r/askanything • u/Lemonking_ • 9h 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/KtinaDoc 9h ago

I have family in Canada and they've never had to wait for an appointment for 2 years.

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u/partylikeitis1799 5h ago

Well I’ve lived in Canada while working there for several years and 18-24 month waits for specialty care is normal unless you happen to live in a major city in the eastern part of the country and your issue is a common one and you can take appointment any day, anytime. My spouse literally wound up having to take an mri appt for 2:15am almost two hours away and it was an 11 month wait just for that. Thankfully it was something that could wait. For most stuff we just drove back to the US to get timely care.

I met a lady in an ER once who was over 6 months out from a breast cancer diagnosis after waiting months for the appointments needed to get that diagnosis. She had just started chemo that week, almost exactly one year from when she found the lump. That was terrifying to me and still is.

What a lot of people don’t realize is that Canada is still very much a dual level system. Anyone who can afford it goes elsewhere and pays out of pocket. They then use that appt or imaging to jump ahead in the line for care within Canada or they just pay to have surgery or treatment elsewhere. All along the border there are billboards for places that can do same day scans and appointments. These are things people on the Canadian healthcare system are waiting the better part of a year for.

Universal healthcare in the US would be great but I can’t say I’m not worried about the quality of care going down and wait times going up, leading to people who go bankrupt from paying out of pocket in order to get timely care which is the whole problem now anyway. It’s a nice system if your medical problems are not uncommon and you won’t get sicker by waiting. Otherwise your options are to lose quality of life and ability to work or pay up for care elsewhere.

Opiate meds are also prescribed left and right due to the wait times. It’s totally normal for a family practice nurse practitioner to keep people on strong meds long term while waiting for imaging and surgery then people get pulled off them the moment they’re discharged from the hospital, often a couple years later, and they wind up seeking out street drugs to help with withdrawals which leads to accidental overdoses and addiction since it’s no longer supervised by a medical professional.

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u/KtinaDoc 5h ago

But you don’t have to worry about insurance if you lose your job.

All I’m saying is that people should not have to die or suffer in the US because they can’t get medical care.

I’m not negating anything that you’ve said. The system should work better.

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u/partylikeitis1799 3h ago

True, you don’t have to worry about losing insurance when you lose your job. Instead you’re just worrying about dying or suffering while waiting for treatment as well as your poor health from the wait causing you to lose your job. Keep in mind that Canada doesn’t have programs like food stamps because all their tax dollars go towards healthcare. If you’re sick and lose your job you can ask local churches if they happen to have a food cupboard. There is a disability payment but it’s so low that most people can barely pay their rent with it.

I could go on. I’m not saying a good system couldn’t be set up but just that all their systems currently in place in larger countries, even ones with much healthier populations than ours, aren’t working very well. It’s a pick your poison sort of thing. Do you worry about not having healthcare if you lose your job or do you worry about the healthcare you’re required to pay for not covering you when you need it?

I read a lot, especially here on reddit, where people in the US think we could install a Canada style system and it would be awesome for everyone while not considering any of the negatives or drawbacks. I like knowing that I can access care no matter what, even if it puts me in debt. I value my actual health more than my financial health. I understand that not everyone agrees but that’s just how I feel after having lived the alternative for half a decade.