7 ms·

This is ridiculous. I'm what most here would consider pretty conservative, but even I have trouble understanding the arguments against universal healthcare. D

• ryneandal 6y ago
  Disinformation campaigns.
• jupp0r 6y ago
  ACA has one important aspect of it, which is the universal coverage mandate. Plenty of people have voted against that. You can't have your cake and eat it too.
• pm90 6y ago
  It polls favorably but the GOP won’t vote for it, likely because of ideological (Govt is bad!) and financial (insurance industry lobby) reasons.
  • aynsof 6y ago
    It seems to me that the former is a convenient excuse for the latter.
  • axaxs 6y ago
    I still remember when Trump was campaigning in 2016, someone asked him about health care (I don't care to look up the specifics). He replied pretty vague that he wasn't going to let people just die. The audience boo'd. I still can't believe it. Most Republicans I know aren't even steadfast against it. It really feels like the lobbyist/business people/politicians are trying to paint a different picture than reality. Edit for clarity - This wasn't a rally, but a small event of 'suits' in the audience. Perhaps a debate?
  • mmcnl 6y ago
    What is Biden wins the election? Democrat Senate + House + POTUS would make UHC actually within reach, no?
    • pm90 6y ago
      Possibly, assuming Democrats get rid of the Senate filibuster. I haven’t checked what Biden’s plan is currently, but I assume it will be something that strengthens Obamacare. But ... you never know, Harris would be VP...
    • Clubber 6y ago
      Biden is against UHC I believe. He said he would veto Medicare-For-All in a debate.
  • ckw 6y ago
    Biden has repeatedly said he would veto Medicare for all, and the program was pointedly left out of the party platform despite 87% support among democratic voters.
• torb-xyz 6y ago
  AFAIK universal health care is a fairly popular idea in the US, including by self-identified republicans.
  • alex_anglin 6y ago
    If an idea isn't triggering action, does it really matter how popular it is?
    • vonmoltke 6y ago
      "Universal health care" is actually a broad term. The problem is that people agree on the broad principle, but disagree on the details and can;t come to a compromise. Thus, nothing gets done.
    • dbbk 6y ago
      Not for lack of trying. It's only ONE person who is blocking action, which is Mitch McConnell refusing to even consider bills in the senate. It is still in the power of the people to replace him as majority leader of the Senate, if they want to unblock that logjam.
      • triceratops 6y ago
        He's elected by his peers in the Senate. They're all responsible for blocking action.
    • Someone1234 6y ago
      True. The problem in the US is that a large chunk of the population have been trained to be anti-tax regardless of goal. They'll support Universal Medicine hypothetically but as soon as you talk about the required payroll tax they'll oppose it, even if it is lower than they're paying now in premiums. Then the conversation will immediately turn into a "government cannot be trusted"/"stealing my money" etc. People will love it once it is online, just like the ACA/Medicare/Social Security, but getting it online is politically radioactive and will sink both the politician and party until people realize they love it.
• jmeister 6y ago
  From a third-world immigrant traumatized by dysfunctional govt. institutions back home, and seeing some spectacular cockups by state-run institutions here, what is the guarantee that UHC won’t be worse?
  • happytoexplain 6y ago
    There is no guarantee - but the more immediate problem is that talking heads spectacularly amplify such doubt for shallow political reasons. Similar to how "free college" gets turned into "communist mass starvation".
    • afarrell 6y ago
      A significant percentage of the US is descended from those who abandoned the life they knew to move across an ocean because they were so afraid of a neighborhood or government conspiracy to murder them. For example: My wife's father's family. The relatives that didn't flee Europe were murdered in the early 1940s by a German government conspiracy.
  • zerkten 6y ago
    There are plenty of ways to phase a transition to mitigate concerns. It makes senses to take an approach like that. It doesn't make sense to continue the status quo. For any other change, there would generally be a preference from people to phase the changes, why not healthcare too?
  • triceratops 6y ago
    I assume you believe there are some things the American government does better than your home country, otherwise you wouldn't be here. Why are you so worried it'll turn out poorly?
• michael1999 6y ago
  The real arguments are too dark to say aloud. E.g. without the perks over civilian life, the military would be unable to recruit a volunteer force large enough for empire.
  • gruez 6y ago
    Is this actually a thing, joining the military to get healthcare?
    • wpurvis 6y ago
      It is definitely a perk. That and cheap housing, paid-for education and years of experience in whatever field you get put in. The army and marines sent recruiters to my high school in a poor area and I got to hear about all these things twice a year. The military is a way out of poverty for a lot of people.
    • filleduchaos 6y ago
      This is not the first time I'm hearing that US recruiters use health insurance or college education as a lure for poor teenagers.
    • ideals 6y ago
      Kinda, same with college tuition. If you made university free for everyone the Reserves would take a hit on enlistment, same with active duty but to a lesser extent. I'm a vet and those things were huge in making my choice to join, lots of family and friends, fellow service members have echoed the same. The military is largely downsizing though in warm body count so it might not matter much anymore.
    • glitcher 6y ago
      Also a thing: intentionally committing a crime for the sole purpose of getting healthcare in prison.
  • mmcnl 6y ago
    These are really inefficient incentives. With UHC it would be possible to lower health costs, freeing up budget for the military to increase wages for recruits, for example. In HN language, this is tight coupling that in the end would work far better in a loosely coupled manner for both UHC and the military.
• happytoexplain 6y ago
  ACA was nothing close to it because our voters don't allow us to get closer than that, as far as I can tell. I don't think people actually oppose universal healthcare, they just oppose the worst case scenario of its implementation, or some bastardized version of it, that is constantly emphasized by the politically/socially/economically powerful people on their side of politics. Some people even oppose it simply because it is associated with the other side of politics - that's frankly all it takes sometimes for an issue to be a non-starter.
  • qppo 6y ago
    It's hard to get closer to it as a voter when we don't have anyone to vote for who isn't bought and paid for by Super PACs funded by insurance companies. It's tantamount to bribery and the only reason we aren't prosecuting people like former Senator Joe Lieberman for killing the public option is because people like the former Senator were the ones that wrote the laws that make such bribery legal.
• phkahler 6y ago
  I dont think many Americans are aware of the underlying issues with the system. The arguments against it are also rooted in valid concerns even if they're exaggerated beyond belief. So yeah, plenty of people will vote against it.
• lotsofpulp 6y ago
  ACA was as close as “conservatives” let the US people get to universal taxpayer funded healthcare.
• justin66 6y ago
  > Do that many people exist that really vote against it? Please don't point at ACA, that was nothing close to it. During the debate surrounding ACA, single-payer healthcare was not deliberated in congress. Nobody really got the chance to vote for or against it, or express much in the way of pleasure or displeasure with representatives in support or opposition.
• MisterBastahrd 6y ago
  Here, let me explain. The average wait time at a Starbucks in my town is about 18 minutes because of the number of people who are in line. Starbucks is seen as a great independent business whose lines are just a byproduct how successful they are and representative of capitalism. The average wait time at the USPS is about 10 minutes in the same town, which largely includes people having to fill out forms for packages. This is seen as an inadequate and inefficient endeavor by a government that spends way too much money. Because the wait time for the USPS negatively impacts their livelihood, they would prefer to go bankrupt or watch people kill themselves via untreated illnesses (because they can't afford to get them treated) than submit to a single-payer system, even if they had the option to supplement the public plan with private insurance. Until they turn 65. Then suddenly they're for it, as long as the younger people still suffer. Americans tend to judge capitalism by its successes and socialism by its failures, even though any modern functioning society is going to have a mix of both.
  • filleduchaos 6y ago
    I'm aware that nearly all nuance in discussing economic systems has been absolutely obliterated, but I must say that I can't think of any modern functioning societies that actually mix (the socialist bedrock of) public ownership of the means of production with (the capitalist bedrock of) private property on a macro level.
• salawat 6y ago
  Lobbying. Many of the industry actors make bank based on spread, which incentivizes lack of downward pressure on prices in order to get allocated bigger chunks of money to manage as float. This increases earning in the event your risk pool is on the lighter side, and ensures that all actors material to price point fixation converge on price increases. Medicare/Medicaid don't factor into the price point equation, because they aren't allowed to negotiate as a private market actor, and are considered by most who got into the U.S. medical industrial complex as a price of doing business to cash in on the fundamentally dysfunctional market. Until you can get a straight answer out of insurers/hospitals/medical practices how much something will cost ahead of time,you won't get sane downward price pressure. There's also the F'd Medical Education Complex issue and cartel as well, but that's another issue. Full disclosure: Working somewhere that's trying to remedy at least a part of this dysfunction.
• Mindless2112 6y ago
  I'm assuming by "universal healthcare" you mean single-payer. I think the biggest problem is that changing who pays for it doesn't actually fix the problem. You've still got the most expensive, least effective healthcare system in the world -- now it's just financed with your tax dollars.
  • axaxs 6y ago
    Not necessarily. Right now, hospitals/doctors/etc can tell insurance companies to pound sand if they aren't willing to pay much. If there is only one insurance company, they are beholden to it and have to negotiate from a position of little-to-no power.
  • deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
  • afarrell 6y ago
    Free-at-point-of-care does reduce costs because it reduces complexity. Once hospitals don't have to haggle with insurance companies, they can fire a bunch of administrators and thereby reduce costs.
• leetcrew 6y ago
  the uncertainty around the cost of healthcare makes universal healthcare a hard sell for a rational, mostly self-interested voter with a decent job. to get to "yes", you need to convince this voter that their additional tax burden would be less than their current healthcare costs. comparing US insurance premiums with european per-capita costs doesn't do much unless you can explain why this would be different than all the other public services that are way less efficient here than overseas. take me for example. I have no idea how much my employer contributes to my premiums. the only way I can think of to estimate the cost is to look up typical pricing for comparable ACA plans. if we switched to universal healthcare, I have no way of knowing what fraction of those premiums would be tacked back onto my salary versus simply pocketed by my employer. all I know is that things are currently okay for me, and as long as I do the in/out-of-network dance correctly, my exposure is limited to my out-of-pocket max. outside of ideological/moral concerns, there's really no incentive for me to rock the boat.
  • axaxs 6y ago
    That gives me an interesting idea. What if employer provided health insurance was outlawed? Once people see the real costs of their coverage, I feel they'll all be all in on reform of some kind.
    • leetcrew 6y ago
      interesting idea, but probably even less viable than full universal healthcare politically. individual rates are not really the true cost of insurance. they're just the rates you get when you can't negotiate as a group. you would lower the standard of living for pretty much everyone with a full-time job and give them nothing in exchange.
      • lotsofpulp 6y ago
        Employers don’t get lower health insurance premiums because they are big enough to negotiate. They might get them if they happen to employ healthier people than average and if the employees are on the younger side, hence experience lower healthcare costs.
• deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
• rndmize 6y ago
  It seems some people have forgotten the rhetoric of the time. The opposition had a wide variety of arguments against universal health care, such as government death panels[0], increased wait times for essential care[1], government control over 1/6 of the economy, free medical care for illegals, etc. I particularly remember a claim coming out that Stephen Hawking would have died under a universal system like the NHS[2]. As such, Obama proposed the ACA as some kind of middle road[3], with the goal of having something that both sides would be in favor of, and to hold the moderates that were against single payer[4]. After the better part of a year of negotiation and multiple efforts to reach out to the opposition, the ACA was passed without any Republican votes, who then spent the following eight years running for office on the idea of repealing it (with at least 50 attempts in a four year span). Unfortunately, the Republicans don't have any plan for healthcare themselves, resulting in a failed repeal attempt three years ago even after taking control of the house, senate and presidency. It should be fairly obvious at this point that logical arguments for or against policies are irrelevant, even more so than they were ten years ago - and yes, a great many people would vote against it. They spent the last decade doing just that. [0] https://www.politico.com/story/2009/08/palin-doubles-down-on-death-panels-026078 https://www.politico.com/story/2009/08/palin-doubles-down-on... [1] https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2009/07/28/statistics-show-canada-healthcare-is-inferior-to-american-system https://www.usnews.com/opinion/blogs/peter-roff/2009/07/28/s... [2] https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/passing-the-baton-of-irony/ https://theincidentaleconomist.com/wordpress/passing-the-bat... [3] https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/us/politics/10obama.text.html?auth=login-email&login=email https://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/10/us/politics/10obama.text.... [4] https://www.newsday.com/business/single-payer-health-care-plan-dies-in-senate-1.1657102 https://www.newsday.com/business/single-payer-health-care-pl...
• Bubbadoo 6y ago
  I too am a fiscal conservative and see the merits behind a comprehensive single-payer health care system. Realize the American people are being told that 'socialized' medicine will eliminate choices such as choice of doctor and/or hospital. That was the main reason given by the 'moderate' Democratic Presidential candidates as to why not have universal healthcare. Look more closely and you see why. One of candidate Biden's largest contributors is big health insurance (the other being credit card banks). You saw the same thing with Amy Klobachar for much the same reason. Incidentally, I was oringally against the ObamaCare legislation, but having imagined a country without that option, I now believe it's essential. And it's certainly far from sufficient.
  • mrguyorama 6y ago
    I like how you conveniently ignore the mountains of horseshit conservatives have been spouting about the negative of universal healthcare for a decade.
• ckw 6y ago
  M4A is very popular, with 69% support in the US. The reason it hasn’t been instituted is that the US is an oligarchy. As such, policy is formed according to the desires of the oligarchic class rather than broad public opinion, and they oppose M4A. Regarding voters, an aside I find pretty rich is that among those 65 years and older, i.e., voters who currently enjoy Medicare coverage, and overwhelmingly regard the program positively, support for M4A is only 46%.
• jpindar 6y ago
  >Do that many people exist that really vote against it? I have never even seen it on a ballot.
• david927 6y ago
  America is a failed state. Every single other industrialized country has universal healthcare, free universities, paid vacation, paid maternity leave. I could go on. And these things are not on the table. They are not, nor have they ever been, really considered -- at least not for the last 50 years. The recent candidate who ran on this platform, Bernie Sanders, was widely loved by the public and absolutely slated by the media. The wealthiest in America are fine but the poor are more miserable than some third-world countries. The country is falling apart and there's really no opposing force, trying to stop it.