this post was submitted on 30 Nov 2024
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I'm super grateful in this regard to live in Germany, where free doctor visits are not a benefit of something but fucking minimum for literally everyone. Even though it may take a while for specialists. I even get benefits for going to free appointments at the dentist. Safes money and pain later, leading to more productiveness as well.
Was really weird watching "Breaking Bad" just as I had cancer myself years ago (Cancer-free today ๐). Being in a hospital, receiving anything I needed just by showing my insurance card (for which I didn't have to pay anything either as I was without a job at that point). And as long as our government ain't complete dicks I'm more than glad to pay that back.
The US just weirds me the fuck out. I don't get this selfish lack of solidarity towards your fellow humans.
It's all manipulation, Americans are not quite as psycho and as selfish as we seem outwardly. In general, unless you're talking about bigotry and deep-seated prejudice, most of the dumb stuff Americans believe, we have been essentially force fed.
In this case, for historical reasons I don't remember ATM, it became normalized for employers to offer health insurance and for that to be the primary way people obtained health insurance. Combine that with the strategy to teach poor white people to hate on minorities, as a way to feel superior to someone and thus less angry about their own lot, and you can start to see how the link between employment and healthcare can be seen by some as a moral situation - the person without the good job to get the healthcare must be lazy, and since we don't want to encourage laziness, it's therefore acceptable (even preferred!) not to take care of them.
I can't stress enough how much effort is put into teaching a huge portion of America to fear and hate, constantly. We wouldn't be this bad otherwise, we're pretty normal folks by and large. Even pretty kind and generous, often. We've just been really fucked up, and very deliberately.
It was during the Great Depression and WWII that employer-provided health insurance took off. The fed instituted a wage freeze to combat inflation in the 40s, and as a result, employers had to start offering other incentives like health insurance to attract/retain their workforce.
FDR wanted to pass universal healthcare (along with a lot of other progressive policies) under his Second Bill of Rights, but it never came to be. Had his ideas been enshrined in law, we'd have universal healthcare, a minimum livable wage, adequate housing, the right to work, and several others.
Thanks, I vaguely remembered it being related to WWII and being intended as a temporary stopgap measure due to having few other options, it being a rough time...but I didn't remember the details well enough to cite like that. We ought to make this a bit of common knowledge, truly!
Entire organizations (insurance companies) who do not facilitate health and well-being in any significant way at all - and often impede it, with real commitment! - profit massively from this dysfunction, while both patients AND caregivers suffer mightily, to feed the parasite.
That combined with the fact that the "health insurance via employment" system was set up as essentially a crisis response which should never have been maintained...just really needs to be hammered home.