Summary
A Gallup poll shows 62% of Americans believe the government should ensure universal healthcare coverage—the highest support in over a decade.
While Democratic backing remains strong at 90%, support among Republicans and Independents has also grown since 2020.
Public frustration with the for-profit healthcare system has intensified following the arrest of a suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, reportedly motivated by anger at the industry.
Recent controversies, including Anthem’s rollback of anesthesia coverage cuts, and debates over Medicare privatization highlight ongoing dissatisfaction with the system.
How many of those 62% voted for the guy who wants to let insurance companies deny even harder?
too fuckin’ many, and how many sat this one out?
Could be 0, most people didn’t bother to vote in the last election.
36% of the eligible voting population did not vote.
I am not a mathematologist, but I’m pretty sure 36 is less than 62.
36+62=98 what did that last 2% do lol?
Not sure if I’m getting wooshed here, but in case you’re serious:
You’re adding percentages of two different groups
- 36% of voters did not vote, presumably 64% did
- 62% of voters want universal healthcare, presumably 38% don’t
It’s nonsensical to add 62+36 and wonder about the “missing” 2
Nah, I just fucked up and now will have to live with the shame lol. Thanks for the correction though.
I thought I’d read it was higher, guess I am mistaken.
Here’s the thing… having health coverage doesn’t mean jack crap.
I’ve told my story before, it got best of’d on reddit and such, but it bears repeating why we need Universal Health Care:
tl;dr lost my doctors due to an insurance change 4 weeks in to a 6 week open heart surgery recovery…
In 2018, my company was in the process of being sold. No big deal, above my paygrade, nothing for me to worry about.
Then I got sick right after Thanksgiving. Really bad heartburn that lasted 5 days. It wasn’t heartburn. I had a heart attack. 12/3/2018 I had open heart surgery, single bypass, and that started a 6 week recovery clock.
On 1/1/2019, the sale of my company closed and we officially had new owners. I also officially lost all of my doctors because the new employers don’t do Kaiser in Oregon. They do it in WA and CA, but each state has to be negotiated and they never had presence here.
1/2/2019 I start working with Aetna to find doctors, hospitals, etc. Beyond the cardiologist I need a new pharmacist, podiatrist, diabetes care and a general “doctor” doctor.
Fortunately, my new employer is a big enough fish, they have their own concierge at Aetna and she gets me into the Legacy Health system.
On 1/3/2019 I start developing complications, but I don’t know it at the time. It starts with a cough. All the time. Then, when I try to lay down, like to sleep, I’m drowning, literally choking and gagging.
The concierge and I try to get an appointment, we’re told 2-3 months. For a dude still recovering from open heart surgery? Best they could do is 2 weeks. 1/14/2019.
I can’t lay down to sleep so I buy a travel neck pillow and sleep sitting up.
I get to see the new doctor at the “official” end of the 6 week recovery. He doesn’t know me or my history so he wants to run tests.
I’m sitting at home playing video games and waiting on test results when the call comes… Congestive heart failure. Report to the ER immediately.
My heart developed an irregular heart beat, which caused fluid build up in my chest. They admitted me and were getting ready to pull fluid off me.
“What happened to your foot?”
“I dunno, what happened to my foot? I can’t feel my feet.”
Remember when I said I was sitting around playing video games, waiting for test results? Yeah, my foot was touching a radiator and I didn’t know it. 3rd degree burns, first four toes. Pinkie was spared.
So I’m in the hospital a week. I lose 4 liters of water per day. 50 lbs. of water. No wonder I was drowning. Regular bandage changes.
So now I’m facing two procedures. Electrocardio version to fix my heart, skin grafts to fix my toes.
This whole time the new insurance covers 80% until I reach the out of pocket maximum of $6,500. Then it will cover 100%.
The old insurance? ER visit for heart attack, hospital admission, 8 days in the hospital, open heart bypass… $250. $100 for meds and all the oxygen bottles I can carry.
So we hit the out of pocket maximum almost immediately. My wife had a problem with her foot running through the Seattle airport. The doctor who did her toe amputation was decided to be out of network so that was another $1,100.
I was never unemployed through all this. I had enough vacation and sick time banked to cover it. Cobra didn’t apply. Continuity of care didn’t apply because the new hospital DID have a cardiac department. Buying my old insurance wasn’t an option, it was far too expensive without employer backing. Income is too high for assistance (thank god) and I took steps to max out my HSA account, which is good because we drained it twice.
Three 1 week hospital stays (2 for me, 1 for my wife), multiple ER visits, two more major medical procedures… That would be enough to break most people even with good insurance.
So if you read any of that, let me ask you something… Why does the quality of my health care and my quality of life have to depend on who I work for and what insurance companies they choose to work with?
Why does the quality of my health care and my quality of life have to depend on who I work for and what insurance companies they choose to work with?
Because Nixon was in bed with big business, then Ford fumbled the gas crisis, and finally Carter naively trusted Congress to transition from employee mandates to single payer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_health_care_reform_in_the_United_States
Aside from agreeing with you. Question. Why didn’t cobra apply? I would have thought it could. And did you have an option to pay the full cost of coverage out of pocket for any length of time? Not that any of this should matter, just curious in case I, or anyone I know, ends up in the same situation.
. Why didn’t cobra apply?
Because he didn’t leave his company. His company changed their insurance.
I thought it was more about the insurance than the company. :( it should be.
How is it only 62%?! Who actually looks at their medical bill and thinks, “Yep, this is accurate and absolutely worth every penny”? I have health insurance, and I still avoid going to the doctor unless I’m practically dying because I simply can’t afford it.
And yet, I’m stuck paying nearly $10k a year for insurance—just in case something catastrophic happens—only to still face massive copays, out-of-pocket costs, and coverage denials. It’s completely counterintuitive.
The system is broken.
Screw the insurance industry.
Screw the state of medical care in the U.S.Healthcare shouldn’t be a privilege—it’s a human right. Normalize that.
The other 38% are either young and healthy enough to have never have had to deal with the healthcare industry or are just so staunchly individualistic they’d rather die than let someone else get a ‘handout’. ‘Taxes are theft’, ‘why should MY money go to blah’, me me me. Lack of empathy and/or a very naïve understanding of what society is actually for.
Red state here - the biggest argument I hear all the time is that if we get public healthcare the care quality will go down and we will have to wait 8 hrs to get seen for a heart attack. They point to Canada’s system and say most Canadians wish they had our system. So the answer, as always, is brainwashing.
Don’t forget government death panels.
Oh how could I forget about the government death panels! Yeah we’d much rather leave that to the insurance companies.
. They point to Canada’s system and say most Canadians wish they had our system.
Most Canadians are extremely glad they don’t have our system.
and say most Canadians wish they had our system
So they lie.
i say this as a huge supporter of single payer but also as a trans person.
in an ideal world, a national health system is great but then you also look at places like the uk where wait times for gender affirming care are up to four years and both puberty blockers are on the verge of being banned by the left of centre party.
The reasons for that, though, are largely because the NHS has been under attack by the right wing for more than a decade. It was a huge inflection point for Brexit, and there’s been a major effort to break it so they can point at how broken it is.
Don’t use the NHS issues to judge how such a system would or should work for trans care. It’s been actively sabotaged.
my point was that it’s susceptible to it in the first place… and the attacks on trans care come from both the tories and labour
All social* systems are susceptible to bigotry, and fascistic capitalism most of all.
Labour isn’t perfect by any stretch, but pretending both sides have been equally to blame is just as unfortunate in the UK as it is in the US, Germany, Australia, and Canada. One side may be slow to put your needs to the fore, but make no mistake, the other wants you dead.
Yeah, I mean… You ain’t getting shit with Trump.
I vote blue out of harm reduction, but don’t kid yourself.
The single greatest acheivement Democrats crow about was a healthcare band-aid originally conceived by the Heritage Foundation and instituted by a Republican governor designed to further enshrine private, for profit insurers like United Healthcare cut in as the entire point.
When the people screamed “Help us left wing from this for profit deathcare hell! Here’s a supermajority!” they protected the profit motive in what gets covered and declared victory.
They can make excuses, there’s always several, but as the decades go by and nothing changes, advocating patience starts to sound like “well just be patient, maybe my nepo great grandkids will magically decide to start being civil and equitable with your peasant great grandkids, lol.”
There is no planet on which UHC or anyone else wanted to be forced to cover patients with pre-existing conditions at anything resembling a reasonable cost.
Do I think Obama gave up way too much in negotiations? Absolutely. Do I think you’re a moron if you think this was “all part of private insurance’s master plan”? Absolutely.
There’s a reason Trump keeps talking about “replacing” Obamacare. And it’s not just his ego, private insurance wants it gutted.
Just to be clear, the primary negotiator for ACA was Biden, not Obama. What did he do? Biden immediately gave away the public option as a show of good faith so they could pass something with bipartisan compromise (which always means corpos are screwing the people.) The result was pretty much what we have today, 30mil extra Americans funneled into the pockets of private insurance companies for worse care at greater expense.
It sounds like you’re saying scrapping this and letting private insurers go back to not covering people with pre-existing conditions is Trump’s plan. Hope you’re wrong, that would be exceedingly cruel.
There shouldn’t be a profit motive in denying people healthcare - in fact healthcare should be a basic human right we guarantee to everyone in the richest country in the world, which means private insurers have no business in this business.
What did he do? Biden immediately gave away the public option as a show of good faith
Nope. We only lost the public option because of Joe Lieberman saying he wouldn’t support it and we needed all 60 Dem senators to vote for it.
For profit insurers absolutely did, because they did the math and knew the mandate would more than make up for the new rules, and it did, hence the ever rising profits since. I’m sure neoliberals and Republicans don’t see that as a problem because herp derp it’ll trickle down lol, but everyone else correctly does.
That was the supposed trade, but surprise surprise, for all the protections the ACA proponents claim it enshrines, they still find way to initially deny 1 out of 7 claims, and now some with AI.
Great deal, a larger captive customer base without a public option, and still denying swaths of claims using technicalities and loopholes their floors of attorneys never stopped working on in bad faith since. Because publicly traded companies never, ever operate in good faith towards their customers, there’s always an angle.
It helped some people, but it didn’t address the core problem of American Healthcare that makes it the most expensive on Earth with some of the worst outcomes in the developed world at all: the profit motive middleman dictating who gets what care instead of doctors. The more Americans who prepared for illness and paid them in good faith that they murder, the more gold in their pockets, to the applause of the profiteers on Wall Street. 🔥🇺🇸🔥
I believe that was done as a compromised.
Rioting, violence, maybe a war, who knows, societal collapse? It’s all extremely interesting if not insanely frightening.
There’s tons in store for us over the next little while.
Here’s hoping the raving gangs of warlords that inherit the earth have a Morpheus type figure among them who is benevolent.
Yet, they keep voting for the opposite. People seem too dumb to be allowed good things.
Remember Biden beat Medicare. Democrats have never been serious about universal healthcare. Your choices in the US are “lip service” or “burn everything down”
American voters have been indoctrinated to think anything that in government initiated is “socialism.”
100% and the sad fact is it plays into the GOP/ Oligarchs hand.
Messaging is important. Just look at the damage control corporate media is spewing out about UHC shooting.
Then vote like you’re not fucking idiots.
Too late now.
Replace First-past-the-post voting with a more representative electoral system and the people will at least have the chance to vote intelligently.
And how are we going to do that when we gave the keys to the party that banned ranked choice voting in 10 states?
too bad it only matters what the 1% want. can’t wait to see what those 62% will do when their retirement money gets pillaged too. spoiler alert: nothing
Maybe they should have voted then, last election most people couldn’t even be bothered.
I think part of the problem with that argument is that only a small percentage of Dems want real coverage and the rest want status quo insurance crap- and this coming from someone who did vote.
I still remember when ACA happened. The smart people who wanted single payer or similar were shunned out the room. If I was a slightly stupider or slightly more vengeful men, I too might have gotten disengaged from the political system.
Except if the dems had solid majorities for years they could be pushed left easily. Look at California. Not as left as Lemmy wants obviously but so much further left than the majority of the country.
Except if the dems had solid majorities for years they could be pushed left easily.
That is exactly what it will take for major progress. Otherwise it won’t happen.
I see, Democrats needed to win every single election for a decade or more before they could give us healthcare.
Cool system you have there.
Yeah, that’s kind of how it works.
Do you think the tea party got their fascist takeover in 2010? No, they worked years and years and kept pushing their party further to the right every single time until it finally happened.
Imagine that- you have to put in a couple hours of work at most every year or two for so many years to actually get what you want. Oh how absolutely awful that burden is. /s
They got their fascist takeover by being bankrolled by billionaires.
And guess what? Republicans actually achieve things every single time they win. The moment Republicans have power they push their agenda and they get what they want. Democrats don’t do that. Democrats allow themselves to be stopped by the likes of Lieberman and Manchin every time they get majorities. Why is that, do you think?
It’s tragic. But hey- where were the people voting in primaries to oust Liebermann? And Biden and company just passed the biggest climate bill ever. But sure- take your ball and go home. I’m sure things will magically get better by being lazy.
I think the turning point for being mature is when people realize that politics is not about big changes. Maybe they campaign on them but things don’t happen like that. It takes a long time even if the answer is obvious. Thinking that all of a sudden the US will dismantle the healthcare and health insurance industries in ONE term of Congress when it underpins a ton of the economy (which includes people’s jobs mind you- not just made up crap on the stockmarket) is foolish. It is a leviathan and will take time to eventually get to universal with insurance (ie. public and private) or single payer, etc.
And FWIW, it’s easier for Republicans to get what they want because all they want to do is break things. Trying to build something takes time. But again, go off.
I think the turning point for being mature is when people realize that politics is not about big changes
No, that’s the turning point for being cynical. You’ve been beaten down over and over and learned to accept it. Big changes happen all throughout history, literally what are you talking about!?
You’re exactly the same as anti abolitionist Republicans in the 1800s that thought slave abolition was too extreme and we needed to incrementally abolish slavery.
And FWIW, it’s easier for Republicans to get what they want because all they want to do is break things. Trying to build something takes time. But again, go off.
I want to break a lot of fucking things.
This is all pointless anyway. Harris lost because of worthless liberal incrementalism! People won’t vote for it!
If you want to lose forever, keep doing what you’re doing.
I still remember when ACA happened. The smart people who wanted single payer or similar were shunned out the room
Because neither Obama nor Clinton campaigned in 2008 for single payer. And there was no margin to spare in getting the 60 senate votes needed (although they should have only need 50 no 60), and so Lieberman all by himself was able to kill the Public Option that most people would have used.
That’s nearly 2/3 of Americans, a pretty strong majority. Those other 38% of Americans can go fuck themselves, right along with the corporate oligarchs they worship.
somehow this doesn’t correlate with the > 50% that just voted against it.
Show me where Kamala or the DNC were promoting Medicare for all (or any improvements to healthcare for that matter) in this election cycle? And don’t say negotiating prices on 10 more prescription drugs or I’ll know you’re completely unserious.
Show me where (evidence there are ANY improvements to Healthcare) except for (evidence of any improvement to health care) or ill know you’re completely unserious. Look obviously it’s not enough, no one should genuinely think it is, but to even compare the two parties when it comes to Healthcare is disingenuous.
Also https://www.self.com/story/kamala-harris-health-policies-2024
That’s not medicare for all.
Never said it was?
The poll in the OP did.
I replied to what crusa said? So what the post said has no bearing on this chain.
What they said was in the context of the OP.
The Dems aren’t saint on the topic, but they also aren’t explicitly against it.
The Rrpublicans have been very clear that taking healthcare away from millions of people is a party priority. The only reason it didn’t happen last time was because of 1 Republican Senator willing to fall on his sword shortly before death and end his career a pariah of the party.
i did’t say that dems are for it. i said reps are against it. maybe take more time to take in what someone says before arguing against something else.
R voters also happen to want good healthcare - shocking I know. My point is that the politicians are in bipartisan agreement that profits and lining their own pockets with bribe money is more important than American lives.
My broader point is that Dems lost so many voters because they didn’t indicate any willingness to change from Biden’s policies on this matter. And, obviously, it’s so bad that the people have reached an extreme breaking point. Sadly this allowed Trump to position himself as the change candidate and win, even though in actuality it will be change for the worse through further privatization and rolling back the possibility of those with preexisting conditions to get coverage at all. It’s barbaric, and the Dems were supposed to do so much better for the working class in this area.
Too bad it only takes 30% of the population to control the government and the Reich wing has those people under control. :/
They wouldn’t control shit without half that 62% sitting at home, implicitly supporting it with their inaction.
We have this absolute nonsense where we bounce between a 1-2% swing of support between 2 parties… It’s so absurd… That ultimately decides everything in our stupid system. One of those parties talks a big game about wanting to change but when push comes to shove they have their corporate stooge to vote against it (Lieberman, Manchin, Sinema, etc etc etc), or even changing a previous stance just to block it (Rockefeller).
The other party just unabashedly supports the deathcare system, praying on the altar of profit, and espousing the virtues of piss on you economics, using propaganda outlets and the money of billionaires to brainwash their supporters into voting against their own interests because “woke” or some other stupidity of the election cycle…
I recognize the complete failure of Democrats but I still bash my head against that wall holding out for hope… Even though we really only have 2 parties for the ownership class and none that stand any chance for the working class so I don’t even really know what would change if those 30% that are ignorant or too “above it all” joined in on the “fun” of electing people who will then go 180° when the check clears. :/
* that actually pays out when you need something.
That’s the point of free at point of use health care.
Apologies if I’m preaching to the choir.
Again, there’s that 30-40% Party Of No crowd that is likely the same starve the beast pro-Trump voters we’ve seen in polls time and again. The ones probably going to need those very same services, if they already aren’t using medicare/-aid.
That is why universal healthcare risk pools need to start at the state level. The goal needs to be to lock out the subsidization of those who are voting for predatory policies. This accomplishes a few important things.
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It will systemically punish Republican voters in Republican led states.
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Over time it will (in theory) massively shift the public consciousness in those areas around how badly they are getting fucked.
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It removes the necessity of reliance on a federal change in order to begin the process of legislative reform.
This is obviously not a perfect solution, but I don’t see this happening in any other way. There is roughly a (0%) chance we see universal healthcare implemented at the national level first.
There are very few states that can handle the cost of state-funded health care, and unfortunately they would be faced with negotiating care from for-profit enterprises that have no care other than maximizing profits.
It needs to be a “from the ground up” service, which we had at one point - we used to have a lot of state, municipal and county hospitals, but the majority of them got shuttered and replaced with for-profit enterprises - where the state creates facilities owned/operated by the state and can control pricing with no expectation for a profit to be made. That’s how you get care for all at government prices, we can’t keep shoveling money at for-profit businesses.
This is an interesting idea, but I don’t see where that is ever going to be effective either given the massive logistical undertaking that would be required in order to deal with states managing non-profit medical facilities. The only option is to somehow circumvent the middle men.
Circumventing the middle man is exactly why for-profit enterprises resist state care with everything they have. The government is a powerful negotiator that can undercut for-profit business because they don’t need to profit from the work being done.
Yes, but you could say the exact same thing about the creation of single payer state insurance pools could you not? They can force negotiations on medical providers at the state level, and force them to accept state backed insurance if they wish to conduct business in that state. That seems like a way simpler solution than needing to come up with massive amounts of logistical infrastructure that already exists.
Not as effective as the government as a whole. Also singles that state put among others as you said, placing additional adversity between the state and existing or potential employers.
Look, if it were simple, we could do it. Even if much of the difficulty is artificially created by businesses and other monied interests, it still exists and one state doesn’t exist in a vacuum where businesses wouldn’t have the option to leave. Other states would undermine the attempt for political or financial gain. It’s not simple.
I totally agree that no solution is going to be simple. I think what I envisioned was an inter-state compact where it would make it essentially impossible for medical providers to pull away. If we just use the West Coast as an example, what if Washington, Oregon, and California were to create a public option risk pool that could then be joined by other blue states? That is really the idea that I think is the most sensible, and potentially feasible to implement over time.
A lot of states are larger, both geographically and economically, than many European countries. What’s stopping those states from doing it?
You’re not comparing apples to apples.
Those EU countries have a hoard of social services available, from pre-school to free/relatively inexpensive higher education, to medical services, unions, pensions and elder care…a lot of services Americans have to pay for on top of any exchange of health care premium for state health care tax. I mean, there’s a huge difference between EU workers’ compensation, housing costs, and benefits work compared to US workers, how companies are taxed and pay into social services, and to make them comparable would require massive change. The US has faced “taxes are evil” propaganda for easily 40 plus years now, and getting the funding to create a care system from both citizens and corporations will require a miracle.
If universal healthcare is cheaper than private insurance (and most say it is) why not simply charge the citizens of, for example, California 4/5th of what they’re currently paying? What am I missing here? If they did that in my state it would save me around $100/mo
This is basically how it works in Canada, but when the health care system gets worse during conservative control of the provinces people aren’t blaming the conservatives and province they are blaming the federal government and the liberal party.
People have literally zero idea or care about what level controls things, they just want to blame “the other guy”
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Only 62%?
Why would you want to deny another person health coverage? How does denying another person health coverage help you?
‘Black people will exploit it’
Ultimately, what it comes down to is that white racist are worried about black people having an easier time will enable them to get a leg up on white people.
I think it is more general. Like all minorities and the poor. Sucsessful people feel like those below them just didn’t try hard enough. They can’t understand that often lack of motivation is a medical issue more than a choice. Same with skinny people and fat people. It’s an “I can do it, why can’t they” situation for most people who would say no.
Most Americans are not “successful”, in the same way that most Americans are not “skinny” (far from it).
So, the other arguments given here are disingenuous. The real argument that would be made (not by me) is that they don’t trust the government to run something as important as health care. They think the government would be more wasteful and capricious in its decisions than the current system. They’ve been convinced that nationalized health care systems are simply worse.
And when you elect Republicans, that’s true!
Everyone needs healthcare, so it’s a perfect opportunity for grifting and crony capitalism.
Also, cruelty.
America is a cult of suffering. If you aren’t suffering you’re either freeloading or not working enough. Everyone is responsible for them selves, and so “paying for someone else’s healthcare” is an absolute no go.
They want people to die.
Yeah, we are gonna be mere “poll numbers” forever and nothing will be done.
Yeah, we are gonna be mere “poll numbers” forever and nothing will be done.
Before the ACA passed, each and every time I brought up the need to change the system in online forums, somebody would tell me it will never happen. In those days there was no way to get insurance if you had preexisting conditions without working for a corporation.
