There are several reasons every developed nation on the planet, except one, has some form of universal healthcare for every citizen, and most visitors, cradle to grave.
The first is, it’s less expensive. You don’t realize it, but you are already paying for everyone else now. We have medical costs over 10 times what other countries have, and half the population here has no way to pay. The hospital is required, by law, to give minimal care, and that’s generally in the ER where a $5 bag of saline will be $700 on the bill.
Who do you think covers those bills when they don’t get paid? You and I do with higher costs and insurance premiums. After all, someone has pay the insurance company.
Speaking of that…
Second, we inserted for profit companies and created a position for them between us and our doctors. They now profit handsomely when we get sick, and they still make sure we have nothing left at the end of our lives.
Third, very few humans come into this world without healthcare, and almost none of us get out without healthcare. The end tends to be a slow failure of every system we have. This makes it exceedingly simple to make sure we have nothing to pass on to our children. After they suck us dry and we’re dead, our family is homeless because we sold it trying to pay the medical bills for my end of life care. Insurance cut us off millions of dollars ago.
Fourth, the United States is the only advanced nation on earth where one has a better than even chance of losing everything in bankruptcy due to massive medical debt.
Fifth, we claim to be the greatest nation on earth, but we are the only nation with a falling life expectancy. Every country with social healthcare has a longer lifespan, live happier and with greater health, and most of them have a lower abortion rate.
You are literally throwing all of your money and possessions at already rich people and thanking them for taking it. They add insult to injury with substandard care and overcharging for everything. The latest way to get more money is to add line items to the invoice with no additional value for your money.
But please, tell us again we can’t have it and it’s too expensive.
We have laws requiring treatment or transport for everyone that shows up at an ER. Without universal healthcare, who do you think pays the bill when the patient can’t?
You do.
Universal healthcare is less expensive than what we have today. But keep shooting yourself in the wallet. You are good at it.
There were plans in place to do so before world war 2, but the republicans fucked that up too.
But someone in your family will get sick and you’ll lose everything you own, trying to pay the bill until you file bankruptcy.
Thats life in the most wealthy country.
Welfare for the rich and rugged individualism for the poor.
Excessive profits from other peoples suffering is immoral and a crime against humanity. $700 for a pill that costs the manufacturer $5 to make is murder.
Healthcare is a human right. If you can’t see that, you are immoral.
In 1943, President Roosevelt pursued the idea that every American deserves adequate and inexpensive healthcare.
In 1948, the World Health Organization stated that we have not only a right to adequate healthcare, but we should all have an adequate standard of living.
Based on the number of children dying by gunshot, the number of unhoused people, and how hard it is to vote in some districts, I understand why, in 2021, the US was determined to be a failed democracy. The same group felt we’d been backsliding since 2019. Hell, the show, “The Newsroom” was calling us out in 2012.
So this has been going on for a very long time.
We need to create a floor that stops people from dying of hunger, exposure, and easily preventable illness.
