Why do American leaders hate the health of their citizens so much? Seriously, the multi-generation political opposition to universal health care (or even anything getting close) is obscene. The US spends 2x as much on healthcare as peer nations (about 40% of that excess on admin and pharma) in order to have 220 billion in citizen medical debt. I'm assuming that's with Obamacare btw, much less without guaranteed insurance for high-risk patients.
this post was submitted on 25 Mar 2024
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The suffering and the debt is the point. It makes people compliant workers, and there is massive profit being made off of human suffering. The United States is fundamentally an immoral nation being propped up by the stupidity of the white evangelical working class.
You'd be astonished how much of a money printer companies like Pfizer, UHC, Cigna and Aetna are... and they have enough money that they can buy an awful lot of politicians. Obama care itself is fucking awful - it's way better than what we had before - but it enshrined the ridiculous grift based economy we use for health services.
These companies should not exist.
and they have enough money that they can buy an awful lot of politicians.
Thing is, they don't need to buy an awful lot of politicians. Republicans are already on their side because Republicans are assholes. They only need to buy just enough Democrats.
Facts don't matter, money and cost savings and health don't matter. Only the maintenance of social, economic, racial, religious and gender hierarchies matter.
People are definitely going to cover the political, corrupt reasons but one historic reason is that we didn’t have the destruction of WWII in the U.S. Britain’s National Health Service was created in 1946. Germany’s was created during the war in 1941. In many ways, WWII is what created the conditions for universal healthcare in Europe.
In the U.S., we never had an equivalent crisis and so we basically have a non-system made out of kludges and duct tape. There’s no one government program but instead, several programs that were meant to be reforms but just added to the mess. To quote the Census:
Of the subtypes of health insurance coverage, employment-based insurance was the most common, covering 54.5 percent of the population for some or all of the calendar year, followed by Medicaid (18.8 percent), Medicare (18.7 percent), direct-purchase coverage (9.9 percent), TRICARE (2.4 percent), and VA and CHAMPVA coverage (1.0 percent).
And in the end, 92% of people end up covered. It might be shitty coverage and no one likes the mess of programs but sometimes, it takes a true crisis like WWII to make radical reforms.
Bear in mind that guaranteed insurance isn't the balm you may think it is. Insurance companies make substantial profit off of denying claims. The USA will continue to have worst-in-show health care until/unless we get rid of private health insurance entirely.
I totally agree. In another portion of this thread I talk about how unethical it is that healthcare professionals have to argue/plead with profit-motivated insurance companies to be allowed to properly care for their patients. For what it's worth, it may be that hybrid systems (public and private with universal guaranteed coverage) work best - e.g. Germany and Singapore. The very simplistic TL:DR is that private is allowed to exist as additions to universal public, but is regulated by the government and must make profit within the bounds of those regulations (as opposed to free market maximized profit). Everyone is guaranteed excellent care via very careful government intervention/standards. It's hard to get right, but can result in private efficiency at public prices.
One word: Abortion.
Evangelicals control the Republican Party, and there's never enough votes for real reform without the Republican Party.
Because it is called Obamacare. If you ask if they approve of the Affordable Care Act, support is much higher.
It is the same thing people. Stop calling it Obamacare and start using ACA or Affordable Care Act. Obamacare is not is name.
They're too busy funding other country's wars.
I know they pounded the drum of "repeal and replace" the ACA forever, but in all of these years they have no ONCE posted a draft of any legislation that would even come close to replacing the ACA.
How do Republicans even still say they have a better idea after all these years with nothing to show for it? I'm not even talking about legislation that passed, just a draft of what they're proposing. What has stopped them from opening up Microsoft Word and just writing their "better" replacement? Could it be there IS no better replacement they are interested in passing?
There are better replacements, but they tend to look like a fully government-run system, ending the profits of private insurers and major hospital operators. Those are ideologically unacceptable to the Republicans.
I agree. I can afford even today's ludicrous health care costs, but I know I'm an exception. So many of us can't. For that reason I'm a proponent of "single payer" universal healthcare that all of use can afford which is indeed better than today's ACA. However, I am well aware that is even farther away from what Republicans would want. Hence my statement that Republicans can't even produce a draft of what they deem to be better, not that I'd agree with their definition of better.
The Medicaid expansion alone has saved so many lives, not to mention the pre-existing condition stuff. Even the holdouts are slowly taking the Medicaid expansion (which the federal govt pretty much pays the entirety of)
This is the best summary I could come up with:
And President Biden strengthened the program, notably by extending provisions eliminating the “cliff” that cut off subsides for many middle-class Americans.
And it will probably succeed, since it failed in 2017 only thanks to a principled stand by John McCain — something unlikely to happen in today’s Republican Party, where slavish obedience to Trump has become almost universal.
Last week, he posted a screed about how an “INVASION” of migrants is “KILLING SOCIAL SECURITY AND MEDICARE,” which is both the opposite of the truth and a demonstration that he has little idea how even the biggest, most important government programs work.
When he was in office, Trump was putty in the hands of right-wing economic ideologues, who actually know how to write legislation that serves their objectives; practically his only major budgetary initiatives were a tax cut for the wealthy and corporations, which passed, and the attempted gutting of Obamacare, which fell just short.
And what we know is that even though Trump likes to portray himself as a populist, right-wing economic ideology still rules among congressional Republicans, who are as eager as ever to effectively destroy Obamacare.
members of the House of Representatives, released a budget proposal that teed up many of the 2017 “reforms” that would have caused millions of Americans to lose health coverage.
The original article contains 901 words, the summary contains 217 words. Saved 76%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
Of course it is.