this post was submitted on 25 Sep 2023
1281 points (89.4% liked)
Political Memes
7989 readers
2416 users here now
Welcome to politcal memes!
These are our rules:
Be civil
Jokes are okay, but don’t intentionally harass or disturb any member of our community. Sexism, racism and bigotry are not allowed. Good faith argumentation only. No posts discouraging people to vote or shaming people for voting.
No misinformation
Don’t post any intentional misinformation. When asked by mods, provide sources for any claims you make.
Posts should be memes
Random pictures do not qualify as memes. Relevance to politics is required.
No bots, spam or self-promotion
Follow instance rules, ask for your bot to be allowed on this community.
No AI generated content.
Content posted must not be created by AI with the intent to mimic the style of existing images
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I wrote a whole 3 paragraph reply to this, but it crashed and now I'm too lazy to write it again.
But yes, this. "Everyone getting UBI and universal healthcare" is not far left. Far left is firebombing pharmaceutical companies or forceable seizure of private property to distribute amongst others, or enforced working arrangements to bring about equality.
What most Americans on Lemmy call "far left", I'd call "basic respect for your fellow man and the compassion to put others before yourself".
People who push UBI dont understand how economy and incentives work. Here in our EU country, we have universal healthcare and there is also some sort of UBI for a period of time if you were working previously, but lost your job or something. And its definitely not the saving grace people from US picturing it to be...
The public healtcare here is in rumbles and pre-colapse, you either wait for some essential treatments up to a week or you will pay up and go to a private ambulance anyway... The treatment you get are also basically on the bare necessary level. Most hospitals are buildings from soviet era, with minimal up-keeping and modernization... Many of those workers who work in state hospitals are under payed and overworked, so many of the younger ones just get up and go somewhere abroad where they are payed better for the same job. We have the most doctors post retirement age (65) still working (probably oldest average age in the whole world), due to qualified workers shortage, as they mostly leave. And thats the not so nice real picture, of what many of you from US want to implement.
Sure, first it will be nice and great to have free health care, but basically in every country they have it, the service quality slowly getting worse over the decades, as there is no incentive to modernize those hospitals that much, when its free after all, and you pay for it anyway, only that you pay for it with your taxes, so even the option to vote/choose with your wallet is removed from you...
I'd much rather wait a week for treatment than the... Currently zero treatment I'm getting right now in the US because I can't afford medical debt and the safety net systems in place repeatedly refuse to help with it.
Dont you pay a health insurance in US ? Because here you pay it and its mandatory - you basically pay it together with income tax, social insurance and health insurance - all directly deduced from your monthly paycheck... So its not like free free healthcare...
Here in America, you pay for insurance so that instead of going bankrupt when you have a baby or break your leg or have a heart attack, you only pay thousands of dollars.
Going to the doctor when sick still costs $500. You get "free" yearly check-ups with our healthcare... Sometimes.
Your healthcare is a lot cheaper compared to that. Ours is cheaper as long as you never get it and never need it.
I am a Canadian with a lot of American friends. I cannot believe how much they spend on healthcare. Here's some of the major issues I've spotted.
Their insurance payments are still higher than what is deducted from my paycheck and theirs doesn't scale with how much they make. Like it's insane the cost of what is being paid for healthcare. It's not a "tax" but it's still money you need to pay for a service that opting out of entirely will mean likely dying by something preventable. When I have been jobless or making so little money as to just scrape by my medical payments have dropped to zero. Theirs has just caused them to take risks by dropping it or forcing them more quickly into debt. Theirs is based out of something closer how many family members need coverage and how personally safe they want to be meaning there are less safe but cheaper options.
There are gaps where private insurance doesn't cover. You get taken accidentally to the wrong hospital in an ambulance you are immediately paying more for "out of network hospitals"
Insurance just covers a deductible, not all services have the same deductible so you can end up very poor for having the wrong kind of health issue. The only thing I have ever paid for in a situation is $100 for a cast. That is what an uninsured person in the US practically pays for an aspirin.
Their healthcare plans are often provided by their work meaning leaving their current jobs often mean putting themselves in financial or physical danger if they want to quit. This makes them more personally exploitable to business as a whole.
Medical coverage is approved or denied by insurance adjusters. These people are NOT doctors and are constantly under pressure to deny anything that isn't highly defensible in a courtroom. This means you essentially have random people informing your available healthcare options which is basically practicing medicine without a licence.
Their hospitals are not faster where it counts. You still get placed in queue for life threatening issues at about the same rate. Emergency rooms, oncology and all the specialists take about the same time. The one place where it's better for timeframes are joint surgeries and elective surgeries.
If you are personally unhappy with the state of your health care then fight to make the funding of it more of a thing and be prepared to chip in. Of course it isn't free. It's not a charity where doctors are just doing side gigs to help out and medical equipment is donated. Everyone gets bent out of shape that "I don't have a choice it's taxed!" but look over the fence and you'll realize how fairly our system is priced and run based on that lack of choice. Like I will never feel as unsafe here as a citizen as my American friends. I literally worry about them so much whenever they are unemployed, travelling to a new city or in the midst of divorces, job transfers or any period of financial instability because it's a sword of Damocles. We need to reinvigorate a pride in doing one's civic duty to pitch in and make things better across the board rather than just "got mine, fuck you." Creating a public good does have cost but you are unprepared for what a private system will charge for the same thing but less safe.