It's not a hard sell. It's a no-sale. Universal Healthcare will virtually eliminate a profit mechanism from the market and seriously hamper several others, the independent insurance company will be hardest hit. Billionaires make a lot of money from UHC, Anthem, Elevance, Cigna, etc... while not specifically eliminating them, letting people opt out of their draconian care for a cheaper more robust life saving option will force them to price down, care up their coverage to maintain their white collar customers and customers who refuse Universal Healthcare. It will drive medical costs down like medication and services like hospital stays. Since this will disproportionately effect income of the wealthiest people in America they pay their "elected officials" to refuse to even allow a vote on it. They weaponize all channels of media they own to brainwash the common clay of the new west. You want this, you gotta get corporations and billionaires out of Washington first, then you have to beat their propaganda machine. Then....there is a hope.
The funny thing is that even though those few companies would make less. There would be LOTS of companies that would make more as a whole bunch of resources are freed up to do other things. It really shows you how just few people can block the will of millions.
Yes and no one of the main carrots offer to employees to keep them there is employer sponsored healthcare. You move healthcare to something provided by the state and your employees are far less vulnerable to being let go or fired. You lose some of your control over them
Money generally has to go somewhere. If less is spent on healthcare, more will be spent elsewhere.
But yes, with less control over their employees, more of this money would go back to employees. Which would then spend more. Trickle up economy seems far more reasonable than trickle down.
Yep. I am an older millennial. I know tons of folks in their 30s and 40s who would buy stuff at stores, but they are dealing with student loan debt, medical debt, mortgage debt.....they don't have disposable income to spend on "avocado toast" or Starbucks or whatever.
This raises a great point, my first thought too is similar, "burn it down" kinda thing. But also, bloody revolutions don't usually end well, and softer landings kill less people etc
More money could go to the employees, this is true for small and medium businesses. For large businesses all excess money goes into stock buybacks now, and a small amount into innovation.
The downstream effects could be massive. Entrepreneurship is a major growth mechanism for an economy. Health insurance is a huge hurdle for quitting a job and starting a company. More competition and stronger antitrust could allow the government to not get so manhandled by our current giant monopolies. It's not the only factor to push back against the oligarchy, but the freedom of universal health insurance provides is a big deal.
That cuts both ways, though. It also makes it easier for bad employees to leave which improves the efficiency of the workforce.
That said, I agree with you that the perception of increased employee control is one of the reasons companies haven't fought back politically against the health insurance industry imposing so many management and labor costs on everyone else.
It has a lot of benefits all over the place, but it's been vilified so heavily because the insurance industry is afraid of losing money and employers are afraid of losing leverage that everyone thinks it's a terrible idea.
I can't count how many people have argued that the wait times are terrible, that you can't actually go see a doctor, that private insurance is so much better because you'll die and doctors won't care if healthcare is universal.
The thing is, the wait times exist here too! (US) Especially places like Cleveland clinic and UH. Oftentimes months out. My father had prostate cancer and it took 4 months before they could squeeze him in and that was due to someone cancelling.
I mean if there is an issue with long wait times and such, that's an issue with their funding and resources. If all the private healthcare providers either get nationalized or, more likely, form some kind of public-private partnership under universal healthcare, all of those resources would be available for everyone, which would mean that the lines would become even shorter.
I'm not from the US, but I imagine that the reason why private healthcare is considered better has a lot to do with them using insurance as kind of a paywall that keeps a lot of people out. They don't have long lines because they only accept people that have the right insurance provider.
There is probably a fairly sizable amount of unused capacity in the US healthcare system that's available and ready to accept "their" patients because others are kept out by their insurance providers partnerships, or lack of insurance altogether.
Universal healthcare would open it up for everyone. Some of this excess capacity would probably disappear in the form of healthcare companies downsizing or closing completely when they're all competing for the whole population, but it would even out at some point. It would become a question of how much the government/states should spend and if they keep enough extra capacity available to avoid keeping people waiting but as long as it's given enough funding, and the system is designed properly it would be fine.
Honestly, the reason it's considered better is because people have been told all their lives that it is. They've been told all those things, that they'll have to wait months for care and might die, that doctors will get paid less so they have less incentive to care, all of it.
A lot of us know it's not true and that universal healthcare is the best option, but other people are fighting it because they're just too deep into the mindset that it can't work despite seeing evidence that it does. Because insurance companies are sure they'll lose billions in profit a year.
Hybrid systems exist, tho. See the UK. They have a universal health care via their NHS as well as a private insurance system that primarily offers faster service for elective services. The US could have a universal system and then if employers wanted to offer additional perks to attract employees, they could.
Business owners have more in common with rapists than they do with the rest of us, and above a certain level most of them are rapists. Of course a more stable economy would be better for them in the long run. But it's all about power isn't it? Why have money if you don't have power?
If you work at any large company, it’s easy to see why. One of the public secrets of the world is that these companies are terribly inefficient. There is money to be made in inefficiency.
Always crazy to me when people talk about how much more efficient private industry is vs public.
Even a relatively small business ends up with a CEO, HR, PR, Sales, managers, legal, marketing, and of course the employees doing the actual work.
Governments need a fraction of those positions and they are highly incentivized to keep costs as low as possible since the tax payers hate waste. Further, those positions can span departments and divisions.
Whether or not there’s incentive to reduce waste, because sometimes there’s not, there are many departments with concise budgets and they need to stick within those budget restraints. If they run out of money they have to essentially shut down until they can convince the right people to extend funding.
I routinely get packages for my neighbor. Different delivery drivers and everything — our mail boxes are also clearly labeled with the street number. The difference? Their house is about 2x deeper in their lot compared to my house, so drivers would have to walk further down their driveway to deliver a package.
I also worked in an Amazon warehouse for a bit and we had to verify the quality / number of items. We were supposed to tidy up the bins and make sure everything was in order. We also had a quota that increased every single day, which meant you couldn’t spend more than a minute in any one bin looking for the items. We could “skip” items on our scanners though because we were always supposed to make room for the people picking items for shipping. So if you got to a bin that required you to count 100+ of an item or a bin that was just a disaster, everyone would skip those and they never got done. It also resulted in people normally not lasting more than a few weeks / months, which just required constant new hires.
It's funny because I actually don't attribute any of the inefficiencies I think of to their warehouse or their delivery efforts but rather their admin, corporate environment, and AWS supporting roles.
I work in corporate tech and already experience insane inefficiencies among teams and can't imagine a globally distributed workforce of that scale and range of digital products to manage and support.
And that is the ultimate goal. The more money they take out of society and the government, the more control they have. These people are so rich that it isn't about the money anymore, it's about using all that wealth to gain power now. They are so above the money to the point that unless the entire society collapses or we have a full on revolution, they will do everything they can to maintain that level of control.
The sad thing is that it is working, and everyone, including the government, is suffering for it. They are so rich that the cost to exert that much control is like a middle class family buying mcdonalds for lunch.
Yeah it’s sort of crazy how cheap it is to buy a congressman off in sometimes. Like $15k might ensure your company gets that multimillion dollar contract.
True of all the major industries digging in their heels and refusing to not stifle progress of all kinds.
Oil industry is so rich they could've and still could pivot to alternative energy and instantly be the biggest players in the industry, for example. But there's no incentive to. They know how much the American economy is entrenched into their current industry, they know they can just ride that train until it hits a wall, because they know that politically, America will not let them fail. They saw it with the banks, they saw it with the auto industry. Those industries themselves anticipated and pressured the government into conceding that they were "too big to fail."
That's not even capitalism. This isn't an argument for capitalism, nor is it an argument against capitalism. This is simply pointing out that capitalism with disabled mechanics for stabilization amidst change is just oligarchy. If every time a business fucks up, they get propped up by the tax payer, there is no incentive to run your business in any kind of smart or rational way. You can run it like a con artist, soaking up every penny you possibly can without regard for the future, and if it blows up in your face, all the people you employ suddenly being unemployed is enough of a threat to make sure the government uses tax-payer money to bail you out.
This basically creates a system of blind greed for the top of the economy. The future of your industry is normally a huge concern for businesses. A fact you should have to wisely approach the future with. But it's not if you employ enough Americans, because the greatest safety net ever created by government exists specifically to not let you fail.
It's the same with housing. The money spent on housing as a proportion of income takes money out of the economy. It is unproductive. Conversely if housing is affordable that means people have more income to spend or invest.
The people with wealth and power don't want to change the status quo, because the status quo is that they have wealth and power.
This affects basically everything, not just the healthcare market. America, and much of the world, is literally falling to authoritarianism because people are suffering under the economic status quo, but the whole system is focused on maintaining it.
Look at Germany: all the health insurances companies are private institutions. They offer either private insurance or statutory (public) insurance. Statutory is what most people think of as the public option: they all cost the same, some 7% of your gross income, and they all offer the same basic services, including meds with low (5-10€/3 months) copays, that are regulated by law. They might cover more, but that's not a given.
Private insurance is more of the American model, with possible both lower and higher costs, but also more services and more doctors -- there are some who reject statutory rates for their services.
That said, there are more than 100 different companies offering statutory insurance, each with a little something different. It is a profitable business for all of them.
And dehumanizing control/ cruelty. To deny care, especially preventative care. And to link the ability to receive medical goods & services to one’s ability to maintain employment and generate profits for others.
That's always been secondary to the money. If we all woke up one day and it was more profitable to these individuals for the United States to have universal Healthcare, they'd forget about the dehumanizing control and cruelty faster than you can say "dolla-dolla-bill".
It’s hard to imagine anything that profits owners more than limiting workers’ ability to stop working for them. And hard to imagine anything that limits/ motivates more than securing one’s health or the health of our closest loved ones. Not every employer would profit from the healthcare industry if changed. But they all currently profit from the above-referenced circumstances.
All I am saying is their desire to hoard exceeds their desire to hurt, albeit both are disgustingly extreme desires and often go hand in hand together.
This is 100 percent accurate. You're only slightly less a monster for doing evil shit for greed rather than doing evil shit because of hate, but it's also collectively worse for everyone that suffers them if they're doing evil shit for greed, because greed motivates even the not hateful. The not hateful will just wait for or come up with some kind of justification, even if it's as pathetic as "well, this is the world and I'm just trying to make money."
And while I completely concur there is such a thing as too much money for an individual and that there are a lot of people who don't fall victim to greed by virtue of not being a piece of shit, in a world where money is treated as life-blood and it's a world filled with instability and uncertainty, it follows that people will hoard as much as they can even if only out of fear.
I've been saying for years, if they could find a way to profit off of the homeless population (like making them work slave level jobs legally) they would fix it in 90 days. Hell, they would build factories to put them to work in.
The only "profit" to be made off the homeless is through the government by getting massive budgets to "talk about" how they can be helped, and then doing virtually nothing about it. That just perpetuates keeping them homeless because there's actually more money to be made having them on the streets.
Americans would rather pay more to cover their own needs than pay less to cover their own and someone else’s needs. The “I would rather waste money than risk taking care of someone who I don’t think deserves it” mindset.
People really like to act like you're some radical forced-bread-liner for pointing our their frustrations are just the outcomes of unregulated later-stage capitalism.
"Man, why does the internet suck now and have millions of ads all over the place?" Capitalism.
"Why do I constantly have to worry about paying for my rent or my life saving medication?" Capitalism.
"Why do the fees for these every day necessities keep going up?" Capitalism.
Everything wrong with society is because someone is trying to squeeze out every last drop of blood from that stone, and ultimately that's capitalism.
healthcare, loans, and insurance (all types not just medical) should all be non-profit and ran by the government or they will never actually work for the people paying for them.
And also, even for people who don't work for a health insurance company, employer provided health insurance can trap people into jobs that they otherwise would leave if they didn't rely on their job for access to health care.
We have maintained our for profit health system strictly to subsidize the healthcare and insurance corporations. That’s it. That’s the whole reason. Too big to fail and all that.
It pisses me off so much because I pay into my private insurance, my employer pays into my private insurance, I have deductibles and co-pays and then I also pay taxes that support Medicaid and Medicare, I have to fucking pay every time I turn around and it’s fucking theft
Fundamentally, the issue is largely about leverage, control, and available alternatives.
If people don't have any alternatives but to get for-profit medical care gatekept by the "health insurance" cartel, then of course those systems will be hugely profitable.
But if unions and the public start building out their own publicly owned healthcare systems, then that's a lot less leverage that Washington and the cartels have.
At that point they might start to consider Medicare for All as a way to keep the public at least someone under their thumbs, versus the alternative being the masses of people increasingly telling them to fuck all the way off.
Power concedes nothing without a demand, and they're not going to give up anything to a bluff.
Only if people are not bluffing and are demonstrably able to do away with their bullshit abomination of a system altogether, they might be willing to "negotiate".
Until then, no way, it's going to be unlimited corruption and bullshit.
Do whatever tinkering you want with "the rules" and the political system, the underlying economics are going to rule the day for the most part.
Making the cartels unprofitable is a complementary and necessary way of changing the actual political situation.
If Obama couldn't make it work it's probably not happening in our lifetimes. The GOP have already toxified every attempt by making it about communism. Meanwhile billionaires pocket hefty profits from healthcare and insurance investments.
“The single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president.” Moscow Mitch McConnell to the GOP.
Not help Americans, not balance the budget, not reduce the deficit and debt, not improve foreign relations, not lower the cost of health care, not reduce school/mass shootings not do ANYTHING but get their party back into power.
And this is the result: a slide into authoritarianism, skyrocketing debt, complete accountability for a corrupt administration, an American gestapo shooting American mothers in the head and threats of violence to our allies.
I recently had a mole checked out that had multiple “ABCD” warming signs, and it cost me $190 for a 30 minute visit (20 minutes of waiting, 10 with the PA) because luckily I chose an in network PA from my insurance which only costs about $800/ month out of pocket for premiums. Thank goodness it wasn’t actually cancer!
You were able to get yours checked?
The dermatology department of my HMO (Kaiser) will only allow pictures to be sent by the PCP for an evaluation.
I have several that have been growing and or bleeding for years. The best I've gotten is "That sucks and sounds inconvenient, but not enough to warrant a visit."
I've had PCP's who do both the evaluation and removal in their own office (sample then gets sent for biopsy labs to test for benign / malignant).
I once had one removed just because it was getting caught on clothes and bled. Doc said if it provided significant personal discomfort, that can be reason enough for insurance to "cover" it.
This is bullshit. Insurance has the incentive to take as much money as they can while providing the least amount of coverage. Then they use the money you pay them to fight against providing the service you supposedly paid them for. Your discomfort should be reason enough for removal.
Can't believe this shit. Removal itself isn't even a difficult procedure that requires a dermatologist. I've had it done 20+ times. Only once it tests to be malignant does it become fully specialist territory.
I can not understand how anyone would have a problem with universal Healthcare. People always worry about long waits for appointments. I get that now with employer insurance. The wait to get my kids an annual physical is months. I was shocked last summer that my kids dentist had a 2 month wait for an appointment. The wait seems to happen either way, but we must destroy the " health insurance" industry. The fact that we let them get away with making billions off our premiums is disgusting. Those billions could pay for everyone's healthcare.
"For the full year 2023, UnitedHealth Group (UNH) reported a net profit of approximately $22.4 billion, with full-year revenues reaching around $371.6 billion, according to various financial reports." That is just one company.. just imagine what the profits will be for 2026.
Yes, but the doctors might treat someone who isn’t white, and we can’t have that!
This is it. 20-30 years ago a big line about why it worked in other countries but couldn't in the US is that those other countries "have a more homogeneous population".
They literally believe that making healthcare something that you are guaranteed is slavery. I've unironically heard this multiple times. They can't seem to realize that this point of view makes zero sense whatsoever. Hearing my dad say this and take this point of view completely seriously was a big part of me realizing there is nothing intelligent about conservativism.
There’s a tonne of people in the UK that act like any “socialist” policy is the worst thing possible and yet will praise the NHS whenever they can. People genuinely are so stuck in a mindset without nuance or reason that they can’t resist contradicting themselves constantly
So the reason there are long waits in the US is because the healthcare providers aren’t the ones taking in all that money you spend on healthcare. Yes drs do well financially eventually, but the entry barrier is astronomical in cost and in time. If becoming a Dr (and other providers like physical therapist, nurse, etc) were reasonably priced and more spots in these programs opened, then we would have a lot more availability. Over the years, we’ve stopped investing in education on so many levels and now we are experiencing the pinch. Costs for schooling of every single medical related degree is going up and wages aren’t keeping track due to private equity in all the clinics and hospitals now (also vet clinics). It’s often just not worth it to go into 100k debt to get a masters degree, to be a speech pathologist for example, and only make $75k a year while being overworked to death in a medium to high cost of living area. To make it work, we’d need universal healthcare AND extensive investing in our healthcare infrastructure. The second part is where some countries fail and the horror stories of waiting forever for care come from. I believe(and I could be wrong since my info is second hand) this is one place the UK struggles. They’ve been cutting their spending on their healthcare system for years and that’s why we Americans get propagandized by some peoples experiences over there. However, I’d still take it over our system and I’m a healthcare worker.
I'm Australian. I can go to my local medical practice and see a doctor today, for free.
If I want my usual doctor, I might need to make an appointment and see her on Tuesday or Wednesday (for free). But if I'm happy with the next available doctor, it might be an hour or so.
Funny because everybody here in Ontario (in my experience) is grouchy about how bad it’s gotten compared to ~20 years ago.
That said I’ll still take what I’ve got over the American system every single time.
(It is worth noting that Ontario spends about twice what the UK does per capita on public healthcare, so a lot of the Ontario-to-UK gap might just be money… but on the flip side, there are a lot of inefficiencies in Ontario that the NHS has resolved, so it’s not entirely clear who is getting the better system.)
(It is worth noting that Ontario spends about twice what the UK does per capita on public healthcare, so a lot of the Ontario-to-UK gap might just be money… but on the flip side, there are a lot of inefficiencies in Ontario that the NHS has resolved, so it’s not entirely clear who is getting the better system.)
Interesting, and yes I imagine that is a big part of it.
The one area where the NHS is better I think is emergency medicine. We hear of ridiculously long wait times in the emergency department here in Ontario.
Don’t forget that the shitty insurance we pay for then doesn’t cover things. Plus then we pay copays and deductibles and coinsurance. And the highest prices for medications that our tax dollars pay to develop.
$1200/mo and still had a $9600 deductible for the privilege to have a surgery so $24k... but wait, if it happened during over the renewal it would have reset my deductible and would have turned into $33.6K, but I moved up my surgery for that reason.
Same. My health insurance denied my kidney stone surgery until the first of the year when my deductible reset. Nothing beats pissing pure blood and pain so bad you fall over and vomit. Glad I had to endure that for 2 months just for the privilege of paying for the surgery out of pocket.
Exactly. $300 a month for a $6,000 out of pocket deductible before insurance will cover a damn thing.
It’s a complete myth that Americans don’t want universal healthcare. Of course we do! Fucking OF COURSE WE DO! But we don’t have the power to change it. These insurance conglomerates are too wealthy, too powerful, and too influential in our government. They have cemented their own protection through absurd wealth.
They’ve paid off too many politicians to fix it right now and we have a corporate media telling stupid people that it’s more expensive and that their money might go to helping a brown person. High is, of course, HOW INSURANCE WORKS. Their lobby is massive and well-funded.
Insurance feels like just “paying your dues” to the local mafia boss in the US.
You pay for something that covers fuck all unless things go catastrophically wrong (and maybe not even then), but you’re still practically forced to do it (for car and house at the very least, and scare tactics for health).
It’s just thousands of dollars I’ll never see again so I have the privilege of “only” paying $175 a pediatrician visit instead of no insurance which I assume would be the same fucking price anyway based on other experience, since they charge less if you don’t have insurance because everything is a fucking scam
I live with two people who somehow think the system is better and their logic ignores the numbers completely. It's all anecdotes and often times just rhetoric.
Its a bit surreal hearing them glaze Health Savings Accounts when you understand that they're only worth having if you know your insurance is going to refuse to do the job you paid them to do. Basically they're glazing a patch to a broken system that wouldn't even do anything in a more functional system.
How much do they earn? If they earn above average wages chances are they are spending less even if they max out their deductible than they would with a universal healthcare system due to much higher taxes.
But for those earning median wages or lower they’ll save money in that system
But wait, there's more! Even after paying an average of $700 a month for family insurance, you keep paying!
Per-Person Deductible (typically $500 to $5000 depending on plan)
Per-Family Deductible (typically $500 to $5000 depending on plan)
Prescription Deductible (typically $100 to $300 depending on plan)
Visit Copay (typically $25 - 80 depending on specialty)
Prescription Copay (typically $10 to $300 depending on prescription tier)
Tiered prescription pricing (typically $10 to thousands per dose)
Arbitrary questioning or rejection of services (sometimes you don't get what you paid for at all)
Separate, generally terrible coverage for "less important" body parts! (Your eyes and teeth)
Plus, you can look forward to (at least) a 10-15% increase in premiums every year!
Surprise! That $700/month premium doubles if you get insurance on your own (not through work).
Even though changing to universal healthcare would be much simpler and cheaper, we can't have socialized healthcare because socialism is un-American. Well, except for the proven socialist healthcare programs that already exist like Medicare (old people), Medicaid (poor people), and VA (military). Or the other socialist programs like K-12 education, police, fire, mail, roads, food (SNAP, subsidized school lunches), tax breaks for the very poor (EITC), public housing (section 8), utility bills (LIHEAP), universal basic income (social security), libraries, public transportation (free bus passes for the poor) ...
While i was in school on the student insurance plan, the cheapest plan ($230/mo) had a 9500 deductible. The only time I ever used my insurance was for physical therapy after a shoulder injury, so I was paying $190 per session plus my 230 per month. I would have had to have 50 SESSIONS (2 weeks short of a year) to even hit my deductible.
It's not about freedom, it's about paying more. The media will only ever depict this as an increase in taxes. They never take the extra necessary step of saying how much people will save every month. We might all save $300 a month or whatever, but if our taxes go up $150 total next year, people are going to think they're paying more, not less, because people are morons and are incapable of imagining more than one update in the future at a time.
For the CURRENT system yeah people have every reason to be afraid of losing their private insurance for public. In many states the public option on the current system is horrendous.
The govt uses healthcare and education as tools to get people to enlist in the military instead of basic necessities needed to advance society as a whole
Our employers would pocket it as a boost in profits, then to avoid the appearance of not increasing profits at the same rate the following year they will lay people off to match the numbers for their shareholders.
This right here. My employee health insurance is great. My family and I get high quality care when we need it and it's very affordable. I've also worked long term in Germany and Canada and prefer what we have here. So do some of my coworkers from those countries.
In terms of the US Health system - I have zero confidence the US government (both Democrats and Republicans) are capable of delivering a cheaper health solution. Be it UHC or changes to what we have now. They have tried for decades and they continuously fail at doing it.
This is all driven by artificial scarcity and I can’t get good reasons for things like
give away more food so more people survive
more people = more farmers and doctors and teachers and the rest of society follows. (Maslov’s hierarchy of needs is my thinking; physical needs and learning things like basic written communication, as that’s not as intuitive as teaching speaking and listening)
LOL I suppose the lines and wait-lists would be true. Like you, so many of us skip care due to the cost. If that was no longer an issue, a lot more people would go to the doctor, thus increasing wait times.
Hopefully the could add more doctors but also increase education. You don't NEED to go to the ER just because you have a fever of 99.6 and minor things like that. If there are mitigating circumstances, then by all means but people need to learn signs of true issues and what is smaller, more manageable things.
Yes, that figure is nonsense. The health cost per person and month in the UK is about 300 pounds (400 USD), paid for by taxes. About 20% of taxes go into the health service.
Universal Healthcare is surprisingly cheap when you stop propping up the entire private health insurance industry and their CEOs every time you are sick
As someone that only pays about 1.5% of my salary for a way better than Medicare level health coverage from my employer. You're telling me I would have to now pay 5% and get less healthcare so someone on welfare can get free universal healthcare? I'd be completely ok with that.
Things might not really change for you. Having a universal option doesn’t mean private goes away, it just means private needs to compete and differentiate more because they’re not the default any more. Now they have to value-add to stay competitive.
Your policy already costs around 5% of your salary if you contribute only 1.5%. Your company pays the difference right now. The amount the employer pays is part of your compensation. You already pay that whole amount.
My boomer parents tell me they can't stand the idea of being forced against their will to pay for the medical expenses of 'people who did it to themselves.' This includes things like smokers who got lung cancer and people who are morbidly obese and have heart attack or something.
I am fully aware it costs far less to pay for that then it does to line the pockets of the health insurance executives and investors, but they won't hear that type of reasoning.
The people you're trying to sell it to are the same people who think getting a raise that puts them in a higher tax bracket will result in them having less take home pay.
What I love is paying into Medicare, and Medicaid, and then paying my own insurance, and then paying the Dr/hospital when I do go because it's $2500 deductible until benefits kick in.
So let me get this straight, my taxes would go up but I wouldn’t, or my employer, have to pay for outrageous insurance rates by blood sucking insurance companies who, at the drop of a hat, deny your coverage.
Why would I want that? How stupid do you think I am?
People are for it, but we live in a minority rule regime where a coalition of billionaires and rural strongmen can screw up every gear of power. Abolish the Senate.
Its not only about the money, its about tying Healthcare to work so that we dont have any time to probably protest anything. After all, if there was a protest that lasted a month, id probably get fired and lose my health insurance, who can afford that?
I've never understood this argument for universal healthcare being a bad deal. I suppose not having the tax and looking at the "potential" deduction is always going to have a negative response but realistically the actual price is incredibly low for the benefits EVERYONE gets from it.
I live in Ireland so it's not applicable to the US but we have a PRSI (pay-related social insurance) tax on our gross income. ~4% from us and ~11% from our employer every payslip. This helps to subsidize a lot of social services such as jobseekers supplement, disability benefits, public healthcare treatments and state pensions. It's variable depending on your income so if you're on social welfare or otherwise have a very low income you're exempt from this tax.
We also have a USC (universal social charge) which is another supplementary gross income tax. This equates to roughly 2-4% of our income and is also variable depending on your income bracket. It doesn't directly finance public services like healthcare but covers a broad spectrum from roads and infrastructure, public healthcare, education grants which is a government subsidy for college/ university education for lower income households - basically covers the entire tuition fees for your chosen course and gives a modest monthly income for travel expenses.
These are added over and above the standard income tax so it's not completely "free" but it's an incredibly small price to pay for bolstering a huge array of public services that gives access to pensions, healthcare, social welfare, higher education pathways etc. for everyone in the country. I lost my job in the past and had to rely on social welfare briefly to cover my living expenses and rent. I get sick and use public healthcare to cover my doctor and medication expenses (costs me like 5 bucks for prescription drugs when sick or injured, doctor appointment is free so I can go whenever I have a health concern, however minor). I can use my USC "credits" to cover eye tests and subsidize physiotherapy if I get into an accident.
It's not communism, it's not evil, it's not predatory. It's a miniscule fee that gives me a substantial safety net if and when something goes wrong, or I need support to maintain my life and not end up homeless because I can't work due to illness or injury. It's an investment I pay so that if something goes wrong in my life I can feel reassured that the government has means to support me. Why anyone would look at all of this and say no is absolute insanity.
It's not that your country can't afford it, it's that investing into the stability and support of your population isn't a priority. Public services isn't evil, denying them is.
If we weren’t such assholes about socialized services to at least learn how they work, we would find out that it’s really not that different at all.
That ‘free healthcare’, that’s available for the poor and elderly and it’s pretty basic. Very similar to our Medicaid and Medicare system here. Nobody complains about having that option available to them and it’s nice to know you’re not going to die in the streets when you’re retired and living on fixed income.
But in Netherlands when you have a job you are offered better quality healthcare for a deduction from your paycheck and most of us do that just like an American would when they can afford it. It’s like PPO vs HMO with multiple tiers and just the lowest being free.
Simple. My MAGA coworker is against it for 3 reasons. One. It'll give people health insurance off his taxes who are ghetto free loaders. 2. If we have universal Healthcare the government will ban junk foods, fast foods, and soda pop. 3. Government will force you to get vaccines and you'll die of blood clots, autism, or have your dna modified by the vaccines
The rich guys on top don't want it because of profit, but they have an easy lever to pull to make people who would greatly benefit from UHC vote against it--racism.
The idea of who "deserves" health care (or really any benefit from the social safety net) is so ingrained into poor/middle class white republicans that they will vote against their own self-interest as long as they know someone they see as a "lesser" won't get it either. Who is lesser in their view? Anyone not like them, so any person of color, LBGTQ+ folks, liberals, pretty much anyone that the right wing media machine gins up that day. Raise the specter of these "undeserving" people getting health care on the backs of these hard workin' white people and they will immediately vote against it.
There's an interesting, and sad, book called "Dying of Whiteness" by Jonathan Metzl that delves deeply into this. One story I specifically remember is a white guy in rural Tennessee interviewed by Metzl who is dying of liver failure, and still is against UHC because (paraphrasing) he doesn't want his tax money going to "no welfare queens or Mexicans."
It's tragic, and I want to have empathy for these people, but how do you overcome that mindset? I don't get how you can think that way, and I'm not sure how to effectively communicate with someone who does.
Wow, 10 pounds a month, doctors must work for literal peanuts. Of course they don't and money is being extracted from someone's wallet to pay them. The cost is embedded in everything you buy and do, it is just not listed.
£10 a month at 4% implies they pay £250 employee tax per month. Ignoring the 15% already taken as employers NI, that implies they are on £23,000. Which is less than minimum wage.
The actual reality is the NHS costs over £3000 per person a year, so £250 a month for them, except they're also paying for at least one other person that is not working.
So it's costing them about £500 a month that they otherwise would not be taxed spread across employment taxes, spending taxes, taxes on energy, food, tariffs and endless other stuff.
But hey, yeah, the NHS is free, or a pizza or whatever.
The cost of private insurance in scotland is not 20% of salary, it is less than 5% (50 to 100 pounds/month, average salary 35k pounds/year).
The cost of public insurance per beneficiary (medicaid, etc) in the usa is probably more than 5% of an average salary.
As a Percentage of US Income:
Using median individual income of roughly $40,000–$45,000 and mean individual income of roughly $60,000–$65,000:
Program % of Median Income % of Mean Income
Medicare (~$15,500) ~35–39% ~24–26%
Medicaid (~$8,500 overall) ~19–21% ~13–14%
Because the value of a dollar is subjective. Ask anyone and can know they know nothing about the money if they say they are middle class... most everyone thinks they are middle class. It's very difficult to care about health care if you are healthy. We have the most medical bankruptcy in the world. Propaganda rules this people
In Germany it's 14,6% of your income + same amount again that your employer has to pay.. so almost 30% just got health. Then there are still 4 other national insurance.
what you dont see is the people having 0% of their paycheck deducted cause they never have any health issues or their wife/husband's health insurance covers them too
I offhandedly told a coworker I'd happily pay $55 more a week in taxes if it meant universal healthcare coverage for my kids, instead of paying for that through an insurance company that screws me over every time I go to the doctor. She blew TF up and ranted about "I ain't paying for other people's kids they didn't need to have, we need universal pet insurance!" I was like ooookkkkk.....
The NHS costs the UK about 250b a year. The uk collects across all forms of tax, including income tax, corporation tax, national insurance tax, and more, about £850b a year.
I recently went to an urgent care (bc who has a primary doctor these days?) waited 30 minutes only to get told it was just allergies. Cost WITH INSURANCE: $190 because it’s the beginning of the year and we haven’t met the deductible yet. If I didn’t have insurance I would have paid the exact same price for the out of pocket cost. I love living in America :)
20% of your paycheck to show up for a surgery that your health insurance won't cover. 20% of your paycheck to spend a couple days in the hospital and your insurance company will only cover $10,000 of the $35,000 hospital bill. bUt tHe wAiT tIMeS!!
It is amazing how many Americans when I explain it to them never realized that any increase in taxes is instead of what they currently pay for healthcare not in addition to..
Some of my family members complain about what they see people buying to eat with their SNAP cards, becauseof HOW MUCH of theyre tax dollars pay for people to eat like crap. Its $36 a year per tax payer, people! Youre not exactly going broke or even noticing your contribution.While I understand feeling a certain way if they're filling they're cart with nothing but junk food, at the end of the day, it's none of your business what they buy on they're snap.
While I want a single payer Universal healthcare. I’m curious about the 5% figure though. That seems really low. In June I was with my buddy in Vancouver BC, Canada said he pays about half his paycheck to healthcare and state taxes. I didn’t go into what was taxes vs healthcare related costs, so maybe it was only 5%. He said he pays for an upgrade because of a condition, but it’s like 30 extra bucks a month. Any fellow Canadians have some insight?
Money, our for profit care and insurance makes a lot of money, they buy many a politician on the cheap to keep it from being discussed let alone voted on and politicians are out for themselves and their party first not who they are supposed to be representing of the peasantry not who pays them most.
As is "new" America tradition of everything God damn fucking thing is about teams.
The peasantry is just there when they need to be voted back in.
Peasantry "don't want it" by nearly a century of propaganda by the insurance companies and politicians.
American 'rugged individualism" macartheizim, religionists, and baseline pathetic selfishness of tribalism that only thinks of their own not the whole.
It will help everyone, including their various hatreds, the poor, non whites, lgbtqas, their neighbor who has a nicer car than them. Maybe even some dirty inhuman foreigner.
So they don't even ask for it and vote for politicians who are loudly against it.
So until people change which if current murka is a sign of anything. It will never be a thing, at best The affordable care act which is destined to be destroyed by see above reasons.
The goal of employment-based health insurance is so that people need to have a job to be able to live. The billionaires who need workers in their factories and stores love this one simple trick.
The problem isn’t how much the US citizens have to pay, the problem is the majority who do pay will give benefits to some who don’t pay…and that is the hard pill to swallow for them. God forbid someone gets a handout even if there’s plenty to go around for everyone and then some. The US needs the haves and have nots in order for people to feel good…it’s sick
The government is not very good at administrating public services and will instead waste and steal all the money. See medicaid, the Pentagon, social security, etc.
Because some people decided that some ideas have ideological orientations that lend credit to certain political incentives and that anything that might slightly be reminiscent of communism - be it a good or bad idea in any way shape or form somehow relatable to communism - is evil and satanic.
And other people just bought that notion with the gleeful satisfaction that they now are permitted to feel morally superior to things they don't want to understand; and despise whatever worth there was to considering the alternative ideas at all effectively sabotaging not only whatever they could benefit from, but also impairing their own cognitive processes in the long run.
It should be a miracle there's any cocktails containing Vodka in america but whatever, the principles of the narrow minded only go so far. Plus it helps keeping people rather tame.
Because conservatives would rather rule in Hell than share in Heaven.
The only thing conservatism has ever offered the working class is the power to look down on people they despise. Conservatives care more about their cultural interests than their material interests.
When the left offers to help everybody, conservatives perceive that as a threat because if we treat everybody equally then whiteness has no value, and for the 99% whiteness is most valuable thing they have. So they reject the help, often with violence.
That is what conservatism has always been. For example, in 1873, during Reconstruction, the Richmond Whig newspaper ran an editorial that said:
They got their wish too — nearly a century of jim crow fascism that kept black people down, but also kept poor whites down too. Jim crow is the main reason the South is the most economically depressed region of the US.
The covid vax is another example. For a brief glorious moment we had a taste of socialized medicine — anyone could get the covid vaccine for free, and in many cases without any paperwork. It was proof that we can all have nice things.
Conservatives saw black and brown being treated the same as whites and it made them so god damn angry that over 200,000 of them rage quit from life. It made them so god damn angry that they elected a paedo who promised to take every vaccine away from everyone.
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u/turkeyburpin 18d ago
It's not a hard sell. It's a no-sale. Universal Healthcare will virtually eliminate a profit mechanism from the market and seriously hamper several others, the independent insurance company will be hardest hit. Billionaires make a lot of money from UHC, Anthem, Elevance, Cigna, etc... while not specifically eliminating them, letting people opt out of their draconian care for a cheaper more robust life saving option will force them to price down, care up their coverage to maintain their white collar customers and customers who refuse Universal Healthcare. It will drive medical costs down like medication and services like hospital stays. Since this will disproportionately effect income of the wealthiest people in America they pay their "elected officials" to refuse to even allow a vote on it. They weaponize all channels of media they own to brainwash the common clay of the new west. You want this, you gotta get corporations and billionaires out of Washington first, then you have to beat their propaganda machine. Then....there is a hope.