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Comment by mancerayder | Hacker News Reader

I believe you're deluded into believing that 'we' are deluded. French and British TV news have little snippets of anecdotal dummy Americans being paraded around to make the entire country look stupid. It's not the entire country that's stupid - we DO have a socialized healthcare system called Medicare - it kicks in when you're retiree age. A Yougov poll from July 2025 showed:

59% of U.S. adult citizens support “Medicare for all” (27% oppose, 14% not sure)

So are "we" voting against our own interests? Have you considered that neither party, including the Democrats we're supposedly too foolish to vote for, support this. The political system is infiltrated with a large amount of money which we call "lobbying". This lobbying is illegal in the major democracies in Europe, leaving the impression that "Americans are voting against their own interests."

Hope I've made a better case than BBC or French TV5!

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Exactly. The Democrats are the lesser of two evils, but they still carry water for the billionaires. Neither party represents what people really want (Medicare for all, at least as an option, lower defense spending, etc)

I have lived for many years on the border of the United States and Canada, have many friends on both sides of that border (probably more in the USA) and I don't watch French or British TV news.

Your 'socialized healthcare' is a very weak version of it, there is no other country where medical issues can spiral out of control financially in the way they do in the United States.

I know the political parties are as corrupt as they get but that is your problem to fix, even so Trump's talking points, that the USA has been financing the rest of the world are plain bullshit.

I've lived in a few countries including the UK and France, by the way. And I don't think any Canadian would compare their healthcare system to either of those countries, they'd rather use the U.S. insurance system than be given paracetamol while waiting a few weeks to get a CAT scan. In fact, according to Gemini googling 'Canadian healthcare wait times':

Key Figures & Trends (from Fraser Institute & CIHI reports, late 2025): National Median Wait: ~28.6 weeks (down slightly from 30 weeks in 2024). Longest Waits: New Brunswick (~60.9 weeks), PEI (~49.7 weeks). Shortest Waits: Ontario (~19.2 weeks). By Specialty: Neurosurgery (49.9 weeks), Orthopaedic Surgery (48.6 weeks) were longest; Oncology (Radiation 4.2, Medical 4.7 weeks) shortest. Diagnostics: CT (8.8 weeks), MRI (18.1 weeks).

That's pretty bad. In the U.S. you wait one week for an MRI and it's paid for, minus copay, by your insurance if your insurance is good. The U.S. healthcare is pretty great if you a) work b) work in a place that gives you good healthcare or c) are old enough to qualify for Medicare. It also depends on which state you are in, since the state laws differ on healthcare (Texas and New York are not the same).

But I don't think your point is fact-finding, it's hating on the U.S. or provoking.

I know the political parties are as corrupt as they get but that is your problem to fix, even so Trump's talking points, that the USA has been financing the rest of the world are plain bullshit.

Not sure the point of this angry statement.

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