I have family who can't afford health insurance. And those same people would vote against a president promising universal healthcare.
I don't understand it. But a lot of people don't agree with universal health care (even many low/middle income people)
Lots of people who worry a hell of a lot about the federal deficit when talking about whether they would like to be able to afford going to the doctor. Nevermind that this discussion rarely covers the deficit when it comes time to give tax breaks to "job creators".
Also the Democratic party is comically bad at politics in the US. Like "oh but you might lose your private insurance" is a discussion people in the primary are having _when you would be replacing private insurance with free healthcare_. What sort of positioning is even being had here? So many people are stuck in the 90s
A common fear is that wait times to see a doctor would be much higher with universal healthcare compared to a system with private insurance.
Horror stories about people in Canada and the EU waiting months for a procedure that would be available immediately to someone with private insurance if in the US.
I don’t mean to start a health care debate in this thread. My main point is that there are reasonable (logical, rational) fears that people have causing them to be against universal healthcare. Understanding those fears and addressing them upfront is one way to get past them.
Why are there going to be lines and waits with expanded healthcare coverage? Because people who need to see doctors will be seeing doctors. If your logic train is "Expanding coverage will create lines, therefor don't expand coverage" and not "Expanding coverage will create lines and therefor we will need to find solutions to new problems when we expand coverage" IDK how you're not just doing some gatekeeping to keep services high for yourself at the expense of others.
Yes, either that or one's own health being potentially at fault and having to wait too long for treatment. I didn't mean to insinuate that it was a morally correct choice; only that I thought it was a perspective not being considered. Better healthcare for all is a good thing and is something many people support, but doing so at cost of a loved one's health makes the decision far more difficult.
I will die on this hill. If you oppose expanding healthcare because you feel that then too many people will have healthcare and that will cause problems for you, you're a terrible person. "What about the smaller number of people who have a great situation" is never a counterpoint to "what about the much greater number of people who have a terrible situation"
Basically, people who have a job and get health insurance dont want to be lumped in with the commoners and get worse care/longer wait times/less options/etc... Its fucked up, but its not hard to understand the pushback. They dont want their health care experience to turn into a 6 hour trip to the DMV.
It's actually quite baffling how Americans generally seem much more generous, warm and helpful to their fellow human beings, but the idea of potentially paying for someone else's medical treatment seems absolutely outrageous to most.
this is just my personal take as an american. I think the disconnect has to do with locality/proximity. americans who have some surplus income (ie savings and not living paycheck-to-paycheck) are quite willing to help people they know with cash or free labor and will happily donate time or money to help people in their broader community. what americans hate is being forced by the government to help people far outside their circle. I think partially we are suspicious that the money doesn't get where it's supposed to go intact, but there's also an element of "fuck them, what do those people over there have to do with me?"
obviously this is suboptimal as entire communities can be disjoint and have serious imbalances in funds available. also it tends to leave a lot of efficiency from scale on the table. but perhaps this at least explains some of your bafflement.
Meanwhile, I (SRE at a hedge fund) and all my liberal coastal elite friends can absolutely afford private doctors in an emergency without having to think about cost up front, and we do support universal healthcare—and we know it would be a larger tax bill for us.
(BTW, in practical terms, putting liberal elites in well-paying, politically-connected industries on your healthcare system is a great way to make sure it doesn't turn into the VA. America cares deeply about our happiness. It doesn't care about our veterans and sort of wishes they hadn't survive, so we could just remember their sacrifice instead of actually facing up to what we did to them.)
> (BTW, in practical terms, putting liberal elites in well-paying, politically-connected industries on your healthcare system is a great way to make sure it doesn't turn into the VA. America cares deeply about our happiness. It doesn't care about our veterans and sort of wishes they hadn't survive, so we could just remember their sacrifice instead of actually facing up to what we did to them.)
this is a pretty common talking point, but I don't really see this happening with the systems that already exist that wealthy people have to use. I, an upper-middle class white person, still have to take at least a half day of PTO any time I need to go to the DMV. my dad, wealthier than me, still had to spend a whole day at city hall disputing a $40,000 water bill (the city doesn't even have a functioning water meter on his property because DPW paved over the access; it's been "estimated" for twenty years).
It would quite possibly be a net saving. The UK, for example, spends less public money on healthcare than the US. There's no necessary reason why you should end up paying more in taxes for universal coverage than you pay currently for insurance.
there are definitely some good arguments for universal healthcare, but software devs should not delude themselves that they will do any better than break even in most cases.
edit: probably not true, I didn't investigate the UK tax system enough.
edit: On an individual level, a lot will depend on your income, and how expensive your US health insurance is. Here is an informative post:
https://www.quora.com/If-you-make-100-000-in-UK-what-percent...
That works out to about $560/month for someone with a salary of $100,000. If you take into account employer contributions, that's still less than a lot of Americans are paying. If you're on a lower income, you're likely to be paying significantly less in the UK for much better coverage.
And I almost forgot - copays! The amount you're paying in taxes in the UK really is paying for virtually the full cost of your treatment when you're sick.
It's because doctors et al don't want to work for less than $x/hr and there are people who don't produce enough to trade with doctors or prefer to spend their money on other things. There's no way to get a free lunch out of this.
There are veterans who are still waiting to get paperwork processed to show a service connection for health issues -- they're still waiting to get into the VA system -- but that's a different bureaucracy. The wait time at most VAs once you're in the system is substantially less than through my employer-provided insurance.
BUT.
I have a hard time thinking of getting a doctor's appointment in 20 days as "incredible access." If I need to see a doctor, I can get an appointment at the local clinic within a day or two. And my employer-provided health insurance is pretty crappy! If I tell the clinic I think it's important (like I'm in pain but it's not an emergency), they'll try to fit me in the same day if possible.
And that's not even considering the Urgent Care facilities 15 miles away..
According to kaitai, those "20 days" are the absolute upper boundary. As a German, I don't find that upper boundary particularly high. When I need to see a specialist about something that's not an emergency, a wait time of a few weeks is normal since there are only so many specialists per area.
In Spain the public health system is still better than the private one and most of the long and most expensive treatments are done within the public circuit. You can wait months for "minor" issues and there is where a private insurance can help (actually I think is beneficial for the system that anyone being able to afford a complementary private insurance should pay for it)
Also, having experience in both systems I feel better when I am treated by someone with no economic interests.
US politics, specifically from the right, lobbies pretty hard and uses fearmongering to the max. Lower standard of care? What’s that? Wait times? Sure, you may wait a bit longer that one day, but someone will see you. I remember when my wife needed to see a therapist for her depression, we had to wait 2 weeks to see someone “in network” in CA. This was with good insurance. Here, walk in, wait, see doc, walk out. My fellow Americans need to wake up to reality and try to understand that powerful interests are lobbying against you and using fear as primary means for arguing against “universal” healthcare. Let me be clear, I still pay a monthly premium and I still have co-payments, but one this is for sure - it’s practically impossible for me to go bankrupt due to a medical issue.
"Sure, I would love to get healthcare. But I don't want /them/ to get it. Especially if they are immigrants."
The tribal divide in American politics is another reason ("if they want it, it must be wrong), but since this level of hatred is quite recent, I think it cannot fully explain it.
"Why doesn’t the United States have universal health care? The answer has everything to do with race." https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/univ...
At the same time, they allow ~1 million mostly non-whites to legally immigrate every year.
I think insurance/medical industry lobbying is a far more consistent explanation. In general, if a story starts by bringing up racism from 150 years ago, it's more concerned with building a narrative than with explaining the current state of affairs.
Rather refreshingly, the NYT admits this: "It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are."
I mean, I totally understand avoiding the subject because it leads to flamewars, because some people respond very poorly to the suggestion that racism exists and has practical effects today. But then you're better off not having a discussion about the topic at all than a skewed, censored one where one plausible answer is just too politically incorrect to be debated.
-Yes, racism still exists and, yes, it is a huge problem. We should work together to support all minorities.
-No, racism is not the primary or even a significant cause of every single bad thing that happens.
It's like the people in the story of the boy who cried wolf; hearing "racism" being trotted out by one-note progressives as a response to any question about the United States' woes (particularly when it's not even very plausible) is viewed as tiresome and unconstructive. And I say this as a minority who has experienced racism!
A lot of Americans see it as a threat to their sense of individualism, and that is why they fight it. To them, any government program which makes our lives easier will cause people to be lazy and dependent. If we want universal healthcare, we need to address that message.
All systems have problems. Other systems don’t seem to bankrupt or kill as many people.
Also consider that as a "NYC Googler" you are not getting the true American healthcare experience.
Google is also self-insured, which means that Google is actually paying for healthcare, not the insurer -- the insurer just manages the networks & relationships with providers, and it's just pure profit for them. Google, meanwhile, wants healthy employees. No one has an incentive to deny claims, so ultimately you are seeing the best side of the system, in which almost every actor wants good outcomes.
Contrast this with Medicare or Medicaid, or private insurance on the individual level, where the incentive is to reduce "medical loss", the industry term for...actually paying for healthcare. Arguing with insurers over denied claims is par for the course -- so much so that some insurers just routinely deny things (and patient is on the hook) that their own plans say should be covered, with the hope that patients won't realize they can appeal.
Having experienced both ends of this -- as a former Googler myself and in the individual market pre-ACA ("Obamacare") -- I can tell you the difference between the wealthy corporate insurance plans and the individual market is night and day.
Ignoring the rudeness of your comment, who is to say that the implementation of universal healthcare in the US will not wind up as dysfunctional as the system in the parent poster's country?
> There is a country where government-run healthcare is bad. Therefore a proposed government-run healthcare system is probably also bad.
This simply doesn't follow. I could make the same argument backwards by pointing to a country where government-run healthcare works well, and concluding that therefore universal healthcare in the US is going to be awesome.
endtime is demonstrating his/her sentiment, but does nothing to advance the discussion.
> No. There is a very large number of people in the US who are (for whatever reason) against universal health care.
I was responding specifically to the "for whatever reason" part, giving an example of a reason.