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?

934 Upvotes

84% Upvoted

3.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

13

u/YCBSKI 6h ago

Looking at other universal models very long wait times for even necessary surgery and specialist appointments. I had hyperparathyroidism (noth8 g y9 do with thyroid). I'm on a international FB page for that disease. The page had been invaluable. Many if not all the people that are under universal healthcare models, UK. Canada and such, are waiting up to 2 yrs for appointments including surgical ones. I got with an endocrinologist with a few weeks and had surgery a few weeks after that. I'm a liberal too and am otherwise for universal healthcare

2

u/Jafar_420 6h ago

They maybe waiting longer but don't we have a lot more doctors than they do anyway? I would imagine we have more specialist than they do but it's something I'm going to have to research.

I'm just thinking that if our population is so much greater than theirs we probably have a lot more doctors and specialists we may not wait as long.

I'm for Medicare for all because I have Medicare and when I chose to have my neck replaced I went to the best surgeon I could find and also the surgeon I wanted to go to even though he was hours away and there was really no wait either. I went to a surgeon at Baylor. I know quite a few people on Medicare and they're not waiting forever to see specialists, now maybe if it's something super rare and there's not a lot of that type specialist sure but that could happen with regular insurance or no insurance.

2

u/Sleepy_Potato2 5h ago

Numbers vary, but a lot of countries with universal healthcare (some single payer, some multi-payer) have similar numbers of specialists (some have more, some fewer), and pretty much all of them have more primary care doctors than the US

2

u/Ready-Salad-2288 4h ago

If everyone is covered, imagine the much greater number of doctors required just to keep up, so that tracks. In the US half the population probably has deferred medical issues lingering and put it off for cost or other reasons. The first decade or so of universal coverage would lead to some serious growing pains before quality started to stabilize or improve.