I despise posts like this. They try to perpetrate a single mindset/thought process on people who may have differing opinions on why they don't support single payer systems. Some people don't support the idea of giving the federal government even more say over their private lives. Some people don't believe a raise in taxes are necessary to cover healthcare when they themselves already have coverage. Europeans, except maybe the Finns, just don't understand the great lenghts people go to be individualistic in the states. The entire cultural identity of the United States is based around individualism. Don't @ me with hate. Debate.
I posted it because it offered a different perspective in terms of cost. As for the government having more say over your private lives, here in Canada you and your doctor determine your treatment and the bill goes to the government for payment. The government doesn't tell you which doctor(s) you see unless it's outside of the country for a very specialized reason. I believe that healthcare is right and not a privilege.
I despise posts like this. The vast majority of Americans I know are well aware that a $10k x-ray doesn’t cost $10k the same as they are aware that a $100 pair of shoes didn’t cost $100 to make. I suppose it might surprise the European who wrote this to learn about a concept called “profit”? You see- in America- we sell things for MORE than we bought them for or they cost to produce. This extra money is called profit. It allows businesses and individuals to build wealth they use to buy things. See- non communists have something called individual possessions. Things are owned by individual people and not communal property. Hopefully that clears up the misunderstanding?
It works for nearly everything else in a capitalist society, because you can deny purchase. With healthcare, it can easily be life and death and you don't really have a choice unless you want to just martyr yourself for your family. This can easily lead to price-gouging, which is an obvious scenario when regulation is required. There's also how easy it is to renew a patent on a drug, but that's not nearly a big of an issue. It doesn't have to be single payer, but the whole "non-negotiable drug prices" part needs to change. That's a bunch of bullshit.
The irony... if the field levels, most people that don't have healthcare will be able to afford it, and this entire "It's not societies' burden (it actually is) argument vastly diminishes.
Alternatively, deregulate. The FDAs medication process is so bloated and expensive that it is seemingly only possible to get anything approved with the backing of millions, and even when smaller groups or individuals have something that works, it doesn't seem to go through... ever.
On top of that some jurisdictions actually make it impossible to obtain and operate specialized equipment without deep pockets and a politicized certification process that favors larger and more expensive institutions. In some cases, smaller providers are punished by the government for charging too little, as that apparently undermines the market.
More regulation will not solve issues caused by bad regulation.
To be clear- I do t think Europeans (or most anyway) really don’t know those things. That was satire. This post is insulting and that’s what it sounds like to an American. We know damn well we are getting ripped off for healthcare. But there are middle grounds between getting ripped off and full socialism. There are drawbacks to socialized medicine. There are hurdles both social and economic to overcome and not simply a switch to be flipped without drastically destabilizing the lives of people who are intertwined to these institutions and the massive redistribution of funds such a move would have. What’s more- while our medical cost is high- we also have one of the highest rates of patient satisfaction, shortest wait times for specialized care, and highest survival odds for critical care. So it’s not so black and white. The American medical system does need work- but to paint anyone who doesn’t have socialized medicine as imbeciles is itself ignorant.
I agree. The FDA is bloated, but when you actually look at "big pharma's" expenses, advertisements cost more than R&D, and when they don't spend that money on advertisements they are spending it on absorbing smaller producers and obtaining patent rights instead of spending it on R&D. It's not a "bad" thing, as they ARE in this for the profit, but to say they can't afford it is BS. They have regional monopolies and set their own prices; literally no other group in the world has that power, not even OPEC at it's strongest.
That's what I'm saying. The regulation in place is only facilitating the problem. Before we think about adding new processes, we ought to kill or correct the ones already in place, first.
That’s the crux right? Going to R&D- you can patent genes. Someone else owns just about every gene in your body. So when company A wants to work on a new drug say to cure a disease- but company B owns the patents to that gene- company A must pay company B just to do the research- and if they release a drug they will likely have to pay company B a royalty on that drug. So the “cost to produce” a drug isn’t the entire story. That’s IF company B even allows it. Company B may be developing their own drug, and as Pattent holder for the gene can block company A from releasing theirs even if they had a functional cure- to prevent competition.
The rabbit hole goes even deeper with costs of lobbying etc being thrown in- and we have to remember that accounting isn’t a 1/1 relationship in such simple terms. The legendary things like a government agency that spent $200 on a hammer- they didn’t actually pay $200 for that hammer. They took a huge chunk- many thousands from another line item, and divided it by a number of hammers and added it to the cost of the hammers. This sort of thing happens in accounting and budgets because you may have a larger budget than needed one place and a smaller in another- so you charge an expense to the other account by amortizing the amount.
Corporations do similar things with prices too. In a conglomerate it eta more complex. For instance- if My parent company owns a bread company and a hotel company- and my bread costs $1.00 a loaf to make- I want $1 profit per loaf- but to be competitive I must sell it at $1 a loaf- I can charge $1 for my bread and then charge an extra $5 or whatever for a hotel room. The loss of profit in bread is offset by the gain in the hotels- and that $1 extra is very noticeable to a person buying bread, but $5 hidden in a hotel fee most people won’t care about the extra $5. Then I can also have my bread company supply bread to the hotel and now the “expense” for food services at the hotel is actually profit. The hotel still pays for the bread- but the money goes to the bread company and both are owned by you- so you’re paying yourself instead of someone else.
The total money you use doesn’t go down but you’ve just moved it from one bucket to another. The raise in room costs can be justified by having the hotel pay more for bread than you’d charge an outside consumer. You’re keeping the money anyway- so all you’re doing is moving money around but keeping it all the same while staying legal. You can also charge different rates in different markets using this same practice.
So say I want every phone I sell to return a $50 profit. The phone is $10 to make. But country A has very little money per person. Country B has fierce completion from other phones, and country C is wealthy with little competition. If I charge $40 a phone in country A, $50 in country B, and $300 in country C- if my phone sells I still average $50 profit. Likewise with medicine I can charge more in one country to offset the lost profit from selling for a lower price to another country. There’s a lot of sleight of hand and it’s on a global scale- not just the US. We are both a victim and a victimizer in the global healthcare system.
@metalman Your answer is total bullshit and displays typical American arrogance. You're no more individualistic than any other country. In fact, I'd argue that you are the opposite. What you are is more capitalistic. Everything revolves around money, including healthcare. The people in charge tell you what to say and think, and most of you just parrot it.
You're telling me that the United states is a collectivist nation? You're joking right? At the base level of modern America is the ideal of the American Dream. The American Dream is where the individual is expected to carve out his/her own part of the world. More specifically it's an ideology where after the age of 18 you're supposed to move out and live outside of your parents' home and begin making your own life. Now the opposite spectrum you have countries like the Nordic ones where you live with your parents throughout your secondary education and partial adulthood so that you can develop more before jumping into the world. Then you have the exact opposite which would be Guatemala where it's unlikely for people to move out of family households where entire extended families live. These are collectivist cultures at it's base. The U.S. being heavily capitalist helps in this regard as the big factor is economic autonomy. Rather than pooling all your resources into the immediate and
Capitalism is a large part of individualism. I spend my money on what I want. Or I agree to spend this much time doing whatever kind of work I so choose for pay myself and my employer agree too. Or I have a good idea and figure out to turn it into more money for me to do as I please with.
And the United States of America is particularly individualistic. Our birth was violent revolt from an empire, and then immediately after we tried to break ourselves up into 13 separate states. Even now we are not one single entity, but a union of 50 distinct states with their own laws, cultures, politucs, etc.
It's in our name. States (Plural) United in the Americas.
No. It's not my responsibility to cover other's costs, and the federal government does not need anymore powers when the ones they do have are so consistently bloated, mismanaged, and inefficient.
I don't care if it's one dollar or one million.
The United States is not collectivist, and it never will be. Our constitution and founding principles are for the individual.
Universal healthcare is not collectivist any more than taxes are, because it is universal and is provided to everyone. That does not however, mean that there is no reason to be against it, or that you're wrong on the other accounts. Just correcting your reasoning here. Carry on.
I’m not going to touch the ideals of the American dream- and true to individuality there’s a lot of room for subjective interpretation there- but I agree that it is foolhardy to greatly expand the scope and depth of government powers and responsibilities when we already face such fundamental failures of existing agencies to deliver on their missions. Until we can better regulate our system and mitigate the propensity for individuals acting on behalf of government agencies but operating towards their personal gains and not the betterment or realization of their organizations core values- a government controlled healthcare system sounds like a nightmare of mismanagement and backroom dealings that would benefit the wealthy and powerful more than the people it’s supposed to protect.
The proof is in the pudding- it’s within the scope of the power of the government to regulate private healthcare in the United States. It’s well within their power to apply pressure to private companies and use funding to help control prices or offer assistance to those in need. They don’t. They haven’t. They won’t. When the same people who regulate an industry are reliant upon it, are personally and financially intertwined with its success and their careers can be made or broken by it- that is who they serve.
I don’t think I’ll ever understand the reasoning for going against universal healthcare, but I respect y’all’s opinion. However, I have spent the last 18 years having never seen a doctor outside of an er. It would literally cost my 2/3 of my stepdads salary to get insurance for me and him alone. So instead anytime my autoimmune conditions go out of wack I get to suffer the symptoms without treatment until i eventually pass out and become unresponsive.
@guest_ on this, I actually have an entire counter argument. "Proof is in the pudding"... no it isn't. The most effective healthcare in america is medicaid. Sure, it has problems, but it also doesn't have the idea that it must make a profit and does not have thousands of employees trying to sell the product. It's actually hilariously efficient and that efficiency increases with scale.
Now... if we look at the VA, that's nearly the opposite..... I'm just going to go out on a limb and infer that the reason for that is the fact that less than 1% of the population use VA services.
You think that shit would fly with the general population? It wouldn't. People would be shunned, forcibly retired or become outcasts if they tried that shit on the general public.
The irony of how it works is what happens when it does not. NO person in a position in power would have the gaul required to fight it and subjugate the populous.
Well... they might, but it ends violently.
@funkmasterrex- I wasn’t disagreeing with you. Lol. All I was saying was that if the government wanted to regulate an industry they could. A lot of threads I’ve come across lately people sure like to jump to revolution. Lol. The government regulates industry all the time and there aren’t armed insurrections over it. For all the stink people made about Net Neutrality or any number of things from being spied on or listened to by companies and the government... I’ve yet to see the thing that actually upsets people enough to do more than talk of Revolution outside of perhaps some civil unrest from civil rights movements.
But anyhow- revolution asides- Medicaid and government medical programs are almost always better than nothing. They quite often are well implemented and well ran. But also quite often not. From red tape to types of drugs or treatments not covered and more, right down to the fact that many people who can’t actually afford medical care do not qualify for coverage simply because of how the metrics are computed for acceptance. But these programs also only deal with a sliver of the population compared to otherwise. Not all systems are scalable. Many aspects of the government run very well and many don’t. A good deal that run well are often contracted out to corporations anyway in most cases.
Government ran healthcare could work for the masses- but there are many questions needing answered and many things to work out before that could happen, and when it comes to healthcare I’d rather not be a part of a “learn as we go” experiment in care.
@jokur_and_batmon- I don’t agree with why many people are against universal healthcare, but it’s generally not hard to understand even if the logic may be faulty in cases- it’s easy enough to follow usually. I don’t think too many people are really against the concept of universal healthcare as an idea- I think many people are against being responsible for paying for it, or against certain ideas on how it would work. For the most part I’d wager if you presented a bill tomorrow that didn’t take funding from any other programs, didn’t increase taxes, and left people the same costs and options and quality of care they have right now but provided universal care- few but the most libertarian, social Darwinian, or objectivist capitalists would resist it.
That’s the run though isn’t it? Entropy. There’s almost no feasible scenario where that happens. If you take funding from elsewhere people will complain. If you raise taxes people will complain, if you work out some miracle deal where hospitals treat one random person unable to pay free for every paying person who still pays what they pay now or something- people would still complain because they’d feel like instead of someone else getting help they should get 50% off or whatever.
The logic of “I work for my xyz so should they...” is often very flawed. Not having the same rewards for hard work isn’t the same as not working hard. If you got paid based on how hard you worked then more farm hands would be rich. Moreover- in many cases there is more than enough to go around if some people give up some of what they have that is more than they need, or if laws change to better regulate necessities and prevent profiteering from them, etc. and in many cases it is cheaper in the long run to give a person aid than tonpay to deal with the consequences of not doing so.
This has repeatedly been shown with homeless, low income, and in other areas. Using medical care as an example- any ER must stabilize a person who is in need. Say a person gets a broken bone and it isn’t treated. It gets infected and or has other problems. It gets worse and worse until they go to the ER. What would have been a $500 visit becomes a $500,000 visit. Say they have a treatable condition like diabetes or a blood problem or cancer. Caught early it could be managed or treated cheaply. Left untreated the complications of its chronic persistence stack up and when the person is ill enough to treat- the condition costs a fortune to deal with, a bill ultimately that will be paid by others anyway. So mitigation says it’s prudent and wise if you must choose to “pay for someone else” to pay earlier when it is less than later for more- and from a humanitarian view that’s also kinder.
But the lizard mind doesn’t follow a logical course. It follows an instinctive one. The part of us that is concerned most about ourselves isn’t concerned about that- it’s a knee jerk reaction. If your neighbor has a leak that is spewing to your property and will end up doing costly damage- but your neighbor is too broke to fix it, broke so that if you sue them they won’t have money to collect and will just owe you forever- paying to fix their leak would certainly be charitable, but beyond that it would be smart because if you let t continue you’ll pay more to fix the damage no?
But people don’t see that. They see the fact that they think it isn’t fair they should have to pay for that persons repair on that persons home. They don’t reconcile that the person is poor and broke but not because they are deficient as a person or because they don’t want to work or don’t work. There’s a million reasons for it and most are simply circumstance and not of that persons fault. We can argue culpability but life doesn’t have guarantees and someone who does everything “right” can still find themselves in a very bad spot here or there with a flip of a coin. That’s life.
So understand that when most people oppose universal healthcare they are opposing change. They are opposing the fact that change brings uncertainty. They’ve struggled too in life and they at least subconsciously realize how fragile what they have in life is and are afraid that change could take that from them. They may just be relying on some schoolyard concept of morality as well, or some combination.
But despite all that there are reasons, valid reasons to oppose any given proposal of universal health care. People need assurances that the money earmarked for such a program- which could go to many various budget items important to many different people, is being used well, efficiently, wisely, and for the most pressing need. Never forget that for 99% of people 99% of the time there is no more important problem in life than our own problems at any moment.
Somewhere a person is starving to death. They’ll be dead in maybe 3 weeks. To them- arguing over paying for cancer treatment for a disease that will kill in months or years isn’t as big a concern is it? Somewhere else a person is upset because they make $500k a year but only keep $150k after taxes and they pay $10k a month child support and have a mortgage and are worried about losing their house and having to move further from their kids. That’s far from life and deaths nd it may be hard to cry for someone in that situation- but to them they are more concerned with how to keep their lifestyle and pay the mortgage and raise their kids to be successful than they are about wether someone they never met 1500 miles away gets their asthma medicine.
Make of it what you will- but for there to be universal healthcare that most people can accept they would generally either need assurances they wouldn’t be impacted or they would need it to someone be of personal importance in their lives. I’ve been where you are and more. I’m sorry for your plight. I know what it’s like to not be able to afford medical care. When I applied to college my step father had died the year before. He and my mother combined made less than I did when I was fresh to the work force. We were on assistance and barely getting by. We got food from the food banks and from donations and neighbors, etc etc. and I was denied a fee deferral because they used the combined household income from the previous year when I had two parents.
That sucked. I have a chronic condition and was on government medical. They dropped coverage for me and what I needed before I turned 16. That sucked. I had to use 50 year old treatments with horrible side effects that had been superseded by newer and better methods long ago because they were cheap. When I could get them. The rest of the time I got by by finding a drug trial for a drug that ended up getting pulled for causing people to die. Still here- although I’m hoping someday I don’t go to the doctor and find out it took awhile for me to roll the hard 6.
I wasn’t able to afford insurance until I was much older, and even then I couldn’t afford to use it when I needed, and any serious issue would have destroyed me financially. It took a long time for me to be able to be ok on that front- and not everyone can be that lucky. People with chronic conditions get forgotten in the debates or omitted- but start medically at a huge disadvantage because you could just wake up one day and find yourself having a bad bout that untreated may kill you but treating it will saddle you with enough debt you’ll probably never be able to own your own house.
It’s fucked up. It’s a fucked up situation. There are very few people who are saying the medical situation in the US is perfect- or even that it isn’t a mess- something needs to be done about it. Most “healthy” “average” people don’t have the sword of Damocles hanging over them and their odds of having a HUGE medical bill are very slim- people who are unlucky enough to have chronic health needs though, and people who do get that unlucky coin flip will find themselves unable to get care, or losing it all and likely never to make it all up.
That isn’t acceptable in a forward looking humanitarian society. That’s where it gets sad however... we must at some point draw a line on the ground and say that we are ok with suffering as long as it is on the other side. Even if the US had universal healthcare it wouldn’t be universal would it? There’s still be people in Africa or South America or somewhere else that we’re suffering wouldn’t there? When asked to pay their countrymen’s care many say “no...” so what do you think are the odds we’d be willing to subsidize the care of people in another country? I’ll give you a clue- people already get upset in what we pay in foreign aid to keep people from being raped or starving to death or catching some obscure (to us) disease- so how do you think paying for sprained ankles would stack up?
Do you think Texas would pay to care for the people of California? Connecticut would subsidize Mississippi? You can’t get one city to pay for another let alone the “rich” neighborhoods to pitch in to better the lives and circumstances of the “poor” in their very town. And the kicker there? Who hasn’t heard someone complain of urban blight or crime etc from some area near them- but what has that person contributed to make it better so they no longer suffer from it?
We are back to the neighbors leak again. A person will complain about their neighbors run down house, maybe try to go to the HOA, the city, or even small claims- but will they go over and help paint it and clean up? Will they chip in to pay people to mow the lawn etc? You say “I hate having to look at that, I hate how it makes it seem like I live in a low class neighborhood and embarrasses me...” but YOU suffer and it’s still THEIR responsibility? See what I’m saying? When confronted by the choice to positively change their lives at the cost of equity on behalf of another most people ask: “why should I?” Or “what do I get?” When the answer is self evident- relief from a burden. But the principal that it isn’t “their responsibility” blinds them to the fact it’s still their problem.
It’s called “cutting off the arm to spite the hand” and plays into game theory. More or less- it doesn’t matter that ultimately the person sees a benefit because to them the fact that another person also sees a benefit makes it “unfair.” A “buy one get one free sale” is a good example. Most people love buying a thing like shoes and getting a free pair. Do you hear People commonly ask “why do I deserve free shoes?” No. They benefit from the free shoes so they generally take them. Run the same sale- but make it so that for each pair of shoes bought- a random person after you gets their pair free. It should be pretty evident that one type of BOGO sale would be more popular with the mass public than the other.
In fact- you’d likely discover that a good number of people who needed to buy shoes anyway would simply refuse to shop during that sale. But why? It laterally wouldn’t cost them a penny more? But for some people- the idea that someone else would see benefit from some action of theirs, that they wouldn’t get any additional benefit from, is enough to cause indignation. It offends their sensibilities and an idea that many have which says that there is a direct correlation between work, worth, and reward.
As already explored however- these things aren’t linked in capitalism as we have it. If you are walking and find a rock shaped like Elvis you can list it on eBay for a billion dollars and if someone buys it- you literally just picked up a rock and posted it online and are rich. But you can also do back breaking or stress inducing or dangerous work, do it well, and for decades and die barely getting by. There’s a relationship between work, innovation, talent, etc and reward- but no direct correlation.
However there’s a part of us that needs to make sense of the world. Randomness is powerlessness. If the difference between being the CEO of Google or begging for change off an overpass can ultimately be guided by luck despite your best efforts- what security does anyone have? What’s more- in a world where someone always has it worse or has less than us- how wise can people justify their own fortunes except to say it is by virtue?
Monarchy and the like generally holds that simply being of noble birth is what gives a person the rights and abilities of privilege. In some societies like many sects of Christianity it’s believed that a persons virtue determines their standing in life- that those who are virtuous will be rewarded in return. Some hold that cleverness, familial piety, hard work and self sufficiency, or any number of things or these things in some combination are what dictate a persons standing in life.
What most of these views however also mean is that by association- a person who does succeed MUST in general posses those innate qualities which are held as valuable, and conversely those who do not succeed must do so simply because they are lacking in these things.
It’s simply easier for most people to believe that when a person can’t seem to make life work that it is their own doing, their own fault. Not many people want to believe that they owe equally large parts of their life to random chance and other circumstances beyond control like their race or religion or where they were born etc. and that the decisions they make play a role but only so far as that to be useful they had to be in the right place at the right time and be able to leverage those decisions to put them in a place of opportunity. We won’t get into destiny paradoxes or wether there is free will or any of that- but staying outside the philosophical one can’t really argue that a combination of chance and decisions shapes our lives as far as we can perceive them.
So- to challenge the idea of self determination is to challenge a persons world view. In order for a healthy mind to function we have to believe we understand the world around us and the rules it works on. When we challenge peoples world views they tend to get upset and resist- even against all logic. Being wrong operates the same because once you admit and accept you’re wrong on one thing, under reexamination a host of your beliefs on reality begin to fall apart. Then you must question everything you thought you knew- and that is a difficult and often painful process that can cause great upheaval in a persons life. Being wrong means losing face as well- shame, regret, embarrassment, and inevitably on larger issue it will result in change to your life in profound ways and that is scary to almost everyone. What if tomorrow you realized all your friends and family were toxic, that people you supported were all frauds and your favorite things were meaningless or destructive?
It gets very deep. So for many people they simply MUST continue to believe that we determine our lot in life otherwise their entire life will unravel. They may lose everything they know and wind up with no idea what to do next.
Realize that the United States is in the 1% of the world. There are poor and homeless here that live better than ordinary folks in other countries in many ways. Yet almost everyone you talk to says they are struggling. Most people you talk to want more or even feel they deserve more. Conceptualize how bad your life has to be that risking your life and liberty to risk being smuggled internationally into a country where you’ll be a fugitive non person and likely be relocated to working the shittiest jobs and living off the grid seems like a better option than staying where you are and “trying harder.”
So with how much better the “poor struggling middle class” has it than a whole huge chunk of the world population- hell- a huge chunk of their own population- people STILL feel they don’t have enough. And you know what? It kinda makes sense if you think about it doesn’t it?
As I type this there is someone having a bad day at work. At this same moment there is someone being raped again who was forced into sex slavery. If you compare the day that sex slave is having to your bad day at work- who has it worse? Would you trade with them? Yet... the fact they are suffering objectively worse than you, does that change the fact you are suffering too in a different and arguably objectively lesser way?
It does not does it? If they were to be set free would that undo their previous suffering? Would it magically undo your suffering? It wouldn’t would it? That’s a little fucked up isn’t it? And there’s a big question for you- the money that would go to universal healthcare- that money would save lives. That money would help so many people suffering from various medical issues. But that same money- how many sex slaves, abused spouses, children of abusers or pedophiles, homeless people, hungry people, people without clean water, people in crime and poverty stricken areas- how many of them would it help- and who’s suffering is worse? Who’s is most immediate and severe?
And I ask you @batmon_and_jokur- if you ha a choice between getting medical treatment for your condition, or placing an abandoned baby off
a drug addicted prostitute or a child being raped by their father in foster care- or providing a home to a family of 5, or of stopping even one school shooting- would you pick to treat yourself of give the funds to them? I’m not sayin it in a dickish or insulting way. It’s an actual question and a thought exercise. Your answer might answer your own questions- or at least provide some insight.
Because when it comes to universal healthcare these are the types of questions subconsciously on peoples minds as well. These are the realities of politics and budgets. There is always someone who needs help somewhere but only so many resources to help with. There is always someone who has less than us but there is also ourselves who most people believe they themselves don’t have enough, or have just enough, and to have less seems untenable. And imagine if you worked your ass off and got lucky in all the right ways that you could pay for care that would completely control your condition.
Imagine long stressful days and nights and lots of hard work and anxiety and uncertainty and luck to get there, and to have it under control and to be able to live your life in some measure of comfort and security, and imagine on that exact day they proposed a law that would take care of people like you once were, but to do that would possibly risk what you have, almost certainly mean that the life you’d worked to give yourself would be diminished- and on that day do you think you’d give up what you’d worked for to help someone like you you’ve never met who hasn’t yet gone through all that? Maybe. Maybe not. Everyone is not going to answer that question the same.
Me personally? I don’t oppose some type of universal healthcare in principal. If he happy as a clam if they found a way to provide food, housing, medical care, clean water, and even some sort of basic allowance or provision for self recreation and realization to everyone on earth- or at least here at home. But.... only if the consequences and requirements of that were ones that didn’t otherwise impinge upon propels abilities to live the life they choose for themselves and carve out for themselves.
Only if I knew that such a system were truly for the benefit of the people it served and not a method of control or another boondoggle which ultimately used the governments powers to make sweetheart deals that served the wealthy and powerful. When the president chooses his own club with a huge entry fee as a place to host guests of the government that’s an example. When a standing executive politician appoints their own private firm or a firm they are ties to financially or personally to a huge contract that’s usually an example of the employees of the system using its power for their benefit above the benefit of the systems interests.
When a former senator of a state who is a major corn and soy producer pushes corn and soy based fuels and products and passes favorable laws to those things despite the dubious nature of their status- that’s an example. If we look a round we will cronyism and pandering and the like is rampant. Favors to curry or pay back favors- not just those personal debts incurred in the public trust but those incurred to see a person elected or kept in power etc, and even those favors asked to facilitate the public good often require a payback which harms the public interest, and how do we compare of the “bad” was worth the “good”?
This is the system and how it works. The people in power use the affairs of office directly or indirectly to benefit themselves/their agendas and those who can or will benefit them or their agendas- and often their own agendas do not consider or care for the public opinion they are sworn to serve.
So I’m that regard I personally am somewhat skeptical when a host of rich powerful people beholden to a massive multi billion dislike industry say they would modify that industry in such a way that would cause the loss of large sums of wealth to those at the top. Such moves are seldom made or moved forward without them at the very least preserving or enhancing their own interests. So when something’s monumental as universal healthcare is proposed I would always ask as written- who would benefit from it most? What’s the hustle? And yes- it would still help many people regardless at least in the short term- but in desperation and optimism we often tend to latch on to remedies that have lasting and deep negative consequences. You can’t generally expect most humans to act against self interest and politicians are no different.
So in short- the issue of universal healthcare is far to complex and involved with too many diverse views and players and perspectives etc. to look at it simply as a boon because it would mean healthcare access to many. Jut because the surface of the ocean looks beautiful and pleasant doesn’t mean there aren’t sharks and undertows lurking beneath the picturesque view we see.
The irony... if the field levels, most people that don't have healthcare will be able to afford it, and this entire "It's not societies' burden (it actually is) argument vastly diminishes.
On top of that some jurisdictions actually make it impossible to obtain and operate specialized equipment without deep pockets and a politicized certification process that favors larger and more expensive institutions. In some cases, smaller providers are punished by the government for charging too little, as that apparently undermines the market.
More regulation will not solve issues caused by bad regulation.
So, yeah, two sides of the same coin.
And the United States of America is particularly individualistic. Our birth was violent revolt from an empire, and then immediately after we tried to break ourselves up into 13 separate states. Even now we are not one single entity, but a union of 50 distinct states with their own laws, cultures, politucs, etc.
It's in our name. States (Plural) United in the Americas.
I don't care if it's one dollar or one million.
The United States is not collectivist, and it never will be. Our constitution and founding principles are for the individual.
Now... if we look at the VA, that's nearly the opposite..... I'm just going to go out on a limb and infer that the reason for that is the fact that less than 1% of the population use VA services.
You think that shit would fly with the general population? It wouldn't. People would be shunned, forcibly retired or become outcasts if they tried that shit on the general public.
The irony of how it works is what happens when it does not. NO person in a position in power would have the gaul required to fight it and subjugate the populous.
Well... they might, but it ends violently.
a drug addicted prostitute or a child being raped by their father in foster care- or providing a home to a family of 5, or of stopping even one school shooting- would you pick to treat yourself of give the funds to them? I’m not sayin it in a dickish or insulting way. It’s an actual question and a thought exercise. Your answer might answer your own questions- or at least provide some insight.
NIGGA WWUUUUTT
Anyway, viva la revolution!
I have a hatchet if needed.