To be clear, it isn’t free healthcare. In Canada we pay our taxes and the government administers the health insurance system. In Ontario where I live it’s the Ontario Health Insurance Plan. It covers most doctors visits and most treatments. I have Hodgins Lymphoma and am nearing the end of my treatment. Dozens of doctors visits, CT scans, x-rays, an echo cardiogram, a respiratory study, two PET scans, and all the drugs and the only thing I’ve paid for out of pocket is parking, and the hospital where I’m being treated just put in free parking for cancer patients and gave me a parking pass. Our government negotiates the price of drugs at the national level and regulates drug prices. Companies aren’t allowed to raise the price of a drug that is on the market unless there is a corresponding improvement in benefit to the patient. They can’t add a coloured band to a capsule, rename the drug (Losec to Prilosec, for example) and double or triple the price. Generic drugs are the same. That’s why epipens are $100 here and not $600 like in the US. There has been no substantion improvement in their benefit to patients so the price can’t go up.
Universal healthcare isn’t perfect but 22 of 23 highly developed countries in the world have it and the US profits before people system is grotesque.
I don’t think many Americans in favor of universal healthcare think it’s going to cost nothing. Of course, taxes will increase. But we already pay for private healthcare. Most of us via a payroll deduction.
I don’t like the term “free healthcare”, because most of us would be paying for it in taxes, it would be more accurate to call it “socialized healthcare”.
Saying “I want free healthcare” allows the media to twist your words and make you look like some “entitled brat” that “want everything for free”.
Universal healthcare
Insurance is already a socialized program- just a private one. Creating public health care simply removes the profit incentive.
Or ya know, simply Public Healthcare. Because it’s for public. End of topic.
Keep it simple and call it “healthcare”. No need to qualify it with anything.
It healthcare has a own risk (literal translation, I’m not sure about the English term) in which the first costs are out of pocket until you reach a certain amount (400-800 depending on your insurance package).
So it’s not ‘free’ as you don’t pay for all of it, but you can’t go into crippling debt over medical payments.
The ones who still think Obamacare and ACA are different things definitely need a catchy label and marketing if they’re gonna vote for it.
Or just lie to them, their own leaders have learned it doesn’t matter what you tell them. Call it the “everyone gets a puppy” Bill or whatever. Then tell them they got a free puppy. They won’t know they didn’t.
They won’t know they didn’t.
We have concepts for a puppy.
Single payer healthcare is fine.
The single payer is the government
The government doesn’t have any money. They decide how to spend our taxes…
The government doesn’t get money from taxes. It prints money, the taxes are how it removes money from circulation.
Don’t call it “free”, it sounds like you are so out of touch with reality that you don’t know that healthcare has costs.
The word is “universal”. In my country, I paying for healthcare, but not as much as wealthly people here do. That’s the main argument for it: the rich subsidize healtcare for the poor.
In my country I pay for health INSURANCE through income tax. I get healthcare for free. I call it free because I don’t pay to go to the doctor or the hospital. ** So why is this distinction important to me? Because this means I don’t have to worry about paying for healthcare. I don’t save any money by not going to the doctor. I don’t loose access to health care if I loose my job. As long as I am a citizen here, money and healthcare are two unrelated concerns.
I know that money is going from my salary and in some way to the hospitals etc, there’s no way around that. But this way I don’t have to worry about it. Not when paying my bills, not when needing health care.
I think their issue is everyone getting it. In American culture and Christianity, love must be conditional.
Only correct behaviour would mean you get rewarded/supported.
Their issue isn’t giving it away for free, their issue is not being able to classify certain members of society as a underclass that don’t deserve anything unless they conform to their values.
So it’s about power and control. Universal health care means you have no power over these individuals and what values they live by.
Charity is the bandaid covering a societal failure
A bandaid that lets wealthy people get an ego boost and a tax write off
There’s no virtue signalling in paying taxes
They don’t want the possibility of helping everyone, there could be someone they don’t like in there!
Charity is our choice. Taxes are the force of the government. Everything you want funded by others should be funded by charity. We shouldn’t be forced to pay for each other’s choices.
This is an acceptable thing to believe if you’re a teenager or younger. Past that it’s just embarrassing.
It’s what most MEGA supporters believe. Well, I say believe but that rather implies that they’ve thought about it, it’s what they’ve been told to parrot.
Which I suspect is what we’re dealing with here.
Yeah why dance all night when you can go join a mob and shout angrily at passersby all day?
