9 ms·

Sounds like you’re arguing with insurance salesmen.

cj 7y ago
No. There is a very large number of people in the US who are (for whatever reason) against universal health care. I have family who can't afford health insurance. And those same people would vote against a president promising universal healthcare. I don't understand it. But a lot of people don't agree with universal health care (even many low/middle income people)
- adamnemecek 7y ago
  They've been brainwashed.
- rtpg 7y ago
  It's this thing where US political dialog has basically become "Well _I_ would like this but what about all these other people the media say won't like this? Won't someone think of them?" which short circuits to "Oh I don't want this" Lots of people who worry a hell of a lot about the federal deficit when talking about whether they would like to be able to afford going to the doctor. Nevermind that this discussion rarely covers the deficit when it comes time to give tax breaks to "job creators". Also the Democratic party is comically bad at politics in the US. Like "oh but you might lose your private insurance" is a discussion people in the primary are having _when you would be replacing private insurance with free healthcare_. What sort of positioning is even being had here? So many people are stuck in the 90s
  - Dumblydorr 7y ago
    If your tribal leaders support something, you do. Tribe comes before religion, race, or any other consideration, though admittedly many of those are correlated. In the end, for around 90% of Americans, its about R vs D.
  - cj 7y ago
    > Like "oh but you might lose your private insurance" is a discussion people in the primary are having _when you would be replacing private insurance with free healthcare_. What sort of positioning is even being had here? A common fear is that wait times to see a doctor would be much higher with universal healthcare compared to a system with private insurance. Horror stories about people in Canada and the EU waiting months for a procedure that would be available immediately to someone with private insurance if in the US. I don’t mean to start a health care debate in this thread. My main point is that there are reasonable (logical, rational) fears that people have causing them to be against universal healthcare. Understanding those fears and addressing them upfront is one way to get past them.
    - moate 7y ago
      "I don't want to wait in line, so make sure poor people can't go to doctors", which is the reason there are lines and wait times, is basically a cartoon villain argument and anyone making it should be treated as such.
      - DHPersonal 7y ago
        The anxiety is not about the wait but rather the potential consequences of the delay, such as the potential death or prolonged suffering of a loved one.
        moate 7y ago
        Got it. "my sick dying relative > your sick dying relative". Total morally reasonable now, thanks for clearing that up. Why are there going to be lines and waits with expanded healthcare coverage? Because people who need to see doctors will be seeing doctors. If your logic train is "Expanding coverage will create lines, therefor don't expand coverage" and not "Expanding coverage will create lines and therefor we will need to find solutions to new problems when we expand coverage" IDK how you're not just doing some gatekeeping to keep services high for yourself at the expense of others.
        7y ago
- endtime 7y ago
  I'm a US citizen who does not want the government to run healthcare. I'm also an immigrant from a country where it does. I've seen what my family in my country of origin has to deal with and...no thanks.
  - zamfi 7y ago
    Have you yet seen what you have to deal with here? All systems have problems. Other systems don’t seem to bankrupt or kill as many people.
    - endtime 7y ago
      Other systems kill plenty of people. What I have to deal with here could be far better, but I definitely prefer it to the NHS.
      - zamfi 7y ago
        You'd be an outlier then. Also consider that as a "NYC Googler" you are not getting the true American healthcare experience.
        endtime 7y ago
        No true Scotsman, eh?
        zamfi 7y ago
        Not at all -- you work for (and I assume are insured through) a rich company that contracts with insurers who are incentivized to keep that company happy and maintain their contract. Most Americans don't. Google is also self-insured, which means that Google is actually paying for healthcare, not the insurer -- the insurer just manages the networks & relationships with providers, and it's just pure profit for them. Google, meanwhile, wants healthy employees. No one has an incentive to deny claims, so ultimately you are seeing the best side of the system, in which almost every actor wants good outcomes. Contrast this with Medicare or Medicaid, or private insurance on the individual level, where the incentive is to reduce "medical loss", the industry term for...actually paying for healthcare. Arguing with insurers over denied claims is par for the course -- so much so that some insurers just routinely deny things (and patient is on the hook) that their own plans say should be covered, with the hope that patients won't realize they can appeal. Having experienced both ends of this -- as a former Googler myself and in the individual market pre-ACA ("Obamacare") -- I can tell you the difference between the wealthy corporate insurance plans and the individual market is night and day.
- ds 7y ago
  The reason is pretty simple to understand- Those who can afford health insurance dont want their standard of care reduced on a 'free for everyone' system. Looking at the existing bureaucratic issues the current 'free' health programs have ( VA, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.. ) seems to indicate their fears might be well placed. In the VA for instance, you can go months just to get a first visit. Basically, people who have a job and get health insurance dont want to be lumped in with the commoners and get worse care/longer wait times/less options/etc... Its fucked up, but its not hard to understand the pushback. They dont want their health care experience to turn into a 6 hour trip to the DMV.
  - ragebol 7y ago
    Which means there are more hospitals needed, more doctors and more nurses. So it may even create more jobs.
  - iforgotpassword 7y ago
    But does it really reduce your standard in those systems? I know it's really hard to properly compare the costs of something like this between countries, but it would be interesting to know how much you need to spend on healthcare in the US to get similar benefits as in some European country purely with public healthcare. Since another benefit of public health care is that you can be reasonably sure people around you are healthy and not dragging themselves to work with god knows what since they can't afford treatment. Be it your colleague or the cashier at the store. It's actually quite baffling how Americans generally seem much more generous, warm and helpful to their fellow human beings, but the idea of potentially paying for someone else's medical treatment seems absolutely outrageous to most.
    - leetcrew 7y ago
      > It's actually quite baffling how Americans generally seem much more generous, warm and helpful to their fellow human beings, but the idea of potentially paying for someone else's medical treatment seems absolutely outrageous to most. this is just my personal take as an american. I think the disconnect has to do with locality/proximity. americans who have some surplus income (ie savings and not living paycheck-to-paycheck) are quite willing to help people they know with cash or free labor and will happily donate time or money to help people in their broader community. what americans hate is being forced by the government to help people far outside their circle. I think partially we are suspicious that the money doesn't get where it's supposed to go intact, but there's also an element of "fuck them, what do those people over there have to do with me?" obviously this is suboptimal as entire communities can be disjoint and have serious imbalances in funds available. also it tends to leave a lot of efficiency from scale on the table. but perhaps this at least explains some of your bafflement.
- dankohn1 7y ago
  Here's the explanation: "Why doesn’t the United States have universal health care? The answer has everything to do with race." https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/universal-health-care-racism.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/univ...
  - deogeo 7y ago
    Americans are so racist, they'd rather get bankrupted by illness and die, than have universal health care help black people. At the same time, they allow ~1 million mostly non-whites to legally immigrate every year. I think insurance/medical industry lobbying is a far more consistent explanation. In general, if a story starts by bringing up racism from 150 years ago, it's more concerned with building a narrative than with explaining the current state of affairs. Rather refreshingly, the NYT admits this: "It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are."
    - geofft 7y ago
      Not sure if you're being sarcastic—my experience of Americans is precisely as you say. There is a strong streak of "I don't care if it helps me, if it helps those people I don't want it to happen." Americans are also so transphobic that they'd rather have fewer soldiers defending the country, etc.
      - deogeo 7y ago
        So why does the "I don't want to help people I don't like" attitude affect the healthcare system, but not immigration policy? That is why I don't think the explanation holds water. Plus, Americans do support universal healthcare: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/most-americans-now-support-medicare-for-all-and-free-college-tuition.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/most-americans-now-support-m...
  - geofft 7y ago
    It's fascinating that HN downvotes comments pointing to America's historic struggles with race (which did, beyond a doubt, exist and leave a fingerprint on the political reality of our current country) when people ask questions for which race is a potential answer. It's happened to me before too, IIRC also with a cited claim. I mean, I totally understand avoiding the subject because it leads to flamewars, because some people respond very poorly to the suggestion that racism exists and has practical effects today. But then you're better off not having a discussion about the topic at all than a skewed, censored one where one plausible answer is just too politically incorrect to be debated.
- SantalBlush 7y ago
  I don't think it's even about the money anymore, since nobody seems to take issue with massive deficit spending in the US. A lot of Americans see it as a threat to their sense of individualism, and that is why they fight it. To them, any government program which makes our lives easier will cause people to be lazy and dependent. If we want universal healthcare, we need to address that message.
  - mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
    Nobody works harder than a Japanese worker. And Japan has government-administered “universal” healthcare. The idea that access to affordable healthcare makes people lazy requires mental gymnastics and total ignorance.
- paggle 7y ago
  Because the US has so many successful corporations, its politics is controlled by corporate interests to an extent not seen in most other developed countries (where the political “right” tends to be the nativists and the propertied class). The “small government” concept in the US creates a political incentive for government to be ineffective and wasteful creating a self fulfilling process through which any politically visible part of the US government is terribly ineffective and the pieces that are behind the scenes are excellent. That’s why universal health care is likely to be a terrible boondoggle in the US.
- Tomte 7y ago
  There are always people a rung below you on the social ladder. "Sure, I would love to get healthcare. But I don't want /them/ to get it. Especially if they are immigrants." The tribal divide in American politics is another reason ("if they want it, it must be wrong), but since this level of hatred is quite recent, I think it cannot fully explain it.
- DINKDINK 7y ago
  >I have family who can't afford [cotton pickers]. And those same people would vote against a president promising [to use violence to coerce cotton pickers to work at a wage lower than in a freed market or coerce money out of other people to pay the cotton pickers]. >I don't understand it. You don't understand because your voting principles are based on "I'll vote for whomever gives me 'free' things, regardless of the ethical implications". You don't understand why someone wouldn't vote for increasing the scope of state aggression. If you couldn't afford to drive a car because of gas prices, should we use state aggression to take oil from an oil-rich country?
  - dang 7y ago
    Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. Also, personal attacks will get you banned here, so please don't do that either. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
    - DINKDINK 7y ago
      Help me understand, which ideologies are allowed to be discussed? The person I replied to didn't understand why people don't vote for certain policies. I tried to help them understand the position of people who don't agree with increasing aggression.
      - dang 7y ago
        It's not a question of one ideology rather than another. They're all equally bad when it comes to generic internet discussion, and especially flamewar. Such discussions have all been had a million times, they're all predictable and therefore tedious and therefore off topic here. HN is for curiosity. There's zero curiosity in "taxation is theft" (or "property is theft") flamewars. Ditto for "state aggression" here, which is a generic ideological tangent even from a subthread that was already one in its own right. If you want to understand further, I've written a lot about this in the past: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20generic%20ideolog https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
- jpindar 7y ago
  Are they against universal healthcare, or against the politicians that happen to support it? Big difference.

cj 7y ago

No. There is a very large number of people in the US who are (for whatever reason) against universal health care. I have family who can't afford health insurance. And those same people would vote against a president promising universal healthcare. I don't understand it. But a lot of people don't agree with universal health care (even many low/middle income people)

adamnemecek 7y ago
They've been brainwashed.
rtpg 7y ago
It's this thing where US political dialog has basically become "Well _I_ would like this but what about all these other people the media say won't like this? Won't someone think of them?" which short circuits to "Oh I don't want this" Lots of people who worry a hell of a lot about the federal deficit when talking about whether they would like to be able to afford going to the doctor. Nevermind that this discussion rarely covers the deficit when it comes time to give tax breaks to "job creators". Also the Democratic party is comically bad at politics in the US. Like "oh but you might lose your private insurance" is a discussion people in the primary are having _when you would be replacing private insurance with free healthcare_. What sort of positioning is even being had here? So many people are stuck in the 90s
- Dumblydorr 7y ago
  If your tribal leaders support something, you do. Tribe comes before religion, race, or any other consideration, though admittedly many of those are correlated. In the end, for around 90% of Americans, its about R vs D.
- cj 7y ago
  > Like "oh but you might lose your private insurance" is a discussion people in the primary are having _when you would be replacing private insurance with free healthcare_. What sort of positioning is even being had here? A common fear is that wait times to see a doctor would be much higher with universal healthcare compared to a system with private insurance. Horror stories about people in Canada and the EU waiting months for a procedure that would be available immediately to someone with private insurance if in the US. I don’t mean to start a health care debate in this thread. My main point is that there are reasonable (logical, rational) fears that people have causing them to be against universal healthcare. Understanding those fears and addressing them upfront is one way to get past them.
  - moate 7y ago
    "I don't want to wait in line, so make sure poor people can't go to doctors", which is the reason there are lines and wait times, is basically a cartoon villain argument and anyone making it should be treated as such.
    - DHPersonal 7y ago
      The anxiety is not about the wait but rather the potential consequences of the delay, such as the potential death or prolonged suffering of a loved one.
      - moate 7y ago
        Got it. "my sick dying relative > your sick dying relative". Total morally reasonable now, thanks for clearing that up. Why are there going to be lines and waits with expanded healthcare coverage? Because people who need to see doctors will be seeing doctors. If your logic train is "Expanding coverage will create lines, therefor don't expand coverage" and not "Expanding coverage will create lines and therefor we will need to find solutions to new problems when we expand coverage" IDK how you're not just doing some gatekeeping to keep services high for yourself at the expense of others.
        7y ago
endtime 7y ago
I'm a US citizen who does not want the government to run healthcare. I'm also an immigrant from a country where it does. I've seen what my family in my country of origin has to deal with and...no thanks.
- zamfi 7y ago
  Have you yet seen what you have to deal with here? All systems have problems. Other systems don’t seem to bankrupt or kill as many people.
  - endtime 7y ago
    Other systems kill plenty of people. What I have to deal with here could be far better, but I definitely prefer it to the NHS.
    - zamfi 7y ago
      You'd be an outlier then. Also consider that as a "NYC Googler" you are not getting the true American healthcare experience.
      - endtime 7y ago
        No true Scotsman, eh?
        zamfi 7y ago
        Not at all -- you work for (and I assume are insured through) a rich company that contracts with insurers who are incentivized to keep that company happy and maintain their contract. Most Americans don't. Google is also self-insured, which means that Google is actually paying for healthcare, not the insurer -- the insurer just manages the networks & relationships with providers, and it's just pure profit for them. Google, meanwhile, wants healthy employees. No one has an incentive to deny claims, so ultimately you are seeing the best side of the system, in which almost every actor wants good outcomes. Contrast this with Medicare or Medicaid, or private insurance on the individual level, where the incentive is to reduce "medical loss", the industry term for...actually paying for healthcare. Arguing with insurers over denied claims is par for the course -- so much so that some insurers just routinely deny things (and patient is on the hook) that their own plans say should be covered, with the hope that patients won't realize they can appeal. Having experienced both ends of this -- as a former Googler myself and in the individual market pre-ACA ("Obamacare") -- I can tell you the difference between the wealthy corporate insurance plans and the individual market is night and day.
ds 7y ago
The reason is pretty simple to understand- Those who can afford health insurance dont want their standard of care reduced on a 'free for everyone' system. Looking at the existing bureaucratic issues the current 'free' health programs have ( VA, Medicare, Medicaid, etc.. ) seems to indicate their fears might be well placed. In the VA for instance, you can go months just to get a first visit. Basically, people who have a job and get health insurance dont want to be lumped in with the commoners and get worse care/longer wait times/less options/etc... Its fucked up, but its not hard to understand the pushback. They dont want their health care experience to turn into a 6 hour trip to the DMV.
- ragebol 7y ago
  Which means there are more hospitals needed, more doctors and more nurses. So it may even create more jobs.
- iforgotpassword 7y ago
  But does it really reduce your standard in those systems? I know it's really hard to properly compare the costs of something like this between countries, but it would be interesting to know how much you need to spend on healthcare in the US to get similar benefits as in some European country purely with public healthcare. Since another benefit of public health care is that you can be reasonably sure people around you are healthy and not dragging themselves to work with god knows what since they can't afford treatment. Be it your colleague or the cashier at the store. It's actually quite baffling how Americans generally seem much more generous, warm and helpful to their fellow human beings, but the idea of potentially paying for someone else's medical treatment seems absolutely outrageous to most.
  - leetcrew 7y ago
    > It's actually quite baffling how Americans generally seem much more generous, warm and helpful to their fellow human beings, but the idea of potentially paying for someone else's medical treatment seems absolutely outrageous to most. this is just my personal take as an american. I think the disconnect has to do with locality/proximity. americans who have some surplus income (ie savings and not living paycheck-to-paycheck) are quite willing to help people they know with cash or free labor and will happily donate time or money to help people in their broader community. what americans hate is being forced by the government to help people far outside their circle. I think partially we are suspicious that the money doesn't get where it's supposed to go intact, but there's also an element of "fuck them, what do those people over there have to do with me?" obviously this is suboptimal as entire communities can be disjoint and have serious imbalances in funds available. also it tends to leave a lot of efficiency from scale on the table. but perhaps this at least explains some of your bafflement.
dankohn1 7y ago
Here's the explanation: "Why doesn’t the United States have universal health care? The answer has everything to do with race." https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/universal-health-care-racism.html https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/08/14/magazine/univ...
- deogeo 7y ago
  Americans are so racist, they'd rather get bankrupted by illness and die, than have universal health care help black people. At the same time, they allow ~1 million mostly non-whites to legally immigrate every year. I think insurance/medical industry lobbying is a far more consistent explanation. In general, if a story starts by bringing up racism from 150 years ago, it's more concerned with building a narrative than with explaining the current state of affairs. Rather refreshingly, the NYT admits this: "It aims to reframe the country’s history, understanding 1619 as our true founding, and placing the consequences of slavery and the contributions of black Americans at the very center of the story we tell ourselves about who we are."
  - geofft 7y ago
    Not sure if you're being sarcastic—my experience of Americans is precisely as you say. There is a strong streak of "I don't care if it helps me, if it helps those people I don't want it to happen." Americans are also so transphobic that they'd rather have fewer soldiers defending the country, etc.
    - deogeo 7y ago
      So why does the "I don't want to help people I don't like" attitude affect the healthcare system, but not immigration policy? That is why I don't think the explanation holds water. Plus, Americans do support universal healthcare: https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/most-americans-now-support-medicare-for-all-and-free-college-tuition.html https://www.cnbc.com/2018/08/28/most-americans-now-support-m...
- geofft 7y ago
  It's fascinating that HN downvotes comments pointing to America's historic struggles with race (which did, beyond a doubt, exist and leave a fingerprint on the political reality of our current country) when people ask questions for which race is a potential answer. It's happened to me before too, IIRC also with a cited claim. I mean, I totally understand avoiding the subject because it leads to flamewars, because some people respond very poorly to the suggestion that racism exists and has practical effects today. But then you're better off not having a discussion about the topic at all than a skewed, censored one where one plausible answer is just too politically incorrect to be debated.
SantalBlush 7y ago
I don't think it's even about the money anymore, since nobody seems to take issue with massive deficit spending in the US. A lot of Americans see it as a threat to their sense of individualism, and that is why they fight it. To them, any government program which makes our lives easier will cause people to be lazy and dependent. If we want universal healthcare, we need to address that message.
- mrhappyunhappy 7y ago
  Nobody works harder than a Japanese worker. And Japan has government-administered “universal” healthcare. The idea that access to affordable healthcare makes people lazy requires mental gymnastics and total ignorance.
paggle 7y ago
Because the US has so many successful corporations, its politics is controlled by corporate interests to an extent not seen in most other developed countries (where the political “right” tends to be the nativists and the propertied class). The “small government” concept in the US creates a political incentive for government to be ineffective and wasteful creating a self fulfilling process through which any politically visible part of the US government is terribly ineffective and the pieces that are behind the scenes are excellent. That’s why universal health care is likely to be a terrible boondoggle in the US.
Tomte 7y ago
There are always people a rung below you on the social ladder. "Sure, I would love to get healthcare. But I don't want /them/ to get it. Especially if they are immigrants." The tribal divide in American politics is another reason ("if they want it, it must be wrong), but since this level of hatred is quite recent, I think it cannot fully explain it.
DINKDINK 7y ago
>I have family who can't afford [cotton pickers]. And those same people would vote against a president promising [to use violence to coerce cotton pickers to work at a wage lower than in a freed market or coerce money out of other people to pay the cotton pickers]. >I don't understand it. You don't understand because your voting principles are based on "I'll vote for whomever gives me 'free' things, regardless of the ethical implications". You don't understand why someone wouldn't vote for increasing the scope of state aggression. If you couldn't afford to drive a car because of gas prices, should we use state aggression to take oil from an oil-rich country?
- dang 7y ago
  Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. Also, personal attacks will get you banned here, so please don't do that either. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
  - DINKDINK 7y ago
    Help me understand, which ideologies are allowed to be discussed? The person I replied to didn't understand why people don't vote for certain policies. I tried to help them understand the position of people who don't agree with increasing aggression.
    - dang 7y ago
      It's not a question of one ideology rather than another. They're all equally bad when it comes to generic internet discussion, and especially flamewar. Such discussions have all been had a million times, they're all predictable and therefore tedious and therefore off topic here. HN is for curiosity. There's zero curiosity in "taxation is theft" (or "property is theft") flamewars. Ditto for "state aggression" here, which is a generic ideological tangent even from a subthread that was already one in its own right. If you want to understand further, I've written a lot about this in the past: https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comment&storyText=false&prefix&page=0&query=by:dang%20generic%20ideolog https://hn.algolia.com/?sort=byDate&dateRange=all&type=comme...
jpindar 7y ago
Are they against universal healthcare, or against the politicians that happen to support it? Big difference.