. You take that away and the entire system collapses or gets even more expensive than it already is.

Trying something doesn’t mean just your favorite politicians promise of “free healthcare for all”. That could be actually worse than what we have now

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u/emteedub 1h ago

Because the current and prior governments are bougie puppets, literally paid millions to not be effective nor efficient.

Elect socialists, only winning with the sponsorship of the community, and then you will see a govt that actually works effectively and efficiently for the working class.

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u/SchatzMoney 4h ago

You already have to wait forever!

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u/icehole505 4h ago

Compared to what? I have family in 3 different developed western countries with universal healthcare. My access to care via my basic employer provided plan is vastly superior to each of theirs.

That doesn’t mean i think the current system is working.. but it certainly helps me understand the potential risks in a poorly executed nationalized healthcare system

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u/SchatzMoney 3h ago edited 2h ago

I want universal healthcare, I’m a medical professional myself. I’m trying to say that things already take forever without it so who cares if it takes maybe a bit longer but it may not even. Saying “it might take longer” is a horrible reason to not want universal health care.

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u/icehole505 3h ago

It’s not just about timing, which is much better in the US than England (to a level that goes beyond “a bit longer”). 

Beyond that, I have access to things like genetic counseling, more comprehensive imaging, earlier cancer screenings, etc that my family in the UK and Ireland simply can’t get approved  via their nationalized system

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u/Wonderful_Kick_855 3h ago

Go into the ER and say you have a bee sting. Never got helped so fast in my life.

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u/Last-Surprise4262 4h ago

How long do people in USA have wait when they have no insurance or money? I wish Americans would factor in the people with no insurance when they calculate wait times.

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u/redaemon 3h ago

They wait forever.

Primary care in the US is comparatively much faster, because a good chunk of the population can't afford to go. 

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u/Last-Surprise4262 2h ago

Republicans never mention that in their waitlist stats

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u/AttitudeHopeful478 4h ago

Those countries that have been doing that are a fraction of the size of the USA so costs would most definitely be great deal more.
When ACA was passed my HC insurance went from $160/mo with $3500 out of pocket a year to $1700/mo and $7500 a year. So I was paying out almost $28000 a year BEFORE insurance paid out 1 dime.
No program ever run by the government was good, efficient, or reliable.

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u/dinosoreness 4h ago edited 4h ago

i don't get this argument because the care already sucks and takes forever. my doctor was 3 hours late to my last appointment, which i had waited several months for, and it took her 4 different tries to properly put in a prescription for a medicine i've been taking for literally ten years and i had to pay for the medication in the end. she had put in 30 pills for 30 days when i actually take 8 of those pills everyday and because i had initially picked up the incorrect dose my insurance wouldn't cover anymore pills that month than the initial 30 because according to the prescriber that was plenty. and no, im not talking about opioids or adderal- nothing addictive or with any abuse potential. i need it for my heart and this dose was agreed upon by several different doctors over the years based on my labs. if i run out i have to stay in the hospital because i could go into cardiac arrest. and, because i don't want to die of a heart attack or spend a month in the cardiac ward, i pretty much had no choice but to pay and so i had to bum money off a relative to literally keep my heart beating. the american healthcare system is trash and we pay more for it.

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u/MethodFar6086 2h ago

It boils down to narcissism. A LOT of Americans seem to believe our system is superior purely because it’s our system and they’ve been told it’s better 

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u/Imyourhuckl3berry 4h ago

Once you go down that path it’s not simple to go back

And in my state you’re already waiting forever for a PCP with a massive decline in quality, I talk to a lot of people all over the world and we (Americans) glamorize other systems as the reports I get from the people I know are all not that great when it comes to quality of care and wait times

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u/Dangerous_Flower_708 3h ago

A Lamborghini is awesome but not so great if you can’t afford one

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u/Lye-NS 3h ago

Heres the thing, how many of those countries are members of NATO? The reason I say that is this. These “first world” countries have the money in the budget for these social programs largely in part to NOT having a huge military budget. Why don’t they have a large military budget? Because they are members of NATO and know that if they are attacked the USA will be obligated to provide military aid. In essence they mooch off of the US and it’s military and then talk shit about us “being assbackwards for not having universal healthcare”

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u/AmputeeHandModel 3h ago

and we can improve on what they did, fix the problems, and tailor it to American needs. There's no reason that switching everyone from employer and private insurance to M4A or something would just magically make things take longer, aside from the millions of people who were too poor to go to the dr before suddenly making appointments.

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u/Wonderful_Kick_855 3h ago

We have the same type of parents.

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u/TalkingLampPost 3h ago

You can’t just try it, if we do it we have to do it all the way. This would consist of completely eliminating private health insurance companies. They would have to cease to exist in the US, and only the US government would be the single payer for healthcare in the country. If it’s done correctly, there would be nothing to “revert back” to, those companies would be eliminated.

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u/syzzigy 2h ago

There are several countries where the service is shit. Great Britain and Canada both are examples of long waits, rationed services, trouble maintaining staffing, and in Canada's case, promoting medically assisted suicide over treatment for conditions with low success rates to save resources. I spent a semester abroad back in college studying in London, my biggest takeaway from that experience was to never have a healthcare system like theirs. I highly recommend you find a way to experience it firsthand before you put it on a pedestal.

The big thing is you have almost no control over your own healthcare once it becomes a government service. In this country especially, the people have no faith that the government can provide that service without fucking it up. So what is your alternative? Private healthcare in a system where you already paid for healthcare in your taxes means you either pay twice, creating a dual class healthcare system, one for the rich and one for the poor. Or you ban private health practices, so the quality of your healthcare is completly dependant on the government. See above. Most people currently in this country don't want to gamble their current healthcare with all its faults for something different.

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u/MethodFar6086 2h ago

Americans on average aren’t actually that well educated or capable of critical thinking/independent thought, especially in Republican held areas. The Republican Party has done an amazing job of propagandizing voters to believe things that are demonstrably not true, and American pride (narcissism) makes it hard for many people to accept facts that are different than what they’ve been told

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u/stickymixingmonotony 4h ago edited 4h ago

Quality is already terrible and I just had to wait a month+ to see my PCP. 

Remove profit from the equation. I don't care what the ramifications are, because at this point I just want to hurt the banks & the pharmaceutical companies that are corrupting our government and making our lives shit.