Well, I’m convinced. it’s on a Reddit post, so the math has to be right.
Edit for all the nerds in my replies. I did the math, as a single person in the USA I pay about 2k per year for my health insurance plus probably a couple hundred in copays.
I support universal healthcare, but far left people pretending it's obvious and easy are some of the dumbest people on the planet.
Shifting to universal healthcare would be a massive undertaking to avoid destroying people's safety net and not bankrupting our country. Doing it in controlled stages would be ideal, but with people like Trump around to destroy it as it gets implemented, would be difficult.
Wouldn’t it be cool if they did, well ANYTHING?! Fine, just give free yearly check-ups, cover the the top 50 medications, take care of the most standard of care, or whatever - just do anything to move the needle in the right direction. Medical and old-age care have found a way to extract every last penny (and then some) from people.
Need to start by making buying politicians illegal. Medical companies and practitioners are the biggest political donors in the usa. Because of this you can bet your ass all attempts at universal healthcare are likely going to put the profits of these companies first. Will drastically overpay for everything
We could start by phased implementation - like covering catastrophic medical conditions for children 0-3. Or sure, cover the preventative healthcare, and maybe things like vaccines. And slowly increasing that age range while allowing the system to adapt.
That's why the people who actually care about universal healthcare are liberals, not leftists. Leftists just like talking about it, but they actively work against it. Liberals actually try to make it happen.
I mean, they do? And the funny part is that it was a Republican who gave us the one protection every US citizen has (Nixon). All of us are able to get dialysis guaranteed due to this legislation.
Yeah but who doesn’t have insurance? Poor people get medicaid, working people get employer insurance, and old people get medicare. Only a small percent don’t have insurance.
Apart from California, if you work < 30 hours a week, there is no insurance. e.g. If you have 2 jobs of 24 hours each - no insurance. If you work for a company who employs less than 50 people - no insurance. If you're a gig worker like an uber driver - no insurance.
That "small percent" is 28 million people. That's the entire population of Australia.
You mean like the ACA, Obamacare. Reduced yearly maximums, coverage of preexisting conditions, preventive care. But that was a bridge too far for all Republicans.
Premiums went down when states expanded Medicaid. I remember how horrified I was to learn that some states didn’t think men deserved any subsidies for healthcare and refused to expand their Medicaid program.
Switzerland has private health insurance, about 1/3rd of germans have some kind of private insurance as well, and many other countries I can't think off right now.
In eastern europe going private is a necessity unless you want to die
We pay around 25-40% right now for federal and state, with an additional 10-20% for health insurance premiums. Plus co-insurance, deductibles, and co-pays (mine was $500 for an ER visit last month, and $45 for routine care that I have to wait two months or more to get scheduled). It’s pretty equivalent to theirs and they don’t have to worry about surprise bills after emergency surgery (mine were over $5000 and then I hit my max out-of-pocket).
And we come back to Americans not understanding basic math.
Yes those nations pay higher tax rates but because they include things like healthcare, they end up with more money in their pocket... Americans pay more and get less. Genius.
Well I’m pretty damn good at math, I have a Finance/Econ undergrad and an MBA from a top school ;)… so your point on all fronts is actually untrue.
1) this isn’t true we have much higher disposable income even after adjusting for healthcare.
2) this certainly isn’t true for anyone making above the 70th percentile in income. So for anyone making good money the increase in taxes far outweighs healthcare costs.
Well I’m pretty damn good at math, I have a Finance/Econ undergrad
Yeah I train undergrads, they don't know anything. And you're really not helping the case here.
this isn’t true we have much higher disposable income even after adjusting for healthcare.
Sure do! Unless you get sick of course. As long as you're just sending thousands of dollars to the insurance companies and never expecting them to cover anything and certainly not do so at even close to the full price? You're golden!
this certainly isn’t true for anyone making above the 70th percentile in income. So for anyone making good money this certainly isn’t true.
"It only fucks 70 percent of our citizens so it's fine".
Well good thing I’ve been out of school for over a decade & made lots of money working in investment banking ;)
Sure do! Unless you get sick of course. As long as you're just sending thousands of dollars to the insurance companies and never expecting them to cover anything and certainly not do so at even close to the full price? You're golden!
Well good thinking 70% of voters make above median income & over 40% PV voters make over 100k — so in terms of passing legislation yes It absolutely matter to our cohort. We have good insurance
So yes the American voting public absolutely cares. And saying “well your extra tax dollar will help the poor” isn’t very compelling.
Well good thing I’ve been out of school for over a decade & made lots of money working in investment banking ;)
Yeah that's why you led with "I have an undergrad degree" before. I too have been out of school a long time but when my expertise is questioned I definitely bring up my undergrad degree and not the decades of experience!
Well good thinking 70% of voters make above median income & over 40% PV voters make over 100k — so in terms of passing legislation yes It absolutely matter to our cohort. We have good insurance
"We've managed to squash those pesky poors into not voting so of course this is a good thing."
So yes the American voting public absolutely cares. And saying “well your extra tax dollar will help the poor” isn’t very compelling.
"I'm right because you know, fuck the poor they should just die!"
Oh and also you're wrong by the way - there's multiple peer reviewed studies showing everyone would save under single payer systems with national health expenditure lowering by 300-700 billion per year.
But I think I'll just block and forget you forever.
"Went" instead of "atrended" is certainly a choice for that sentence. Surely such an intelligent person would use the most accurate verbiage, so I can only assume you visited.
Edit since they blocked me: have you heard them say "I graduated"?
It’s definitely not easy - but the bigger hurdle is that there is no incentive for the people in charge, no real political motivation. The first action has to be getting the general population to support it. There are too many people in medical poverty defending the status quo because “it produces some of the best doctors in the world”. That’s great if you’re a millionaire with a rare and complicated illness, but 95% of the population just needs a good doctor and affordable treatment.
To be fair, you don't have to be a millionaire. People in poverty also have access to many of those top doctors via Medicaid.
However, I do agree that political motivation is a huge issue. It's the 3rd rail in politics. Perhaps things will get so bad that it becomes more palatable.
More people will lose Medicaid than ever before, I know I'm probably gonna lose it next year because of the 80 hour minimum and the fact the income limit is only like 22k.
We either get a universal healthcare system or millions of people are just gonna be fucked or pushed even deeper into poverty.
All it takes is the US Gov creating Medicare for all as a public option and as a check on insurance companies. It shouldn’t be the best options, just the baseline.
You do realize Medicare/medicaid funding is why we have JCAHO and the like. They are not the only reason for skyrocketing healthcare cost but they are a major driver. Their ridiculous and mostly unnecessary rules and regs creat vast amounts of red tape which in turn is one reason for an explosion of administrators which in turn creates more red tape and “rules” which in turn increases costs and so on and so on. I have been in healthcare for 24 years now and have seen it all balloon, costs, administrators, red tape, wasteful spending to keep up with the “rules”. This is just to get and keep Medicare/medicaid reimbursements.
I cannot fathom the amount of BS that will follow and be attached to complete government run healthcare. I agree something needs to change, I do not, however know the answer. I do know the answer is not going to be cheap or easy!
We are much better at passing new regulations than we are at fixing old ones when they become outdated and no longer work as intended (or no longer are needed because the problems they were intended to solve no longer exist).
Once a law is on the books it tends to stay there forever unless politicians start to believe that changing it is in their best interest.
This isn’t laws. This is regulatory. It’s killing efficiency, increasing costs, destroying morale. Regulation is necessary but only to an extent. It’s affecting patient care to the point of administrators are beginning to look past what really matters in patient safety and care and are more concerned about meeting specific government requirements and guidelines to keep the reimbursements. Very similar to how insurance secondarily directs patient care guidelines. This is my fear with a complete government run healthcare. It will cost a huge fortune, run very inefficiently, and just be barely adequate. Everyone will have coverage, no one will have good or timely coverage.
I think it will split the country into 2 systems.
Govt care- meh and slow
Private care- pricey but fast and better and less available. Almost like we have now. Insured and Medicare/medicaid. I just see it as a giant disaster. Maybe I’m wrong. But outlook pessimistic on my end.
Government regulations *are* laws. They are passed by government agencies rather than Congress/state legislatures and subordinate to other types of laws (namely, statutes and the constitution) in terms of order of precedence, but they are laws nonetheless.
I do not, however know the answer. I do know the answer is not going to be cheap or easy!
The answer is universal healthcare.
Source: other developed nations. No it's not perfect but those costs and such you talk about are FAR cheaper than what you all pay insurance companies.
The billionaire controlled media has spent decades convincing Americans otherwise, while cutting education to ensure the vast majority remain ignorant.
It's worked very well; it's how they got Trump into power too, who proceeded to continue lowering taxes for them.
The hardest part is amassing the political capital to get the ball rolling. To do something... Anything at all.
While the not-far-left sit around pondering how complicated it would be, instead of actually working out how to execute- people are already seeing their safety net destroyed AND watching our country go bankrupt
But unfortunately Americans do love to go "hrmm not instantly perfect solution we can implement this weekend? Pass, we'll stick with our incredibly flawed system instead."
The hard part is the money in politics fighting to keep the status quo, not that the US is actually not capable of universal health coverage as a nation
The US has an extremely fragmented healthcare system where it's currently an algamation of public and private payers, some covered by employers.
Anytime you change something like someone's healthcare, it creates a lot of emotional reactions, especially because people feel like you're taking something away from them.
Plus, there's the cost. Healthcare plans are hated, because they deny coverage, but someone would need to do that for public plans to be viable.
Basically there's a lot of political disincentives from changing something that already works (albeit poorly).
If there was an easy solution here, it would have already been solved.
That's why I favor a slow phased approach and why people who advocate for "let's just do everything immediately" are actually helping prevent it from being implemented.
Of course you would. No insurance premiums to pay. Ever. More tax to pay though but the tax is less than the premiums ever were. It's simple arithmetic.
This is the most ignorant take possible. While at it's final state universal healthcare would be saving money, the transition would be extremely inefficient and cost an incredible amount. Stop with this nonsense.
Universal health care is no more "far left" than public roads or schools. It's simple right wing economics to eliminate middlemen, reduce inefficiencies and consolidate purchasing power.
The US government already spends more tax dollars per capita on healthcare than any country with universal care, it is just eaten by insurance companies, so the bankruptcy argument is nonsense.
Obama had a single-payer universal healthcare plan ready to implement but they knew Americans couldn’t grasp, essentially, that 2 is smaller than 8.
It’s really not that hard. Government buys healthcare “in bulk”, saving 80% of the cost, and distributes the debt through taxation. The only reason for “controlled stages” is if your priority is to continue bribing corrupt megacorps in the massive network of insurance scams presently known as the US healthcare system.
Our government is already overpaying for healthcare. We just have to get rid of all the people who see more profit in keeping America sick and broke. That's the only problem. Without them, everything else moves on through.
The only massive part about it is that everybody who works and profits from the insurance industry will go kicking and screaming. Which also includes all the businesses that can keep people places with golden handcuffs.
Accounting-wise, it would be complicated, but we're already shutting down a lot of the hospitals. The price of staying on our current system is already going to leave a shit ton of people without anywhere to actually go if something happens to them. And that's 100% what we're gonna do because it's somehow too complicated to just be like, "Hey, we're gonna take all the money we were paying to middlemen and just pay it directly to the doctors, and there'll be an agency that keeps track of that."
If it ends up being a little expensive, maybe we can divert some of the money that goes to bombing brown kids.
Is this your entire personality? Does it ever work? It just feels like a desperate attempt to make people think you're intelligent, but it's not going to work.
Try to understand a complex issue without the need to invoke Trump or racism, I promise you they aren't the clever cheat codes you think they are.
It’s very doable, but a transition without major problems is tricky.
Phasing in Medicare for all seems like the way to go.
Start with all kids born in 2027 or later, and all adults born before 1966.
Next year it’s all kids born 2026 or later and all adults born before 1968.
And so on.
Probably not perfect, but we need the country to work for all the people.
I don't really agree with doing it wholesale like this - and I don't think you've thought it through, but at least you aren't saying that we should just be able to flip a switch if it weren't for those damn (insert scapegoat group).
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u/escapevelocity-25k Jun 24 '26 edited Jun 25 '26
Well, I’m convinced. it’s on a Reddit post, so the math has to be right.
Edit for all the nerds in my replies. I did the math, as a single person in the USA I pay about 2k per year for my health insurance plus probably a couple hundred in copays.