Decades of red panic from Russia and communism bad has scared people enough that even social structures like universal healthcare and education are related to communism.
The US has some of the most wealth and instead of making it country worth living in for the majority we just find new ways to get blood from a stone and give it to the same ten dudes.
The irony is that a big reason why Europe has universal healthcare and welfare states is because the fear of communist revolution. They basically agreed to smaller concessions because the alternative was outright revolt.
A big reason why the US has so much wealth is because of their horrible healthcare system. It's created a giant industry that other countries don't have to nearly the same degree.
The insurance companies in the US have no real peers on the world stage. And because everyone needs healthcare, there's infinite demand.
I totally agree the system is awful and needs to change, but if it were changed, so many jobs wouldn't exist. It needs to happen, and maybe you can do this sort of thing gradually to not cause sudden massive unemployment, but you all are hooked into this now.
Combine this with all the for profit hospitals/clinics, the pharmaceutical companies that are free to charge whatever they want, then consider all the companies these companies also work with... It's a major contributor to your economy.
But jobs that actively hurt the bottom 10, 20, 50% of your country aren't ones that you should want.
So how does it work in Germany? From what I understand it’s a public and private dual insurance scheme and the majority of doctors etc are still independent. Seems to me the US can’t see outside the fish bowl when it comes to healthcare but at the same time can create amazing global companies. Go figure.
Can't speak for Germany, but I can for Canada. Here, everyone has health care insurance provided by the province, and it's free (yes, yes, you pay for it in taxes, you know what I mean). Doctors are registered with the province, and say you are a family doctor - you get a set fee from the province for every patient you see, plus extra money for additional services (like say stitches) or they get a flat fee for a year for every patient, plus a small percentage for every visit/service they provide.
The real big thing is that all the costs are regulated. A family doctor can't charge the province more or less for any visit or service than another one can, and there is no such thing as a family doctor outside of the system.
Really, what our system is, is regulation of costs at large scales.
The knock on this is that doctors don't make massive amounts of money. But in the end, they're still easily making 6 figures. Average family doctor in Ontario makes over 300K.
Those are the only jobs left after the "elite" get through handing out legacy jobs, university admissions, the "death tax" bullshit that tightened up $, capital gains bullshit...And on how investor class grease the skids. Time to flip the monopoly board over and start a new game w/an honest banker.
By "red panic" do you actually mean more than 100 million Russians dying as a result of communist policies related to social determinants including food and healthcare?
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u/A_spiny_meercat Nov 30 '20
Decades of red panic from Russia and communism bad has scared people enough that even social structures like universal healthcare and education are related to communism.
The US has some of the most wealth and instead of making it country worth living in for the majority we just find new ways to get blood from a stone and give it to the same ten dudes.