Presumably, you have insurance — which means you, along with the pool of insured individuals, are already paying for healthcare. But what you’re really paying for is a rapacious, profit-driven company whose sole purpose is to take as much money from you as possible while denying you care whenever it can. That’s the system we have now — a cartel that inserts itself between you and your doctor, enriching itself in the process.
A far better system would be a single, nationwide insurance provider that covers everyone. Unlike private insurers, it wouldn’t operate for profit — meaning no money would be skimmed off the top. You’d pay as little as possible, and the insurance would cover whatever you need — without the constant fear of being denied care. We already have such a system: it’s called Medicare. The problem is that it only covers the elderly. What we need is Medicare for All, ensuring universal coverage while allowing people to continue seeing private doctors and using private hospitals — offering better care than the public systems in Canada and the U.K. The solution is simple: a single-payer, public insurance system — Medicare for All.
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Keelai (36149)
4 hours ago
I agree with you 100%.
But the 2024 election has now endangered Medicare and other programs for regular folks. Our government safety net is being dismantled right now by sociopath billionaires who want to transfer the money to themselves. And millions are going to lose their healthcare as Medicaid expansion is rolled back, fed workers are fired, and Medicare and Medicaid are defunded.
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maixiu (2857)
4 hours ago
Our health care system is a public-private disaster, no doubt. But a Medicare for all system isn't what I want to do when my country is awash in genetic aliens looking for as many freebies as they can cram into their sombreros.
Even in countries where there is demographic uniformity, universal healthcare faces extreme challenges. Taiwan instituted their universal health care system in the mid 90's. It's a country reasonably prosperous, with a strong cooperative ethos, and an ideal-sized population. But in 30 years it's faced a string of rising premiums, rising co-pays, and ever-increasing restrictions on coverage.
It's bad enough here that foreigners flood our emergency rooms while never paying a bill. Imagine them now filling the waiting room at your primary care doctor's office. I absolutely agree that we have to look after our own but until we sort out the demographic nightmare in the U.S. we're not in a position to enact any more gibs programs.
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curiousMInd101 (4581)
2 hours ago
I agree about foreigners and immigrants — which is why, alongside implementing Medicare for All — we need to halt all immigration, both legal and illegal, except perhaps from Europe, and carry out mass deportations. In fact, this could even be done in phases. Instead of rolling out Medicare for All all at once, we could start by lowering the eligibility age by ten years — deport more people — then lower it again.
To fund it, we could implement a payroll tax similar to Social Security, establish a social wealth fund combined with tariffs, or even adopt Bernie Sanders’ proposal of a small tax on financial transactions. I’m just thinking outside the box here, but the point is — it absolutely can be done, and done well. We just need the will to make it happen.
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maixiu (2857)
2 hours ago
I'd like to see foreign remittences by non-citizens heavily taxed, 100% ought to do, and those funds used to pay for health care.
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