Hacker News Reader

Agreed, good healthcare is a huge part of shackling you to your employer. Every time I think about quitting it gives me pause knowing it means a few risky months until I can get a new job and have coverage again.

Insurance has also skyrocketed the cost of care, I was doing a weekly physio/massage visit and with good health insurance it was a $50 copay. I looked back at what the place was charging my insurance and it was ludicrous. They were billing my insurance $400-600 a week and every little thing they did was getting charged. All the cool like "extras" I thought they were doing for me were becoming $50-200 charges.

I partially tore my achilles last year and most doctors I saw just wanted to check all the boxes so they could send a massive bill to my insurance. I ended up seeing 3 different doctors, a physical therapist and a physiotherapist before I finally found someone who really cared about helping me. It was $2000 out of pocket but he really went all out mapping my recovery and performing all kinds of interventions.

I am scared that universal healthcare would introduce so much bureaucracy that doctors will just process you asap, check off their forms and then shuffle you off. It feels like we are getting further and further from the world where you know your doctor and they can say something like "you only needed a referral, lets just call this $40, see ya in a few months". Now it is someone you may never see again, who has no control over how much you are billed and who has 20 more patients coming in behind you.

> I am scared that universal healthcare would introduce so much bureaucracy that doctors will just process you asap

I hear this a lot, but that doesn't really seem to be what the data says? There have been a good number of studies comparing American healthcare to more socialized systems, and the outcomes are generally comparable or better in the socialized systems. That doesn't imply that if we just changed to a universal system tomorrow that we would have the same outcomes, every country is different, and it's not necessarily guaranteed that copying Sweden's system would automatically work here.

But I do think that it's also not implied that it would lead to the bureaucratic chop-shop that people are afraid of.

A good universal healthcare system wouldn't have these issues but, much with a nod to the ACA, would we manage to accomplish a good system or would that system still be riddled with rent-seeking opportunities to protect the employment and profits that the current players extract?

The US seems to have real problems with regulatory capture (especially with recent political happenings where we're seeing tariffs implemented that specifically hurt competitors to those with influence in government) so I think it's important to not fall into a trap of believing you'd walk away with a wonderful healthcare system even if something like medicare for all happened. The entrenched interests would continue to exact their pounds of flesh unless a real sea change was seen away from the current status quo.

I do hope it happens though, I'm a Canadian and my employment is dependent on your system continuing as an entangled morass but I'd happily be out of a job if it meant more equitable access to care.

It always comes down to who you compare. Most of the cited information on outcomes look at averages. US healthcare outcomes are bimodal. It is easy to sell the idea to people with poor coverage distribution. The harder sell is the people in the better distribution worried about taking a step down while carrying the cost for other people.

Yeah, that's kind of why I hedged what I said a bit, because I know things can get a lot more complicated than just looking at averages.

I do think it'd be better if everyone had healthcare and it sucked a little vs "some people have good healthcare while others have none", but of course that's a much harder sell.

> I am scared that universal healthcare would introduce so much bureaucracy...

I use the NHS in the UK and it isn't especially bureaucratic, much less so that the US system. It does have its failings though like wait times to get stuff done, poor communication and the like.

The bureaucracy of dealing with a patchwork of health-insurances plans, their different payment structures, what care is/isn't covered, in-network or out-of-network etc, etc is a HUGE bureaucratic burdern. Doctors already do what you describe, or are at least pressured to do so. Doubly-so as places are being bought out by health insurance companies (like all those "Optum" clinics, which are owned by United Health Group).

A universal health care insurance plan, like "Medicare For All," would simplify bureaucracy. How many times can you honestly say that a government run program would simplify bureacracy?! Not often! But if we could just start over, a single health insurance plan that works the same for everybody in the country would be a huge burden lifted.

A bureaucracy results in controlling the payout of money. Once people's paychecks are tied to running or working in a bureaucratic system, it's hard to get rid of them. Mostly because they can show how many requests for cash were denied and the savings they achieved which were passed on to the taxpayer or to the stockholders.

A Fortune 500 company will find it easier to negotiate a good plan with easier money for it's employees typically, but a mom and pop shop doesn't have the negotiation power to make the insurance companies pay out.

And just because it's a benefit today, doesn't mean DOGE (or whoever next in power) will enshittify it.

That is the problem with good things. They sometimes are ruined. Best stick to the bad things, then!

> I am scared that universal healthcare would introduce so much bureaucracy that doctors will just process you asap, check off their forms and then shuffle you off.

That wouldn't be a change.

> Every time I think about quitting it gives me pause knowing it means a few risky months until I can get a new job and have coverage again.

There's COBRA for that! If you quit your job, you can continue your previous employer's coverage for up to 18 months, but you'll have to pay the premiums yourself.

And it's typically cheaper than what is available on exchanges. You can also get a subsidy for COBRA if you can't pay premiums, but only if you were fired.

> I am scared that universal healthcare would introduce so much bureaucracy that doctors will just process you asap, check off their forms and then shuffle you off.

We have universal healthcare: Medicare and Medicaid.

> There's COBRA for that! If you quit your job, you can continue your previous employer's coverage for up to 18 months, but you'll have to pay the premiums yourself.

That's not really a consolation if the premiums are really expensive.

> And it's typically cheaper than what is available on exchanges. You can also get a subsidy for COBRA if you can't pay premiums, but only if you were fired.

"Typically" yes, but not always. I mentioned in a sibling thread that when I was fired from a job and was on COBRA, the premiums were almost 4 grand a month.

It was so expensive that I actually started calling up different insurance companies in the NYC area, because the premiums were slightly lower even just paying out of pocket, and luckily I narrowly qualified for a medicaid thing, and it ended up being free through the MetroPlus network [1], so it all worked out, but my point is that COBRA isn't always cheap.

> We have universal healthcare: Medicare and Medicaid.

Medicare and Medicaid are great programs, I'm very glad they exist, I think it would be horrible if they were taken away. That said, they're not "universal" healthcare. It's pretty easy to fall through the gaps where you're "too rich for Medicaid" but "too young for Medicare".

Anecdata, but my brother in law does work for a living, as does his wife, and together they end up making somewhere around $75,000/year in Texas. Not a terrible wage, people have certainly lived on a lot less, but neither of their jobs have health insurance, and they make too much together to get it for free from the state.

[1] If you ever get fired in NYC, I'm sorry to hear that, but do not hesitate to call MetroPlus. The agents there was extremely nice, helpful, and without an ounce of sarcasm I think that their existence makes the world a better place.

The right way to think about Medicare and Medicaid is on a bathtub shaped graph, where everyone who is young is covered, everyone old is covered, and everyone poor is covered.

It's just "above income threshold between ages of 18 to 65" that isn't covered.

We just need to get the social/political will to fill the bathtub.

> "Typically" yes, but not always. I mentioned in a sibling thread that when I was fired from a job and was on COBRA, the premiums were almost 4 grand a month.

That sounds illegal. They have to charge the same premiums that the employer pays. Unless you had a really expensive coverage.

> It's pretty easy to fall through the gaps where you're "too rich for Medicaid" but "too young for Medicare".

I'm sorry, I meant that they are examples of universal healthcare that exists in the US, with some conditions.

$4,000/month sounds about right for some plans. When I quit a job my COBRA premiums were like $2500/month which I did not want to pay since my new employer was providing me a stipend for an exchange plan in my area. My SO had a UHC plan through an employer that was like $1200/month via COBRA. I know that because we paid it so they could continue some treatment.

I think my coverage was expensive.

Also, and I don’t know how the legality of this, it got progressively more expensive each month. The first month was around $1800, the next $2500, the next $3100, etc.

> If you quit your job, you can continue your previous employer's coverage for up to 18 months, but you'll have to pay the premiums yourself.

With what money?

> We have universal healthcare: Medicare and Medicaid.

Do you know what "universal" means? Both of those programs have significant restrictions on who can access them.

COBRA is not cheaper than exchange plans. Medicaid is not universal; in many places - Florida for ex - it isn't available to most men, to other-than-the-elderly, and other-than-children.

What's this about getting a COBRA subsidy if you're fired? Where did you hear that?

I think this sums up the problem. People that have suffered by the affordability issue or hit some of the money traps (excessive charges for referrals, needing prescriptions for basic antibiotics and glasses/contacts, etc), seeing how different people pay vastly different prices, and so on. This group is likely to be in favor of universal healthcare.

But there’s a whole other group that hasn’t had that friction yet, are lucky enough to have the “good insurance”, are completely naive, and/or just buying into the lie that this is all normal and what’s best for everyone. This group reads your comment and thinks “you just want me to pay for something because you can’t afford it” which is a very flawed take.

The "whole other group" also often has no idea how much their healthcare actually costs. I know folks who pay $0 or $50/month, because work picks the rest of it up. They think that's how much health insurance costs.

It can be challenging to get them to believe that it's $3,600/month on the open market in my area for a family of four.

Agree. Obfuscating the cost is what American healthcare does best. Even within the industry, how well they do or if they meet their budgets/cover expenses is largely based on which type of card is in your wallet when you show up for an appointment

You don't even need socialized healthcare, really. What you need is a system that doesn't exhibit the insane amount of regulatory capture that's on display in the US.

I lived in Hong Kong for a while. In Hong Kong:

(1) If you want to see a doctor, you just pay cash. Fees are reasonable. (~$50-80 for a GP up to $350-400 for a top specialist.)

(2) There's no other way to pay. (If you have insurance, they might reimburse you later.)

(3) You don't need referrals for anything. (If you need to see a specialist, you call a specialist directly and make an appointment. Many of them will see you on the same day you book an appointment.)

(4) You don't need a prescription for just about anything. (Antibiotics and steroids -- and all the the most powerful non-recreational drugs -- are available OTC.)

(5) ERs, emergency services, and things like childbirth are covered by the government, but the service is generally worse than you'd get if you pay out of pocket.

The US system isn't more "capitalist" -- it's captured by special interests and middlemen to a mind boggling extent. And you don't necessarily need "socialized" healthcare -- you need a system that gives both patients and doctors more agency.

> (4) You don't need a prescription for just about anything. (Antibiotics and steroids -- and all the the most powerful non-recreational drugs -- are available OTC.)

IMO antibiotics and antibiotic resistance are one of the strongest arguments in favor of gating certain medications behind a prescription.

> And you don't necessarily need "socialized" healthcare -- you need a system that gives both patients and doctors more agency.

You can get something sort of like that here in the US - direct primary care. I pay ~$125 per month to my doctor. This can be paid from an HSA/FSA as well. It is not as expensive as "concierge health care", but you get most of the perks and immediate access.

Appointments are usually available next day or even same day - as many times as I want. No co-pays. The doctor has far fewer patients so you can actually talk to them for an hour or two during your appointment. They can charge insurance (if you have it) for most lab-work or you can pay them reasonable rates out of pocket.

They can refer you to specialists if necessary (who may require insurance), or even consult with specialists with your permission, at no extra cost.

The on-going care/prevention aspect will probably help save money and keep me healthier in the long run as well.

There's probably some truth to that; I think a lot of the medical establishment in the US treats the insurance industry as a glorified "slush fund".

Universal care is the moral option. Hong Kong was great for you because you had means.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC6235271/

I mean, sure, that's fair.

But... The amount of money I spent on medical care in Hong Kong, per year, was probably 1/10th of what I'd have to spend on medical insurance alone if I were in the US. Because patients and practitioners have more agency, and because pricing is transparent, there's actual competition in the market.

Sure, you need money, but it's less than you think, and there are fewer hoops to jump through, fewer roadblocks to treatment.

The optimal system is probably something like that. A public system for emergencies, child delivery, and absolutely necessary treatments -- and a transparent, open, private system for everything else.

Surprisingly, in the U.S. it’s people with means who can’t afford healthcare. Poor people are covered under various state and charity programs.

By definition, when talking about access to healthcare a person of means is someone who can afford it. What is true is that there are lots of people who think they are “middle class” who can’t afford access to the system.

13% of the people don’t have a usual place to get healthcare in the U.S.

https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/fastats/access-to-health-care.htm

> By definition, when talking about access to healthcare a person of means is someone who can afford it.

Correct. Either a person has the dollars to pay or they don’t.

> What is true is that there are lots of people who think they are “middle class” who can’t afford access to the system.

What people think doesn’t really matter when the bill arrives. We might be better off thinking in terms of “qualifies for financial assistance”. Those who have just enough income to disqualify them from assistance will have more trouble paying, obviously. Some of those will forgo or delay treatment due to cost concerns.

If you agree with the first quoted statement of mine then I gather you retract this statement:

it’s people with means who can’t afford healthcare

When I visited, it seemed like there was a good government healthcare system in Hong Kong, and a network of very good public hospitals. Just the private docs are not in that system. I don't know the specifics but I am pretty sure Queen Mary and Pamela Youde Nethersole Hospitals and others were public hospitals.

Oh yeah, but for routine outpatient stuff the government health system is generally not widely utilized. If you get into an accident or receive a cancer diagnosis, then I know from experience that it's top tier.

I remember seeing a survey of different health systems and the ones people liked most were Hong Kong and Singapore. Brits and American on the other hand don't like their systems that much.

Someone in my family has macular degradation, it seems like an awful and incredibly hard way to loose your vision slowly over years.

Hopefully your wife's vision is not getting worse too fast, autoimmune sounds bad still, as someone with normal vision. Losing your eyesight is terrifying, in my opinion.

Tying health insurance to your job has to be one of the worst parts of the American system.

I did some software work, years ago on a 'perimeter' machine that projects points of light at varying intensities so that doctors can track macular degradation.

https://www.icare-world.com/us/products/#perimeters

It was interesting work in terms of the tech, but pretty sad stuff learning to the doctors come in to present information about the pathologies involved.

It's definitely bad, but fortunately it has responded really well to immune-suppresers, and it's fortunately only one eye. There's definitely some level of permanent damage, she is unlikely to ever get it back to 100%, but it's certainly not as bad as it could be.

> Tying health insurance to your job has to be one of the worst parts of the American system.

Yeah, it gives companies so much more power than they really deserve. Not only can they cut off my income supply, which is more or less the nominal agreement we have as part of the capitalist transaction, but they also get to decide if I (or any of my dependents) get to get treatment for any kind of illness.

The medicaid system in the US is actually not too bad, I was really grateful for that in the tail end of 2023 and beginning of 2024 when I was unemployed, but it's extremely concerning that (SOME UNNAMED POLITICIANS THAT I WON'T NAME BECAUSE I DON'T WANT TO BE FLAGGED BY SOMEONE WHO THINKS THAT BRINGING UP POLITICS IS SOMEHOW OUT OF THE SCOPE OF HN) want to drastically cut that program.

What about cobra coverage?

I got fired at the tail end of 2023; I did have COBRA but the cost for it was astronomical; to continue my coverage for me and my wife was almost 4 grand a month. [1]

It's certainly better to have COBRA, and it does reduce the power that companies have over your health, but it's not a silver bullet.

[1] I won't say which company I was working for but it's not hard to find my work history if you want to make sure which companies to avoid in the future.

I’m sorry to hear this. I’m dealing with an insurance company right now that can’t be bothered to bring up its customer portal after a two week outage.

Just looking at HN it seems you’re in ny. There are pretty good aca options there iirc.

I have complicated feelings about universal healthcare... namely that the issue seems to be more-or-less not whether the system is socialized or private but if the healthcare system is provided adequate funding (via government or a private entity) to give acceptable outcomes on a population level. A lot of the detractors to private healthcare is simply that healthcare isn't being administered appropriately (pressure to only see patients for 15 minutes for example or to charge by procedure encouraging specialists where systemic issues go ignored) but so is the case for socialized medicine (waiting too long for specialists, understaffed hospitals).

Providing a socialized system with adequate funding requires elected officials and voters to have appropriate and matched priorities. Voters, regardless of party in Canada for example, generally all agree that the socialized healthcare system needs more funding and to be a higher priority. I understand that when you remove party affiliation from the prompt a majority of Americans are also generally in favor of socialized healthcare and would like to see it expanded.

Critics of socialized healthcare often point at things like waiting too long for specialists, or understaffed hospitals, presenting them as inherent to socialized medicine itself when it's more often the product of elected officials who simply don't think socialized healthcare deserves adequate funding, or are against the idea of socialized healthcare entirely. Politicians will often piss in your cup and insist to you it's champagne.

There is, of course, the economic arguments around public vs. private health-care systems; but there are also the philosophical, moral, and ethical, arguments regardless of economics. Some things are expensive and yet we still understand they are a good and humane thing to do.

> Some things are expensive and yet we still understand they are a good and humane thing to do.

I think this is often a sticking point for agreement. It is hard to get buy in without some level of guardrails on cost and impact. I dont want to bet my house, retirement, and children's future on the promise socialized healthcare will be a net savings for both the public and for me.

For this reason, I think opt-in Medicare is a reasonable middle path, where governments can demonstrate the cost reductions and care, allowing people to voluntarily convert at their own pace.

This would go a long way do dealing with the risk aversion, but I think many people ostensibly for socialized healthcare are too scared test if it could actually compete on price and value.

The thing about Medicare is you can only go to places that accept the Medicare plan, so people who opt-in will be de-facto taking a lower standard of care for a very long time until everyone opts-in. If you go to one of these places in my area the doctors treat you very differently even if you have really good insurance because they presume that you're poor and on Medicare.

Isn't that a good preview of what universal socialized healthcare would be like?

One of the major selling points is that universal healthcare would provide everyone the efficient administration and low costs of Medicare.

I'm not saying that socialized systems are inferior to private ones, nor am I attributing things like specialist waitlines to socialized healthcare specifically. I'm pointing out that I think both criticisms to private or socialized healthcare fundamentally are more about how well-administered they are. I don't know if there's been a real analysis about the systems outside of their administrations, in which case both parties for either side can argue "well it's an issue of funding, not the system itself"...

yeah, I think socialized healthcare is seen as a solution without articulating the specific problem, usually affordability.

Surely a $550 copay for referral would still be frustrating if it was charged by the government.

Universal health care isn't the only alternative. The fault is in the way private healthcare is structured in the US. Countries like Thailand and India have fully functioning and affordable private healthcare.

Surely price caps are the solution here, no? I don’t want big tickets items like Total Hip Replacements price-capped but referrals certainly are not a high-skilled line item.

Just for context, here is what it would have looked like in socialized medicine system, the UK’s NHS:

so we went to an ophthalmologist's office, to get it looked at

In UK, you can’t just go to ophthalmologist’s office. You’d first need to schedule an appointment with your GP, who then would (or would not) give you a referral to a specialist. You then need to wait for something between 6-12 months (sometimes more, depending on your location) for an ophthalmologist appointment. You wouldn’t need to pay for it out of pocket, but you’d wish you had an option to pay the damn 500 quid so that you can start the treatment sooner.

I had to wait almost six months to get her treatment here as well because I couldn't afford it. At least in the UK I wouldn't have been out the cash.

Also, I hear lots of horror stories about wait-times in universal healthcare systems, but that always seems have smuggled in the premise of "you don't have wait times like this in the US", which has certainly not been my experience.

I wanted to see an allergist in 2022, so I went to my health insurance portal, and called a few in the area, and the earliest appointment that I could find was almost four months out. My wife had to wait for months even from our good insurance to get approved for proper medication for her eye problem. What insurance do you have where you're not stuck with long bureaucratic waiting lists?

I would agree. The irony is the much maligned HMO's now seem to beat PPOs, maybe because at least they have a more structured referral system and predictable rules, vs. PPOs always try and fight you.

Double irony is the govt healthcare programs seem to be paying/performing better than the privates (Medicare is like the perfect PPO and no wait, managed medicaid/medical used to be sloooooow but now seem to be improving as the in-network provider availability is improving)

> In UK, you can’t just go to ophthalmologist’s office. You’d first need to schedule an appointment with your GP, who then would (or would not) give you a referral to a specialist

I literally cannot see a specialist in the US without a referral or else insurance will deny it. And this is on a good healthcare plan.

> You then need to wait for something between 6-12 months (sometimes more, depending on your location) for an ophthalmologist appointment.

It took me around 2-3 months to see my doctor, and then talking to them it would take another few months to even talk with a sleep clinic.

> You wouldn’t need to pay for it out of pocket, but you’d wish you had an option to pay the damn 500 quid so that you can start the treatment sooner.

I cannot pay out of pocket to start treatment sooner because it would cost an insane amount of money and waste the large amount I pay on health insurance coverage.

Wait time is a function of supply not insurance regime. And in OPs case, he was still referred. Where I live in the US, dermatologists are in high demand. It can take a year to get a routine appointment. My wife recently had a dermatologist cancel (dr was going on leave). The office provided a list of other dr’s to call for an opening (who may or may not be in our insurance provider network.).

Wait times are not exclusive to social insurance at all and insurance networks only further complicate matching supply and demand.

> You then need to wait for something between 6-12 months (sometimes more, depending on your location) for an ophthalmologist appointment.

I needed a specialty ophthalmologist (for dry eye treatment) and the wait time in Seattle was 4 months. Another time, I needed a cardiologist appointment and the earliest one available within my insurance network's coverage was 5 months away. And I had literally the best insurance plan we could get.

Both appointments were at least several hundred dollars out-of-pocket.

Counter point, when things are urgent, it gets done for free pretty fast in countries where I lived with such healthcare. Speaking from personal experience.

Agreed. My parents in Canada both had cancer treatments without delay, they both recovered, etc. With $0 out of pocket. I'd at minimum have to pay the Kaiser max co-pay here for a similar problem.

I remember having this same conversation with a family friend in another country when I was younger. I had read so much on the internet about how American healthcare is bad in every way and EU/UK/Canadian socialized medicine had it all figured out.

The family friend patiently explained all of the things I take for granted in America, such as being able to choose my own specialists, getting a long list of treatments that were very difficult to get approved in their country (ADHD medications, for example), and the ability to shop around for shorter wait times.

Really opened my eyes to the tradeoffs that come with different systems, whereas the Reddits of the world would make you think America is the worst in every dimension and there are no downsides in other countries.

The more I read these conversations, it becomes clear that Americans don't actually want the healthcare systems and rules of other countries. They want most features of American healthcare, but without the pricetag.

There's a lot of room to work on improving how things get paid for, but I worry that anything that involves compromise or tradeoffs is DOA, politically. We want it all, we want it now, and we don't want to have to pay for it.

I am in complete agreement with you. Fortunately, there is a good way to make solid incremental improvement here, which would be easy to sell to the American public on both sides of the political spectrum: increase supply of medical services. Educate or import more doctors, make it easier to open new practices and hospitals, and reduce overhead required to operate them. Do that, and prices will go down.

My acquaintance who moved to the US a few years before I did (both from Canada) said it this way: if you have a good job / are wealthy, US healthcare is miles ahead of Canada. If you are poor, it is much, much worse.

you can pay for a same day private GP appointment (~£150)

they can refer in the same way an NHS GP can, and you can normally get a same week appointment

(obviously you pay for it)

Yes, the free market medicine solves some of the socialized medicine problems.

having the NHS there puts a cap on the price the private sector can charge

generally the NHS is fantastic once you've been placed on the correct conveyor in the factory

however getting to that point can be an absolutely dreadful experience

I don't know how you fix this problem

I don't live in the UK, and I've never experienced anything "medical" in the UK outside of buying aspirin at an ASDA, so I'm kind of speaking out of my ass here.

That said, it seems like having "free" competition would make it so that the private costs don't get crazy?

It probably helps although private medicine is fairly expensive here. Like a hip replacement is ~£14k. Some people save money by going abroad to say Lithuania or Thailand where the costs are like 1/3.

And socialized medicine solves many of the employment-dependent privatized medicine problems! Funny world.

You can go to A&E at Moorefields. At least that's what I did for a macular hole. I got offered an operation within a couple of months.

You can also get referred from an optometrist, found in many high st opticians to a ophthalmologist. GPs are not very keen to deal with eye issues as they don't have the specialist training and equipment. Like the optometrist will likely have an OCT scanner but not your GP.

Kinda depends on if you have the 500 quid to begin with. If it's between having a roof over your head and food in your belly, and your kids', and seeing an ophthalmologist who's just gonna make a referral to another specialist which you have to wait another month for, it's a shit question no matter how you juggle it. The question though is how do you want to pay for the £2,500 laser surgery (per eye) that comes out of meeting with the ophthalmologist? Say, instead, you've got a kidney something or other and need dialysis. A single £500 session to get things tip top shape doesn't sound too bad. It'll hurt but I can get £500 together for an emergency treatment if I hit up everybody I know including rich uncle Joey. But let's say now it's a chronic condition and you need that dialysis three times a week for the rest of your life. Uncle Joey better be real rich and feeling really generous.

I love the silent omission in all these "waiting time" arguments... the majority of America doesn't regularly get healthcare and delays diagnostics and treatment because they can't afford it. So those "wait times" are low because The Poors don't burden the system by actually being taken care of.

Under a “universal” healthcare system your wife would go in for free, and then take 3-6 months, if not longer, to get seen. And then the doctor refers you to the specialist, who will take another 1-2 months. And you pay for it via taxes anyway.

Importantly, it's not just progressives that have takes about why we should have socialized healthcare. Maybe some people are afraid of the S word, but when you ask people about universal healthcare, support cuts across party lines. We especially saw this in the wake of other recent United Healthcare new.

It just goes to show, aside from the few who keep beating the drum about this, Bernie Sanders, etc. this is just another issue that shows how the people in political power aren't there for you or me, they're there for their billionaire friends.