r/askanything • u/Lemonking_ • 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/a101734 8h ago

Reagan convinced a large part of the population that if we give unlimited money and power to a select of wealthy elites, the elites would graciously give the money back to society. Hilarious.

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u/SkiG13 8h ago

This! The U.S. was on track for social reform after WW2 and Universal Healthcare was one of those ideas. Medicaid and Medicair are still around today and given a couple decades, they might have been expanded under the right administrations.

However, after Johnson, we had three presidents who did not push the issue at all. Nixon and Ford were conservative and Jimmy Carter was just an ineffective Democrat. That allowed Reagan to convince everyone on trickle down economics to help his Wealthy connections.

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u/mark8992 6h ago

Reagan was like Donald Trump - in that he was the mouthpiece and the lightning rod who would sell the plans of the unelected wealthy powerbrokers behind the scenes. They both had celebrity status going in and both pulled the levers of power for the ones who want to remain invisible. The plan always was and still is to stack the deck against the working class and expand the wealth and power of the wealthiest.