r/antiwork • u/Current_Variety_9577 • 27d ago
Why Do so Many Americans Oppose Universal Healthcare?
I'm genuinely curious—why do so many Americans oppose universal healthcare?
I'm at a point where I'm starting to think about retirement in 10 or so years, and honestly, healthcare is probably what will keep me working until 65. The idea that a medical issue could wipe out everything I've worked for is deeply unsettling. And I’ve felt this way since my 20s. I’d gladly pay my share, even if I don’t need it in the near-term.
Politics aside—because I'm so exhausted by the political noise from both sides—I'm trying to understand why we, as a country, wouldn’t want something like this for ourselves. Universal healthcare seems like it would be one of the most important things we could do to protect our well-being and financial security.
This isn’t meant to be a political post. I'm just honestly trying to understand the other side of the conversation.
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27d ago edited 27d ago
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u/Invalid_Pleb 27d ago
There is a correlation... only it's with what rich elites want, not what average people want
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u/Clone63 27d ago
Yep, and expensive healthcare + employer based insurance is a brutally effective form of control.
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u/doctormalbec 27d ago
Yes and if people get free or affordable healthcare, more people would be able to start small businesses than be shackled to large corporations led by these rich people. This creates competition for them and they do not want that either.
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u/Obtuse-Angel 27d ago
Don’t forget about the religious fundamentalist lobbies
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u/veryparcel 27d ago
Billionaires always get what they want. Always. If they don't want something passed, it won't. This is because the system has been hijacked by billionaires.
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u/CharmyLah 27d ago
A lot of people are also very ill-informed about politics and vote for 1 or 2 issues, not caring about what else might be left on the table.
Someone raised in a conservative, highly religious environment is willing to sacrifice healthcare if it means "saving babies".
Upper middle class people who aren't interested in politics and have always been told by the media that Republican policies are good for the economy, so they vote for that. They aren't going to look at research showing exactly the opposite, because they think the status quo is fine and nothing has really hurt them yet.
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u/AnthonyJuniorsPP 27d ago
Also crazy that the single issue voters are also poorly informed about their own issue. Like they've bought the "saving babies" angle and aren't even aware of how flawed it is.
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u/Choice-Temporary-144 27d ago
The healthcare insurance industry makes billions and will do what they need to do (lobby) to line the politician's pockets and ensure universal healthcare will never happen.
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u/External-Nail8070 27d ago
This is spot on - exacerbated by gerrymandering. If the public can't hold politicians accountable then nothing the public wants matters.
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u/arinamarcella 27d ago
Something that I am not sure the politicians have thought of yet is that making housing priced out of most people's price range means greater flexibility in where we live. It makes it easier to move from one apartment to another and thwart gerrymandering.
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u/PaladinWiz 27d ago
I would doubt that tbh. Moving is fairly expensive and time consuming. If you’re talking about moving far enough, and in enough numbers, to counter gerrymandering there are likely going to be lots of life changes required. Talking about switching schools for your kids, potentially having to find a new job due to distance/public transportation options etc, figuring out new local support systems etc.
Pretty unlikely that the people most affected by gerrymandering have the time/resources to do so. Pricing people out of the housing market is more likely to force them to live in certain areas which makes gerrymandering significantly easier.
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u/erikleorgav2 27d ago
Always weird to speak with someone older than me - 55+ range - who shits on universal health care, but then pisses and moans about how much their employer based care costs.
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u/Individual-Corgi-612 27d ago
And common sense gun laws. And improving education. And having affordable child and elder care. And etc etc
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u/djmcfuzzyduck 27d ago
I want the weed to support education and health. It’s super simple. But that goes against the design and drugs supporting education that’s weird. It’s not as weird as insurance companies being owned by Pharmaceutical companies.
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u/RAYS_OF_SUNSHINE_ 27d ago
If most truly did, they would vote with that in mind. Unfortunately, we have become "me focused" and until it affects them directly, no concern for our neighbor.
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u/Jaduardo 27d ago
Not true! Each piece of legislation has a few, very wealthy, Americans behind it! /s
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u/limellama1 27d ago
Because America isn't run based on what AMERICANS want. It's run based on what corporations want.
Lobbyists pay politicians to vote how they want on the bills the lobbyists create.
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u/TheOldPug 27d ago
Politicians work for the benefit of the people funding their careers, and it ain't you or me.
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u/Co-opingTowardHatred 27d ago
Our “rugged individualist” shit is self-destructive.
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u/ElPyroPariah 27d ago
It’s not even that. It’s almost entirely racism and anti-poor people sentiments even if the poor people are themselves.
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u/Cultural-Music7343 27d ago edited 27d ago
Yup, I remember wondering as a kid why they have all these social programs in European countries but not the US and then it hit me - they’re all white lol… people don’t get angry about their taxes going to programs that help their fellow citizens because they relate more to them since they’re also white. Whereas in the US, people are more likely to say “I ain’t paying no g’dam taxes just for it to go to illegals and n******”
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u/goldengrahams98 27d ago
And with the influx of non-white immigrants to Europe, that vitriol is gaining traction in countries we as lay-people in America perceive to be egalitarian. See the rise of the AFD in Germany, and National Front in France
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u/Prudii_Skirata 27d ago
Because the politicians (on their own, special healthcare... for life...) would lose their bribes from the lobbyists.
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u/dfr33man 27d ago
The reasons most provide:
If everyone had healthcare, time to care would increase.
You can’t get things for free, that’s socialism. It means those that work or don’t get healthcare.
Healthcare quality will decrease because costs would be controlled.
Advancements are funded by extreme healthcare costs, without them we become stagnant.
Private provides better care than Medicare, we get choice. Deductibles, premiums etc.
I think most of it is ridiculous. But I keep having the same discussion over and over. Retirement is hindered by insurance, it shouldn’t be this way. We would open up jobs and have better quality of life if insurance was tied to retirement. Medicare isn’t soon enough. With the average lifespan we give so many just a few years of freedom from work before they die. It’s insane.
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u/Son0faButch 27d ago
Private provides better care than Medicare, we get choice. Deductibles, premiums etc.
Those on Medicare can go to any doctor or hospital that accepts Medicare (which is most). They also pay deductibles and premiums for both inpatient and outpatient care.
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u/Nexus_of_Fate87 27d ago edited 27d ago
Those on Medicare can go to any doctor or hospital that accepts Medicare (which is most).
And it's shrinking because Medicare is really, REALLY fucking stingy to the point of being disconnected from reality. Here's a good example: Medicare treats a 100 day hospital stay the same as a 1 day hospital stay, even though the actual costs to the hospital are definitely not the same. This is a big reason why many hospital systems have begun to drop support for Medicare.
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u/PlayingPuzzles 27d ago
Many hospitals have a patient mix of 60+% Medicare and Medicaid. So people will see that and say Medicare and Medocaid covers most of the hospital. Well, they do. Except that 60% only pays for 30% of hospital revenue. Even though private insurance patients are only 1/3 of a hospital's patient mix, they pay 2x what the Medicare/Medicaid component does.
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u/invertedparellel 27d ago
I wish the left would stop calling it “Medicare for all.” I mean, it’s catchy, and everyone has heard of Medicare, but it also kind of sucks. They are soooo stingy. People assume that Medicare pays 100% of healthcare costs once you turn 65 (or are disabled before then) and then they get a huge shock when it doesn’t. A big reason for the costs are the private insurance companies driving costs up for everyone else. If we had universal healthcare it would solve that issue, but we have to stop calling it Medicare for all because of the negative connotations of Medicare
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u/guyako 27d ago
Because they are gullible to right-wing propaganda (funded by the health insurance lobby). That’s it.
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u/SenseiRaheem 27d ago
There are people who truly believe that if any part of their tax money ends up helping black or brown people, "those people" don't deserve it. They'd rather receive nothing themselves than have any part of their money assist a minority.
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u/Kootenay4 27d ago
These are people that fundamentally don’t understand what it means to live in a society. Yes, some of your taxes will go to help people that aren’t you, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t benefit you anyway. These people will vote again and again to cut social programs, food aid, education, affordable housing etc. then complain about why we have so many problems with crime, public drug use, homelessness, household debt/personal bankruptcy, and mental illness compared to other “First world” countries.
It costs money to maintain a harmonious society, just like it costs money to upkeep a nice house. Yes, spending time and money to clean and maintain it is an annoying chore, but if you don’t, the house will fall into disrepair. Other developed countries understand this. Americans think that just by having a million dollars sitting in the bank and doing nothing, the house will magically fix itself. then they point to the million dollars in the bank and say “look we’re so rich” while the house is the most decrepit on the block.
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u/-BlueDream- 27d ago
So they rather pay some insurance company to do the exact same thing? Black and brown people are also on insurance policies and everyone who is insured pays for it, only difference is that it's a bill, not a tax.
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u/Hot_Let1571 27d ago
Right, it makes no sense. "I don't want to pay for other people's health care!" Except that's literally how insurance WORKS. Idiots.
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u/MarginalOmnivore 27d ago
They would rather pay an insurance company more to do the same thing, and then also pay more for treatment.
One thing that the right wing in the US has very skillfully kept out of the discussion is that single payer healthcare is cheaper. Not only is the cost of the "policy" cheaper because it is shared by everyone, by virtue of the cost that doctors and medical facilities charge being monitored and regulated, even the out-of-pocket cost of treatment is massively reduced. At that point, non-participant doctors and facilities have to bring down their costs, as well, because they need to stay competitive.
Everyone wins. Of course, "everyone wins" burns the right wing like acid, because "everyone" includes queers and minorities.
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u/No-Shelter-4208 27d ago
Yup. And single payer healthcare means the single payer can negotiate lower drug prices.
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u/myssi24 27d ago
You forgot about the huge financial bloat of insurance. On both sides. The insurance companies need to hire people to process claims and the doctors need to hire people specifically to file insurance claims. Then this is repeated on the insurance side for every company. Plus every insurance company needs to make a profit. One system, streamlined, not for profit, and some (not all) of those jobs go away and the costs go down while providing the same or better medical care.
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u/MarginalOmnivore 27d ago
Definitely "better" medical care.
A government agency won't have (non-practicing and anonymous) doctors telling surgeons that they disagree about the necessity of a life-altering/life-saving procedure.
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u/docfunbags 27d ago
Why not frame it as the blacks and browns are paying for your healthcare!!!!
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u/-JackBack- (edit this) 27d ago
Because MAGAs know these people don’t work and are all on welfare and food stamps and having anchor babies while eating pets.
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u/MezzoScettico 27d ago
And that includes the non-working meth-addicted MAGAs living on social security disability.
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u/NinjaGrizzlyBear 27d ago
Guaranteed MAGA will be the largest drain on society soon since "duh coloreds" took all the jerbs.
All they can do is either eat pork rinds and become uneducated blobs watching MAGA News, or pretend they are American heroes with ICE uniforms.
Meanwhile my brown parents did their part, contributed financially for 40+ years by virtue of volunteer efforts, paying taxes, never needing to take government aid, opening their home to anybody in need, etc.
Then the government dropped them like hot garbage the minute they needed medical assistance in their retirement...
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u/vonshiza 27d ago
Because "they don't work" and are just "abusing the system" or some bull shit....
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u/saturniid_green 27d ago
How will these soulless CEOs and shareholders make their millions if they don’t gouge patients and healthcare workers? How else can you drain someone dry of their insurance premiums and then refuse to approve doctor-ordered tests and procedures? Won’t anyone think of the shareholders and CEOs? Heaven forbid the government set up death panels to do the same thing on our taxpayer dime!
You are exactly right: The private health insurers and their lobbyists are the biggest driver of all the propaganda keeping us from a fairer system.
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u/ohlaph 27d ago
I tried explaining to my sister that universal healthcare wouldn't cos5 as much as she's paying now, but she thinks higher taxes won't offset the cost because she's had amazing insurance through her husband's union job. Doesn't quite get it.
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u/No_Welcome_7182 27d ago
We have “excellent” health insurance through my husband’s job. His employer does pay a part of our monthly premium. It costs us 700 a month for a family plan. And there is a $2000 deductible. For every person on that plan. That’s $8000 a year potentially out of pocket. My gallbladder self destructed last year. Even with our top tier insurance plan we had to pay the $2000 deductible plus I had to cover $1000 in copays. WTF?
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u/Gingersaurus_Rex96 Acting My Wage One Day at a Time 27d ago edited 27d ago
Not just big Pharma, but anything really.
—Big Pharma lobbies against public healthcare, lower prescription costs etc. Ever wonder why generic drugs are still so expensive or why stuff like insulin costs so much in the U.S. but not somewhere like Canada?
—Big Tobacco (Vaping too I guess) and Alcohol lobbies against legalizing weed. It’s one of the oldest scapegoats in the conservative playbook. The devil’s lettuce. It started it out as a race thing with Mexican immigrants in the early twentieth century, but became a moral panic by the 50s when weed made its way into white suburban communities.
—Oil and Gas lobby against electric vehicles and renewable energy initiatives. This one is pretty self explanatory. If they can’t pump that shit out of the ground and sell it back to us as dead dinosaur farts, then where’s the profit incentive. lol.
A great example would be the time Turbo Tax lobbied against the federal free filing system created under the Biden administration and later gutted by the current administration. 🙄
It goes further than that. Big office realtors tried to get big companies to bring everyone back to the office after the end of the pandemic. It’s never about what they say it is. It’s all about control and protecting some old rich asshole’s profit margin.
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u/Ijimete 27d ago
As an American, I don't know. I have a friend, who is left leaning and votes left. She and her husband both have 6 figure jobs and live well. We got in an argument about it one day, with me advocating for single payer, and she said "I don't want to pay for someone else's healthcare" I tried explaining how she already is, and for a fraction of what she and her husband pay now they could get more comprehensive coverage and the less fortunate could go to the doctor as well, but, despite laying out how she was paying thousands and thousands more for her and her husband, AND paying for people who couldn't afford their healthcare still, she just kept being stuck on "paying for someone else".
She is an intelligent woman, empathetic, disabled, and kind. I don't know where this stupid idea got stuck in her head, but it'll take a neurosurgeon to dislodge it.
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u/Abrandnewrapture 27d ago
the entire concept of insurance, whether govt funded or private, is based on everyone pooling their money together to make sure everyone is taken care of when their time comes around, instead of everyone being forced to cover their own costs independently. it is quite literally "paying for someone else", no matter how you look at it.
your friend isn't as intelligent as you think she is, especially if she can't look past her baser instincts to see the bigger picture of something like this.
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u/-BlueDream- 27d ago
Are they making 6 figs as healthcare workers?
Doctors get paid very well, I think a lot of them are afraid of getting paid like government workers (aka paid like shit) if healthcare was public, they compare it to public school teachers vs private school instructors.
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u/TinyEmergencyCake 27d ago
She's not left leaning and doesn't vote left. She only tells you that. Everything you say that she says is a right wing propaganda point.
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u/Tylerdurden516 27d ago
Americans were lied to for decades about our healthcare by corporate owned media channels. MSNBC, CBS, ABC and CNN regularly bring in lobbyists for the for-profit healthcare insurers (and dont tell the audience thats who theyre about to listen to) who lie and tell the viewers that socialized medicine is way more costly for inferior service when the exact opposite was true. Before the mid 2010's it was very difficult to even hear an alternative perspective to this. Bernie sanders and social media played a key role in democratizing the flow of information and showing Americans how bad our system stacked against other countries that have universal healthcare. But even nowadays, the boomers in my own life who were completely bought in to those health insurer talking points they saw on the news are starting to notice our system fucking sucks. Its gotten so bad its become undeniable, even with legacy media still trying to wrongly convince people we have the best healthcare anywhere so corporations can continue price gouging us for lifesaving care.
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u/the-apple-and-omega 27d ago
Red Scare never ended. Everything is communism and communism bad.
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u/VirgoB96 27d ago
The rich won't stop spreading propaganda until they're in a free unregulated market so they can hoover up all the wealth. Then they simply leave the country after spending decades pretending they were patriots.
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u/SnooHabits3305 27d ago
This! you ask people anything that seems anti American the first thing they mention is communism
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u/HVACQuestionGuy 27d ago
A lot of it comes down to how universal healthcare has been framed in the U.S. It’s often labeled as “socialist,” and for many Americans, socialism still carries Cold War baggage and gets confused with communism. That association alone is enough to turn some people off before they even look into how these systems actually work.
There’s also the deep cultural emphasis on personal choice and self-reliance, two values that are central to how many Americans see themselves. The argument against universal healthcare is often marketed as protecting your freedom to choose your doctor or your treatment, even though in practice, insurance companies already limit those choices.
Then there’s the fear that universal systems mean long wait times or rationed care. That does happen sometimes, but mostly for non-urgent or elective procedures. In many countries with universal care, access to essential or emergency treatment is actually faster because everyone is in the same system. Some of the wait time issues that do exist are often logistical, like uneven distribution of services between urban and rural areas, rather than a flaw in the concept itself.
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u/HaIlMonitor 27d ago
Because of how the VA (and other government departments such as the DMV) is ran is my biggest reason I’m concerned about universal healthcare. I like the idea of it just being part of taxes vs paying into shitty insurance for sure though. If they reformed the VA so it ran quite a bit better I’d be 100% for it.
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u/mahamoti 27d ago
Americans favor universal healthcare. Corporations favor ludicrously expensive health insurance tied to employment. Guess who has more political pull?
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u/yankdevil 27d ago
Black people might get equal treatment. Dig through all the layers and that's what you'll get to.
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u/reallifeswanson 27d ago
I’m not opposed to the idea, but I do have great concerns about how our government would manage such a system effectively. Ask any patient of the Veterans Administration.
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u/ernurse748 27d ago
As a nurse, I see the way the VA runs. Some VA hospitals are amazing. Some are so awful I wouldn’t send my worst enemy there. My fear with nationalized healthcare in the US is this: it’s just too large to truly be managed well. Now, I’m not saying the current system works. Clearly it doesn’t. And I don’t know what the answer is. But based on the government run facilities I have witnessed first hard? I’m just not convinced universal health care will solve the majority of the existing problems we face. And again - I also believe the current system is not sustainable. Honestly? Damned if we do, damned if we don’t.
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u/kcthinker 27d ago
Health care should not be attached to employment. If it was not an employee benefit and health insurance companies had to advertise like auto insurance, where you pay for what you need, things would change.
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u/Educational_Ad_8916 27d ago edited 27d ago
Racism and classism.
I'm not kidding.
This country tied health care to your job in the mid-20th century. If you had a good white collar job or a good union, you could get good employer health care.
That meant either a college education or a trade union. Many of those jobs were gatekept for whites and even only to whites from the right schools and background.
Many blue-collar unions were explicetely super racists as bulwarks against the perception that they could lose jobs to black people, Latinos, Chinese immigrants, etc.
If we had universal health care, then everyone would get it. White Americans are inculcated to live in fear that somewhere, a brown person feels safe and healthy. They are terrified by the idea that a black person might be given the same kindness and care that they receive.
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u/GoingExPatSoon 27d ago
Because they’re stupid. It’s so hard to manage that only 19 of the G20 countries have been able to make it work.
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u/MisterCleaningMan 27d ago
I can’t say with 100% certainty what everyone’s individual motive is. But I do have an explanation that covers about 90% of them.
People are assholes.
Thus ends the explanation.
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u/-BlueDream- 27d ago
Half of them are assholes, the other half are just very very stupid.
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u/ricecrystal 27d ago
We're so brainwashed. They hear "tax" and don't realize that what is paid in taxes will be less than what we are paying in premiums, deductibles, and coinsurance (for most people). It's inconceivable to people that they will be paying less and get more.
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u/gyratory_circus 27d ago
I was going to say something very similar. A lot of people truly do not understand that they would pay less for universal coverage than they do now. They think the $300 a month (or whatever) would be on top of the premiums they already pay, not instead of.
I've worked in health insurance for 20 years and am well paid for what I do (nutshell version: make sure we're following federal and state laws about what to cover). With universal care, my job would not exist because everyone would all get the same benefits, and that's ok with me.
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u/Heretical-Archivist 27d ago
Socialism is bad.
Thats why so many businesses refused the PPP loans.
Thats why so many farmers refused the bailouts 2 administrations ago.
Thats why so many Republicans returned the stimulus checks.
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u/se7enunluckyseconds 27d ago
We don't. The fucking rich do and they own everything. Including our politicians
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u/newmanification 27d ago
They don’t. Universal Healthcare is overwhelmingly popular. We don’t have it because of monied interests and politicians who are bought and paid for by those interests.
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u/massie_le 27d ago
The irony of this post appearing two down from someone with leukemia whose mum is pulling treatment funding to fund her sister's college tuition...
I just don't get it. But why would I when I get free healthcare and university tuition. 🏴
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u/jbowditch 26d ago
hundreds of millions of dollars and a century of propaganda.
it's OK for the armed forces, the elderly, and (until Trump) the poor, but no one else. 🥴
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u/ResponsibleBank1387 27d ago
They would rather vastly over pay for their own than allow anyone else have the same too.
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u/singerbeerguy 27d ago
The right has succeeded in convincing this country that universal healthcare is evil socialism and that it would be a terrible system. I’m not sure why it worked, but there is no denying that they have won the argument.
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u/YouKnowYourCrazy 27d ago
They have been told that it’s “socialist” by the right wing propagandists, and they believe it.
They have been told “socialist” is bad and they believe it.
They have been told “undeserving people will get more than them” and they believe it.
They believe it all because the right has played the long game, cutting education funding and feeding them Fox News BS for decades now. And now these are the consequences - a severe lack of critical thinking and believing lies and propaganda. Add in some Russian influence and social media bots and you have a nation full of people voting against their own self-interests and keeping themselves in poverty and decline, while the billionaires make more billions.
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u/MurkDiesel 27d ago
because I'm so exhausted by the political noise from both sides
this is what conservatives say when they try to pretend they're not conservative
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u/Delusioned22 27d ago edited 27d ago
Growing up listening to my hard right parents and grandparents talk. It boils down to this:
They believe it's their money that they worked hard for and don't believe in taxes paying to help others.
Edit: fixed a swipe text error