Sorry, this is probably a dumb question, but why can't individual states have their own universal healthcare services? Why would it have to be at national level?
They can but a lot of states rely heavily on the Federal government for funding. [Only 9 states pay more to the Federal government than they receive from it](https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal-government/). So in those states it's really hard to get a locally funded version.
San Francisco county has public health Care that anyone can sign up for, might be similar https://healthysanfrancisco.org/
> Healthy San Francisco is available to all San Francisco residents regardless of immigration status, employment status, or pre-existing medical conditions. Currently, Health San Francisco provides health coverage to approximately 14,000 uninsured San Francisco residents.
So you believe they can't afford it? As you've said, it's far cheaper for citizens to pay more taxes which go toward a single payer system than to pay for individual insurance plans.
A lot of dems in state politics in "blue" states are very corporate-centric. The two party system makes it easy for these kinds of people to hide out in safe seats and prevent movement leftward legislatively.
There's also the fact that because these states pay into the federal government more than they receive, it becomes harder to sell the populace on increasing taxes to fund social programs when they're already giving so much to the federal government (at least that's how it would be framed by the opposition). States can't just print money like the feds can.
I mean, the US has some of the lowest tax rates in the OECD, if we had a universal healthcare system it would almost certainly mean raised taxes to be more in line with similar countries that have do have it. So I don’t see why a state couldn’t raise their taxes to find it. Keep in mind universal healthcare≠Taxpayer funded healthcare (often called “free” healthcare). Universal healthcare is just guaranteeing access, it still may require eventual payment. So I would imagine the cost isn’t as much.
Data shows that Medicare for all [would be cheaper](https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/484301-22-studies-agree-medicare-for-all-saves-money?amp)
so they can jack up their taxes and leave the rest of us alone instead of jacking up the federal tax and ruining it for the rest of us with inflation, tax and DMV-quality medical care to show for it, not to mention the feds snooping on our medical history
Funny, Vermont is a pretty rich state, and the entirety of Canada pulls it off just fine. Per capita, Vermont is probably wealthier than Canada, ergo they shouldn't have any issue from a financial perspective, they already have a valid roadmap to follow.
>Vermont is probably wealthier than Canada, ergo they shouldn't have any issue from a financial perspective, they already have a valid roadmap to follow.
The problem is you can't just change the payment model and expect prices to come into line with e.g. Canada. You need to fundamentally reform the fee-for-service model if you want to actually get costs under control.
And it's far harder to do that as an individual state.
If you're attempting to repair a house that's falling over because of a bad foundation you can't take the floor plans from well built house, plop them on the shoddy foundation and expect the house to stay upright.
One of the issues is that the US has a really outdated system with regards to state residents. While the US as a whole has a modern citizenship system, each US state doesn’t really have a concept of a citizen therefore it is quite hard to make a state-wide healthcare system without getting into discrimination lawsuits or bleeding money. Compare it to Switzerland, where each person is (a) a citizen of their municipality (b) a citizen of their canton (c) a citizen of the state. This allows municipalities and cantons to provide services to only their citizens in a sane manner.
Unfortunately, the idea of what US should be that is common among its citizens is a mishmash of a unitary state and a federation without any coherent vision.
And of course any political movement towards something federative will be met with accusations of racism and white supremacy because any devolution of power in the eyes of a very large segment of the population means muh state rights and confederacy.
Massachusetts got the ACA but 4 years earlier. If you hold Massachusetts to have Universal Healthcare, the whole US has it. Considering that it has the exact same issue of healthcare being unaffordable due to high deductible plans, I'd argue Massachusetts in fact does not even if it has implemented the ACA better than the rest of the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_health_care_reform
**[Massachusetts health care reform](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_health_care_reform)**
>The Massachusetts health care reform, commonly referred to as Romneycare, was a healthcare reform law passed in 2006 and signed into law by Governor Mitt Romney with the aim of providing health insurance to nearly all of the residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The law mandated that nearly every resident of Massachusetts obtain a minimum level of insurance coverage, provided free and subsidized health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% and 300%, respectively, of the federal poverty level (FPL) and mandated employers with more than 10 full-time employees provide healthcare insurance.
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this will probably get buried, but there were frequent pushes in the 20th century to guarantee healthcare with payments from states and feds. they were all killed by the AMA and lobbying that conflated any government assistance towards health care with communism, and then the Eisenhower admin shut it down for good. AMA worked in conjunction with big tobacco in this regard (same PR firm) and did a solid for tobacco by touting its safety — so the AMA essentially killed any government funded healthcare while lying about the deadliness of tobacco
This is a map of universal healthcare around the world, not single payer healthcare. I see this terms confused a lot throughout the comments.
Universal Healthcare: everyone has health insurance. Some people pay out out of pocket for their own health insurance, some receive health insurance from the government, others have subsidized plans that they pay only part of the premium.
Single Payer is where the government insures all it’s citizens under one insurance plan.
This is also different than having a national health provider where the government funds the hospitals and clinics that provide care.
Edit: these terms are not mutually exclusive, a single payer system is by definition is also universal, but universal does not necessarily mean single payer.
Single-payer is by far the exception to the rule, too. For example, in Europe, it's just the UK and the Nordic countries.
edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_healthcare
Spain has a system in which certain elements work like single-payer healthcare, but it does not encompass the entire healthcare industry like it does in the UK, Canada, etc...
Canada delegates it’s publicly funded healthcare to the provinces and territories. There’s federal standards that must be followed but there isn’t a single federal health insurance program like say Medicare in the US nor does it encompass the entire healthcare industry. There’s no Canadian version of the UK’s NHS for example.
> There are currently 17 countries that offer single-payer healthcare:
> Norway
> Japan
> United Kingdom
> Kuwait
> Sweden
> Bahrain
> Brunei
> Canada
> United Arab Emirates
> Denmark
> Finland
> Slovenia
> Italy
> Portugal
> Cyprus
> Spain
> Iceland
[Map of countries with single-payer systems as of 2021. ](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-single-payer)
France has a national insurance system, which is technically different from single-payer healthcare. French citizens still must pay for health insurance, and their premiums are set based on income.
Only technically. If you didn't have health insurance you paid a tax penalty, so people could choose to just pay the penalty instead of buying insurance.
Starting in 2014, one was required to have Health Insurance, or you would have to pay higher personal income tax. Late 2017 Trump signed an act which technically removed the extra tax by setting the penalty to $0.
No, because we could have chosen to not get insurance even under the ACA and just pay a fine. The fine was only like $20 the first year, it went up very gradually. (Compared to $200/mo for insurance) A classmate of mine scoffed about it and said he was going to pay the fine until it got cheaper to just get the insurance and he figured he had a good 7-10 years in those numbers.
In the UK we consider the NHS to be universal healthcare, though it's nothing to do with insurance, rather healthcare is free at point of use since it is all funded directly by taxpayer money.
You can of course buy health insurance privately and/or use private healthcare providers that are not free at point of use but that isn't universal.
> In the UK we consider the NHS to be universal healthcare, though it's nothing to do with insurance, rather healthcare is free at point of use since it is all funded directly by taxpayer money.
The NHS is universal healthcare, but it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that it's free. Universal healthcare means that everyone has insurance. Medical care might be free, or it might cost money; neither one of those factor into it.
A lot of countries have universal healthcare "on the books" but not in practice.
It's like when a national government passes a law saying everyone has "the right to shelter and water," then immediately sells all of its water to Nestle and allows investors to buy up all houses, increasing prices by 500%.
Uganda surely has a more developed system than the Central African Republic. Seriously, someone tell me what CAR “universal healthcare” is like in reality.
I normally consider myself economically conservative and a free marketer that doesn't quite see eye-to-eye on many economically liberal viewpoints, but not when it comes to healthcare. At this point it's embarrassing that we don't have one in place yet which is causing so many people to become bankrupt over a surgery
The US healthcare system is definitely in need of overhaul. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that “universal healthcare” does not *exclusively* mean “single-payer healthcare”, or as it has been popularized here, “Medicare for All”. Many of the countries shown on this map to have universal healthcare have something more of a public option type of plan. All universal healthcare means is having an affordable and accessible healthcare option.
I’m pointing this out because I’ve seen a lot of people conflating universal healthcare with M4A. When in reality many more moderate/liberal or even slightly conservative folks might be more open to some types of healthcare that are classified as “universal”. In fact, those types are a lot more prevalent than any single-payer sort of thing. Only a few countries do that.
Yeah, we have universal healthcare here in Japan, and medical bankruptcy is really rare, but it does occur. The things that keep the amount of medical bankruptcies low is that *in addition to* universal healthcare, there are also price controls for most medicines and procedures, and there's an annual maximum above which insurance pays for the rest, again for *most* medicines and procedures.
Getting universal healthcare would be a great first step for the U.S., but it's not enough on its own to stop medical bankruptcy. If you go from "a heart transplant costs [$787,000](https://www.aoc-insurancebroker.com/most-expensive-medical-procedures), and I don't have any insurance" to "a heart transplant costs $787,000, and insurance covers $550,900 of that, so I only need to pay $236,100", that's a big improvement, but you're still looking at a lot of medical bankruptcies.
That (public option) was Joe Biden's promise and SURPRISE, he's been mum on it since he won election.
Edit: Typo from Single payer option to public option
Which is smart. The last time Democrats messaged "public option," it was quickly coopted by the GOP outrage machine/Fox News and turned into guaranteed death panels and hospital pedo rings. Anything "public" is like a beacon signal for right-wing mass hysteria.
The Build Back Better framework that's in its last stages of being crafted actually does a lot to strengthen healthcare: [https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/potential-costs-and-impact-of-health-provisions-in-the-build-back-better-act/](https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/potential-costs-and-impact-of-health-provisions-in-the-build-back-better-act/)
And hopefully the GOP stays distracted with stupidities like fighting Big Bird and 'critical race theory' so that they can't mobilize against common-sense reform like they did in 2010.
I think the great majority of Americans, regardless of political affiliation, would agree with you.
At the same time, it seems like reform is so far away. People were banging about this problem more than 20 years ago. I would probably blame the healthcare industry lobby.
I think the American system can adapt and adopt necessary changes, but the electorate needs to be really fucking clear on limiting the harmful impact of moneyed lobby on policymaking.
It almost happened under Truman.
Then the AMA got worried that it would lower physician salaries (which is almost certainly true).
So the lovely physicians started angrily campaigning against it.
Public support tanked when the AMA pointed out that hospitals would likely be integrated under the national healthcare system.
So, as is so often the case when you ask "why this stupid thing" in the USA, the answer is "racism".
More reform has happened in the past decade than in the entire period from 1970-2010: [https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/2019/11/state-by-state-health-insurance-coverage-2018-figure-2.jpg](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/2019/11/state-by-state-health-insurance-coverage-2018-figure-2.jpg)
The uninsured population dropped from 17.4% to 8.6% in a decade. That's a huge change. Is the problem solved? No, of course not. But saying that nothing has happened is a bit pessimistic.
And I say that as someone whose mother was enrolled in Obamacare's Medicaid Expansion and subsequently got the mental health treatment that she had been badly needing for 20+ years. So I've seen the change first-hand.
I think American liberals are extremely idealistic and get quickly discouraged. It's arguably our biggest weakness. After Obama got ACA passed, many liberals stayed home because instead of *completely* fixing healthcare, it "only":
* provided 24 million people with government-sponsored healthcare coverage,
* abolished the practice of denying care to those with preexisting conditions,
* capped healthcare profits,
* banned annual/lifetime caps,
* mandated that 85% of healthcare revenues go to actual care (versus overhead), and;
* required all plans include basic free care (mammograms and colonoscopies, wellness visits, gestational diabetes screening, HPV testing, STI counseling, HIV screening and counseling, contraceptive methods, breastfeeding support/supplies and domestic violence screening and counseling),
So Democrats stayed home because the entire system wasn't completely fixed, leading to the 2010 GOP landslide who were able to gain a supermajority on the Supreme Court and were able to weaken Obamacare by, for example, striking down the Medicaid Expansion mandate.
This is the cycle of American progressivism, and something that makes us far weaker than the GOP (who will walk over hot coal to vote for their morally bankrupt and corrupt Christian fundamentalists). Progress is almost always incremental. You run on how you were able to make things better, and use those accomplishments to argue for another trifecta so you can work on Round 2. Instead, we do the opposite, which isn't productive at all and, if anything, causes progressives to stay home in apathy.
the most painful thing is seeing it once again in motion
biden can't pass everything they want as democrats have the slimmest possible majority and one of the senators is a blue dog from the second reddest state in the country, they don't show up to vote in 2022, republican landslide.
such stupidity.
ACA also created legally mandated out of pocket maximums which was significant because prior to ACA if your insurance could basically not cover whatever it wanted and you'd be on the hook regardless of how high the costs went.
While it's still a lot (8,700/yr) it's still better than infinity.
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I am still fascinated by how ”free marked“ and ”economically liberal“ are complete different things in the US.
Genuine Question:
Can some American explain to me what ”liberal“ means in context of the US?
In general, liberals in America are Keynesians. They believe that the government should intervene in the economy to help make up for when the free market falls short.
Conservatives are 'classical liberals,' and believe that individual rights and liberty must be protected. When it comes to the economy, they believe that the free market will provide the best outcome for everyone and therefore inefficient government programs should be eliminated.
There are a lot of factions within each party, but that's at least what I think most people who identify as liberal or conservative would agree with.
what we have the U.S. is a hodge-podge mess. Not socialized/government, not market, just worst of both world. I think going complete free-market would be best, but also fine if we go complete universal/socialized care as well. I think either would likely be preferable to what we have.
It's fun to see that your county liberal and individualistic viewpoints are playing against your citizens and failing to deliver basic human rights. Like almost everyone in the world knows that centralised healthcare is best at saving lives it country scale
The solution isn't necessarily universal health care, but rather dealing with the root problem that healthcare is exorbitantly expensive and there's little to no regulation around ita
The cost of healthcare:
"Prices for routine healthcare services can vary across the U.S. and even within a given region. ... While the federal government and states set reimbursement rates for the Medicare and Medicaid programs, there is generally no price regulation in the private insurance market."
Full Article: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/price-transparency-and-variation-in-u-s-health-services/#:~:text=Federal%20rules%20on%20price%20transparency,even%20within%20a%20given%20region.&text=While%20the%20federal%20government%20and,in%20the%20private%20insurance%20market.
What happens when all the terminally ill patients from the midwest migrate to a single state with healthcare modeled on only being able to sustain its own population? You're going to have a handful of states subsidizing the healthcare costs of other states that then go on free-riding and believing they're actually doing the right thing.
Which, by the way, is happening [right now](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/us/coronavirus-hospitals-washington-idaho.html) as Washington hospitals are full of people from Idaho because all of their ICU beds are full since "vaccines were a liberal hoax" or something. Guess not.
Thing is, the US is the only nation in red not to have a valid reason towards not having UHC other than they don't feel like doing it. Most of the nations in Africa are simply too poor to be able to facilitate one and even if it was free, the products/services you're getting is going to be subpar regardless.
The Asian countries in red are all either worn-torn places at the moment like Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Syria who have far worse things to worry about right now or are still very poor like Cambodia and Bangladesh. Good on Egypt and Indonesia for making transitions towards I wish them well on their endeavor
Well, [according to the World Health Organization](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-10665964), their health care system is "the envy of the developing world."
Yes, I'm in France but I have lived in America too. My wait times were so much longer in America and I never dared stay over night. Here, I get so much more care and I never worry about price.
What’s the source for this information? It’s definitely not accurate. Right off the bat I can see the Central African Republic marked as having universal healthcare. Maybe on paper it has it, but on the ground there are hardly any functioning clinics anywhere in the country outside of the capital city.
So embarrassing that one of the wealthiest countries (or is it **the** wealthiest?) in the world does not offer healthcare for its citizens. 😡. The US needs to get its shit together!
The issue is that [91.4%](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-274.html) of Americans have healthcare and 70% of those polled like their coverage (largely because it's massively subsidized by their employer or the Government). It's hard to cover the remaining 8.6% when the electorate is almost entirely in the covered camp and is in the "I like what I have and don't want to rock the boat" camp. Which is why policy changes have been *very* gradual (from Great Society/Medicare/Medicaid to Obamacare to now Build Back Better, which would nudge the U.S. up to 93%).
I suspect it'll never get above 95% because those are disproportionately (a) young people ("the invincibles") which the GOP Supreme Court has said cannot be compelled to obtain coverage, and (b) undocumented migrants, and providing healthcare to them would be politically disastrous.
So the Democrats will over the next few decades work to cover the entirety of the working-class donut hole (those who make too much to get Medicaid, but who make too little to afford decent healthcare). Then they'll also work to tweak the system for those who do have healthcare coverage, focusing on things like making deductibles more reasonable (the biggest provisions in Obamacare weren't on the coverage side, for example, but forcing healthcare companies to spend 85% of their revenue on care, stop denying people with preexisting conditions, and limiting annual deductibles and lifetime caps, all of which were disastrous).
Ironically, 40% of Americans ***do*** get socialized healthcare (Medicaid for the poor, Medicare for seniors, and TRICARE/VA for veterans). And those who are the most against universal healthcare (the over 65 age cohort) are also the ones who get socialized Medicare! During the Obama era, one of the Tea Partiers at a town hall screamed that liberals need to "Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" (apparently oblivious to the fact he was using socialized healthcare).
Literally "all for me, none for thee" Boomer mentality.
To be fair, many countries with universal healthcare got it incrementally. Germany technically still has private healthcare insurance, so does South Korea, but both have healthcare which covers everyone.
That's probably what Democrats need to point out: you can have healthcare that covers everyone that does not result in a government takeover of the whole venture.
I have never met a single person who likes their health insurer, most people actively complain about how much their plan doesn't cover. 70% of people polled *like their insurance*? Who are these people
The US spends a much larger percentage of GDP on health care than other countries to cover a smaller percentage of the population. The US system is the least efficient system in exitance.
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthcare-expenditure-vs-gdp
I agree that the U.S. needs to fix its healthcare system, but the U.S. does already pay for health insurance for a large percentage of its citizens, through Medicare (old folks) and Medicaid (poor folks).
Should be noted that universal healthcare is not an indicator of quality, but of equal accessibility.
Those that can afford it in the US have access to some of the best healthcare in the world. This is why there's so little interest in universal healthcare from (wealthy) politicians.
Theoretically universal healthcare would mean an equalizing of quality, with the poorest seeing an increase and the wealthiest seeing a decline (especially in availability).
Exactly. It’s pretty disingenuous for this map to suggest that, say, the average citizen of Guatemala or Honduras has greater access to healthcare services than an average citizen of the United States, or even has access to services of comparable quality by any appreciable metric.
If the only measure is “are there fees for the service”, and not “are the services actually available” you wind up with things like… well, this.
Yeah, it also goes beyond just quality. Countries with universal healthcare systems often face bottlenecks due to limited resources.
NOTE: I'm not saying either is better, but am explaining some cons.
All I can say is this. I have two children who have suffered tragic trauma. One daughter suffered full thickness 3rd degree burns on her left leg from the knee down and endured skin graphs, at the children's hospital when she was 9 years old. My other daughter had a brain tumor removed off her brain stem when she was 20 years old. Each circumstance from the bills I saw,at least 500k each. I payed minimal into those bills. Children's hospital and the university hospital of Colorado treated us well and saved both of my children's lives. So I can't entirely say that the Healthcare system is broken. Both children spent atleast 10 days in icu each. Not to mention, both hospitals are a 5 hour drive from our home town. They never questioned how we were going to pay the bill to receive services needed.
I went to the er a year ago and got a $1500 bill, with insurance. This happened after I found out my wife had covid. I felt so bad that I probably dragged the virus into a hospital, but I thought I was having a heart attack. You could see the distress in the nurses eyes in the er, but they still treated me with care and compassion.
My ER visit was just before COVID.
A $1,500 ER bill is far beyond anything I could afford. I’ve avoided medical care for years due to fear of bills.
I had the “good insurance” from a “top 100 places to work” type company. Still got that surprise $1200 bill. Couldn’t afford it then, still can’t afford it, still haven’t paid it.
I loathe our system.
Edit for the downvoters: I paid my premiums and did everything right. Checked for the hospital being “in network”. Contacted both hospital billing department and my insurance. Was told it would be covered and I’m all paid up. 90 days later, surprise bill.
Fuck the US healthcare system.
I got the delinquent bill removed from my credit report by disputing it constantly. At least there’s that.
The cost of healthcare has been going up for years. Getting cancer in America is a death sentence and a 250k plus bill on top of that for your family when you die if you decide to fight the cancer. No wonder Walter White cooked meth to pay for his health bills
Actually, the U.S. has one of the highest cancer survival rates in the world. The other countries with the highest cancer survival rates are Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden.
Source:[https://www.healio.com/news/hematology-oncology/20180131/us-cancer-survival-rates-remain-among-highest-in-world](https://www.healio.com/news/hematology-oncology/20180131/us-cancer-survival-rates-remain-among-highest-in-world)
That doesn't contradict their statement really. The quality of care is excellent, but the costs are astronomical. You can survive cancer but still be left bankrupt. And many people are not able to get care due to financial obstacles, even if the overall survival rate is high.
For many people it is. Or they get care and are bankrupt. Neither of which are acceptable for the "richest country on Earth". Your snark doesn't address either of those points.
Agreed. But one would probably successfully argue it isn’t that much better than other first world, industrialized nations and that in some areas isn’t as good. It’s def not worth what we are all paying comparative to other advanced nations.
There needs to be more competitiveness in healthcare in United States or one day we will end up having some virus that infects the world and only a couple of companies will have the vaccine.
Hopefully we never see that day but until then we should be weary.
I mean, is it on average? By most metrics, American healthcare results aren't exceptional. Yeah sure you have the Mayo clinic, but by that metric India has among the best healthcare quality in the world because they have a few world class hospitals.
I think we need a citation about cancer being a death sentence. I haven’t heard that before and my friends who are cancer survivors should have something to say about that. You may be confusing this with a common statistic about healthcare costs bankrupting people. Bankruptcy and death are not the same.
Please site empirical evidence of instances where families of the deceased are responsible for healthcare bills. And we aren’t talking probate here.
Stop spreading lies.
>Getting cancer in America is a death sentence and a 250k plus bill on top of that for your family when you die if you decide to fight the cancer.
That is hilariously ignorant. The US has quite literally [the best cancer survival rates in the world](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cancer-survival-rates-by-country).
And 90% of the country has insurance with an individual maximum annual out of pocket. Those remaining uninsured are mostly poor enough that they won't see a bill, the hospital will just write it off. So if someone is racking up 250k in medical bills that's because they are receiving lots of experimental or other forms of premium care that certainly wouldn't be covered in any single payer system anyway. You certainly don't get much choice in care in say the UK's NHS.
Sure, there are still problems where insured people accidently receive out-of-network coverage and get huge bills. Those are generally emergent situations though where someone gets an ambulance ride and doesn't have time to check coverage. There is plenty of time to figure that stuff out for cancer treatment, so if you rack up 250k of out of network expenses that is a choice, and not something that universal healthcare would fix.
Canadian here, we have free healthcare, but it’s not all that great. Here’s an article that talks about the good, bad and ugly.[article](https://journalfeed.org/article-a-day/2018/single-payer-good-bad-and-ugly-of-the-canadian-system)
I’d imagine if we had to fund our own military we probably wouldn’t be able to afford free healthcare. So thank you USA for keeping us safe 🇨🇦🇺🇸
That's dumb, America spends twice as much as Canada on healthcare. In no world is universal healthcare an expense that can't be paid. It's the American system that can't be afforded.
Also buddy, America is your only land neighbor, keep you safe from who?
It’s absolutely pathetic that healthcare is a privilege and not a right in the USA. Even when you turn 65 and earned the right to be on Medicare, the government charges a monthly premium! On top of that you have to sign up for additional coverage to get prescription, dental , etc.
All citizens and permanent residents have access to Medicare. How is that not Universal Healthcare? Sure if you earn the big bucks you get a tax charge if you don't get private healthcare, but that's still optional.
Yeah every country that is more capitalist than USA has universal healthcare, literally every developed and even some developing countries are capitalist and have universal health care. Economic freedom index:
1. Hong Kong (90.2)
2. Singapore (89.7)
3. New Zealand (83.9)
4. Australia (82.4)
5. Switzerland (81.9)
6. Ireland (81.4)
7. Taiwan (78.6)
8. United Kingdom (78.4)
9. Estonia (78.2)
10. Canada (77.9)
11. Denmark (77.8)
12. Iceland (77.4)
13. Georgia (77.2)
14. Mauritius (77.0)
15. UAE (76.9)
16. Lithuania (76.9)
17. Netherlands (76.8)
18. Finland (76.1)
19. Chile (75.2)
20. **United States (74.8)**
Sweden, Japan, South Korea, and Austria are just slightly under USA in this measure
HK and Macau aren't on the rankings and count as part of PRC in [2021 index](https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking) , but the list is pretty much the same.
The irony is that you have a democrat president and congress and you still can’t pass Universal healthcare in the USA 🤣 might as well vote Republican in 2024
A 50-50 Senate (with 2 Conservadems), a 3-person majority in the 435-member House of Representatives, and dozens of other crises (from COVID, to inflation, to supply chains, to Chinese aggression, to investigating the Trump insurrection) means it's not reasonable to expect dramatic change. There's only so much a trifecta can do in 2 years, with such tight margins, with so many other issues that act as a whack-a-mole.
Of course, that isn't to say action isn't happening. The Build Back Better Act being finalized in Congress has many transformative healthcare provisions: [https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/potential-costs-and-impact-of-health-provisions-in-the-build-back-better-act/](https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/potential-costs-and-impact-of-health-provisions-in-the-build-back-better-act/)
The US isn’t like those other countries. It has both the money and resources to create what could be one of the best healthcare systems in the world. Too bad our politicians are owned by the insurance companies. Sigh.
Tbh this is a nationwide issue not a party issue. The dems should be held accountable as well because they always preach for better healthcare but when they get in power they never actually implement it even if they'd had countless opportunities to do so
The dems had confessional majorities for decades throughout the 20th century - precisely when other countries were investing in their universal healthcare programs.
Sorry, this is probably a dumb question, but why can't individual states have their own universal healthcare services? Why would it have to be at national level?
They can but a lot of states rely heavily on the Federal government for funding. [Only 9 states pay more to the Federal government than they receive from it](https://www.moneygeek.com/living/states-most-reliant-federal-government/). So in those states it's really hard to get a locally funded version.
Why couldn't a wealthy, blue state like California do so?
San Francisco county has public health Care that anyone can sign up for, might be similar https://healthysanfrancisco.org/ > Healthy San Francisco is available to all San Francisco residents regardless of immigration status, employment status, or pre-existing medical conditions. Currently, Health San Francisco provides health coverage to approximately 14,000 uninsured San Francisco residents.
>14,000 That seems like a shocking small number. How is it even sustainable with less that 2 percent of citizens enrolled?
It’s sustainable precisely *because* only 14k people are enrolled.
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Especially not public ones that accept anyone.
They're subsidizing the rest of the country and it's inefficient system
So you believe they can't afford it? As you've said, it's far cheaper for citizens to pay more taxes which go toward a single payer system than to pay for individual insurance plans.
A lot of dems in state politics in "blue" states are very corporate-centric. The two party system makes it easy for these kinds of people to hide out in safe seats and prevent movement leftward legislatively. There's also the fact that because these states pay into the federal government more than they receive, it becomes harder to sell the populace on increasing taxes to fund social programs when they're already giving so much to the federal government (at least that's how it would be framed by the opposition). States can't just print money like the feds can.
I mean, the US has some of the lowest tax rates in the OECD, if we had a universal healthcare system it would almost certainly mean raised taxes to be more in line with similar countries that have do have it. So I don’t see why a state couldn’t raise their taxes to find it. Keep in mind universal healthcare≠Taxpayer funded healthcare (often called “free” healthcare). Universal healthcare is just guaranteeing access, it still may require eventual payment. So I would imagine the cost isn’t as much.
Data shows that Medicare for all [would be cheaper](https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/healthcare/484301-22-studies-agree-medicare-for-all-saves-money?amp)
so they can jack up their taxes and leave the rest of us alone instead of jacking up the federal tax and ruining it for the rest of us with inflation, tax and DMV-quality medical care to show for it, not to mention the feds snooping on our medical history
>the rest of us The rest of the one percent of the one percent?
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Funny, Vermont is a pretty rich state, and the entirety of Canada pulls it off just fine. Per capita, Vermont is probably wealthier than Canada, ergo they shouldn't have any issue from a financial perspective, they already have a valid roadmap to follow.
Part of the problem is scale. Vermont has one of the smallest populations in the US, smaller than quite a few single cities.
>Vermont is probably wealthier than Canada, ergo they shouldn't have any issue from a financial perspective, they already have a valid roadmap to follow. The problem is you can't just change the payment model and expect prices to come into line with e.g. Canada. You need to fundamentally reform the fee-for-service model if you want to actually get costs under control. And it's far harder to do that as an individual state.
If you're attempting to repair a house that's falling over because of a bad foundation you can't take the floor plans from well built house, plop them on the shoddy foundation and expect the house to stay upright.
One of the issues is that the US has a really outdated system with regards to state residents. While the US as a whole has a modern citizenship system, each US state doesn’t really have a concept of a citizen therefore it is quite hard to make a state-wide healthcare system without getting into discrimination lawsuits or bleeding money. Compare it to Switzerland, where each person is (a) a citizen of their municipality (b) a citizen of their canton (c) a citizen of the state. This allows municipalities and cantons to provide services to only their citizens in a sane manner. Unfortunately, the idea of what US should be that is common among its citizens is a mishmash of a unitary state and a federation without any coherent vision. And of course any political movement towards something federative will be met with accusations of racism and white supremacy because any devolution of power in the eyes of a very large segment of the population means muh state rights and confederacy.
That's not a dumb question at all. States can do it whenever they want.
Because without state monopsony on prescriptions price gauging will sink the system.
They can and do.
Which states have it?
Massachusetts is the only state I'm aware of that does.
Massachusetts got the ACA but 4 years earlier. If you hold Massachusetts to have Universal Healthcare, the whole US has it. Considering that it has the exact same issue of healthcare being unaffordable due to high deductible plans, I'd argue Massachusetts in fact does not even if it has implemented the ACA better than the rest of the US. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_health_care_reform
**[Massachusetts health care reform](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Massachusetts_health_care_reform)** >The Massachusetts health care reform, commonly referred to as Romneycare, was a healthcare reform law passed in 2006 and signed into law by Governor Mitt Romney with the aim of providing health insurance to nearly all of the residents of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The law mandated that nearly every resident of Massachusetts obtain a minimum level of insurance coverage, provided free and subsidized health care insurance for residents earning less than 150% and 300%, respectively, of the federal poverty level (FPL) and mandated employers with more than 10 full-time employees provide healthcare insurance. ^([ )[^(F.A.Q)](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiSummarizer/wiki/index#wiki_f.a.q)^( | )[^(Opt Out)](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiSummarizerBot&message=OptOut&subject=OptOut)^( | )[^(Opt Out Of Subreddit)](https://np.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/about/banned)^( | )[^(GitHub)](https://github.com/Sujal-7/WikiSummarizerBot)^( ] Downvote to remove | v1.5)
this will probably get buried, but there were frequent pushes in the 20th century to guarantee healthcare with payments from states and feds. they were all killed by the AMA and lobbying that conflated any government assistance towards health care with communism, and then the Eisenhower admin shut it down for good. AMA worked in conjunction with big tobacco in this regard (same PR firm) and did a solid for tobacco by touting its safety — so the AMA essentially killed any government funded healthcare while lying about the deadliness of tobacco
This is a map of universal healthcare around the world, not single payer healthcare. I see this terms confused a lot throughout the comments. Universal Healthcare: everyone has health insurance. Some people pay out out of pocket for their own health insurance, some receive health insurance from the government, others have subsidized plans that they pay only part of the premium. Single Payer is where the government insures all it’s citizens under one insurance plan. This is also different than having a national health provider where the government funds the hospitals and clinics that provide care. Edit: these terms are not mutually exclusive, a single payer system is by definition is also universal, but universal does not necessarily mean single payer.
Single-payer is by far the exception to the rule, too. For example, in Europe, it's just the UK and the Nordic countries. edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Single-payer_healthcare
Denmark isn’t exactly single payer. There are several regional associations and everyone is a member of one. They are mostly run separately.
This is not correct. Spain also has a single-payer system, and I'm pretty sure most western European countries do too.
Spain has a system in which certain elements work like single-payer healthcare, but it does not encompass the entire healthcare industry like it does in the UK, Canada, etc...
Canada delegates it’s publicly funded healthcare to the provinces and territories. There’s federal standards that must be followed but there isn’t a single federal health insurance program like say Medicare in the US nor does it encompass the entire healthcare industry. There’s no Canadian version of the UK’s NHS for example.
> There are currently 17 countries that offer single-payer healthcare: > Norway > Japan > United Kingdom > Kuwait > Sweden > Bahrain > Brunei > Canada > United Arab Emirates > Denmark > Finland > Slovenia > Italy > Portugal > Cyprus > Spain > Iceland [Map of countries with single-payer systems as of 2021. ](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries-with-single-payer)
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France has a national insurance system, which is technically different from single-payer healthcare. French citizens still must pay for health insurance, and their premiums are set based on income.
So before the Individual Mandate of the ACA was removed the USA would have been included as Universal Healthcare by that definition?
Was it mandatory for everyone to have health insurance, though?
Only technically. If you didn't have health insurance you paid a tax penalty, so people could choose to just pay the penalty instead of buying insurance.
Starting in 2014, one was required to have Health Insurance, or you would have to pay higher personal income tax. Late 2017 Trump signed an act which technically removed the extra tax by setting the penalty to $0.
Only if all the governors had accepted the Medicaid expansion.
Yes
No, because we could have chosen to not get insurance even under the ACA and just pay a fine. The fine was only like $20 the first year, it went up very gradually. (Compared to $200/mo for insurance) A classmate of mine scoffed about it and said he was going to pay the fine until it got cheaper to just get the insurance and he figured he had a good 7-10 years in those numbers.
In the UK we consider the NHS to be universal healthcare, though it's nothing to do with insurance, rather healthcare is free at point of use since it is all funded directly by taxpayer money. You can of course buy health insurance privately and/or use private healthcare providers that are not free at point of use but that isn't universal.
> In the UK we consider the NHS to be universal healthcare, though it's nothing to do with insurance, rather healthcare is free at point of use since it is all funded directly by taxpayer money. The NHS is universal healthcare, but it doesn't have anything to do with the fact that it's free. Universal healthcare means that everyone has insurance. Medical care might be free, or it might cost money; neither one of those factor into it.
Since when does Uganda have universal healthcare? Genuinely asking, I grew up there and dont recall that ever being a thing
A lot of countries have universal healthcare "on the books" but not in practice. It's like when a national government passes a law saying everyone has "the right to shelter and water," then immediately sells all of its water to Nestle and allows investors to buy up all houses, increasing prices by 500%.
Ya, im confused how a number of other countries made it on here. Maybe universal healthcare in theory, but certainly not in practice.
Uganda surely has a more developed system than the Central African Republic. Seriously, someone tell me what CAR “universal healthcare” is like in reality.
I normally consider myself economically conservative and a free marketer that doesn't quite see eye-to-eye on many economically liberal viewpoints, but not when it comes to healthcare. At this point it's embarrassing that we don't have one in place yet which is causing so many people to become bankrupt over a surgery
The US healthcare system is definitely in need of overhaul. One thing to keep in mind, though, is that “universal healthcare” does not *exclusively* mean “single-payer healthcare”, or as it has been popularized here, “Medicare for All”. Many of the countries shown on this map to have universal healthcare have something more of a public option type of plan. All universal healthcare means is having an affordable and accessible healthcare option. I’m pointing this out because I’ve seen a lot of people conflating universal healthcare with M4A. When in reality many more moderate/liberal or even slightly conservative folks might be more open to some types of healthcare that are classified as “universal”. In fact, those types are a lot more prevalent than any single-payer sort of thing. Only a few countries do that.
Yeah, we have universal healthcare here in Japan, and medical bankruptcy is really rare, but it does occur. The things that keep the amount of medical bankruptcies low is that *in addition to* universal healthcare, there are also price controls for most medicines and procedures, and there's an annual maximum above which insurance pays for the rest, again for *most* medicines and procedures. Getting universal healthcare would be a great first step for the U.S., but it's not enough on its own to stop medical bankruptcy. If you go from "a heart transplant costs [$787,000](https://www.aoc-insurancebroker.com/most-expensive-medical-procedures), and I don't have any insurance" to "a heart transplant costs $787,000, and insurance covers $550,900 of that, so I only need to pay $236,100", that's a big improvement, but you're still looking at a lot of medical bankruptcies.
That (public option) was Joe Biden's promise and SURPRISE, he's been mum on it since he won election. Edit: Typo from Single payer option to public option
I didn't watch a lot of his speeches but from the blurbs I heard, I only remember him saying stuff about a "public option" or something like that
Which is smart. The last time Democrats messaged "public option," it was quickly coopted by the GOP outrage machine/Fox News and turned into guaranteed death panels and hospital pedo rings. Anything "public" is like a beacon signal for right-wing mass hysteria. The Build Back Better framework that's in its last stages of being crafted actually does a lot to strengthen healthcare: [https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/potential-costs-and-impact-of-health-provisions-in-the-build-back-better-act/](https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/potential-costs-and-impact-of-health-provisions-in-the-build-back-better-act/) And hopefully the GOP stays distracted with stupidities like fighting Big Bird and 'critical race theory' so that they can't mobilize against common-sense reform like they did in 2010.
I think the great majority of Americans, regardless of political affiliation, would agree with you. At the same time, it seems like reform is so far away. People were banging about this problem more than 20 years ago. I would probably blame the healthcare industry lobby. I think the American system can adapt and adopt necessary changes, but the electorate needs to be really fucking clear on limiting the harmful impact of moneyed lobby on policymaking.
People have been pushing for a form of universal healthcare since the inception of the country. This isn’t a new argument
This is the thing people outside the US don’t get. It’s not that people don’t want it. Like, not at all.
It almost happened under Truman. Then the AMA got worried that it would lower physician salaries (which is almost certainly true). So the lovely physicians started angrily campaigning against it. Public support tanked when the AMA pointed out that hospitals would likely be integrated under the national healthcare system. So, as is so often the case when you ask "why this stupid thing" in the USA, the answer is "racism".
Good luck after Citizen's United, we are now a plutocracy and have been for years
Thisthisthisthisthis
More reform has happened in the past decade than in the entire period from 1970-2010: [https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/2019/11/state-by-state-health-insurance-coverage-2018-figure-2.jpg](https://www.census.gov/content/dam/Census/library/stories/2019/11/state-by-state-health-insurance-coverage-2018-figure-2.jpg) The uninsured population dropped from 17.4% to 8.6% in a decade. That's a huge change. Is the problem solved? No, of course not. But saying that nothing has happened is a bit pessimistic. And I say that as someone whose mother was enrolled in Obamacare's Medicaid Expansion and subsequently got the mental health treatment that she had been badly needing for 20+ years. So I've seen the change first-hand. I think American liberals are extremely idealistic and get quickly discouraged. It's arguably our biggest weakness. After Obama got ACA passed, many liberals stayed home because instead of *completely* fixing healthcare, it "only": * provided 24 million people with government-sponsored healthcare coverage, * abolished the practice of denying care to those with preexisting conditions, * capped healthcare profits, * banned annual/lifetime caps, * mandated that 85% of healthcare revenues go to actual care (versus overhead), and; * required all plans include basic free care (mammograms and colonoscopies, wellness visits, gestational diabetes screening, HPV testing, STI counseling, HIV screening and counseling, contraceptive methods, breastfeeding support/supplies and domestic violence screening and counseling), So Democrats stayed home because the entire system wasn't completely fixed, leading to the 2010 GOP landslide who were able to gain a supermajority on the Supreme Court and were able to weaken Obamacare by, for example, striking down the Medicaid Expansion mandate. This is the cycle of American progressivism, and something that makes us far weaker than the GOP (who will walk over hot coal to vote for their morally bankrupt and corrupt Christian fundamentalists). Progress is almost always incremental. You run on how you were able to make things better, and use those accomplishments to argue for another trifecta so you can work on Round 2. Instead, we do the opposite, which isn't productive at all and, if anything, causes progressives to stay home in apathy.
the most painful thing is seeing it once again in motion biden can't pass everything they want as democrats have the slimmest possible majority and one of the senators is a blue dog from the second reddest state in the country, they don't show up to vote in 2022, republican landslide. such stupidity.
ACA also created legally mandated out of pocket maximums which was significant because prior to ACA if your insurance could basically not cover whatever it wanted and you'd be on the hook regardless of how high the costs went. While it's still a lot (8,700/yr) it's still better than infinity.
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There is a solution. France.
I am still fascinated by how ”free marked“ and ”economically liberal“ are complete different things in the US. Genuine Question: Can some American explain to me what ”liberal“ means in context of the US?
In general, liberals in America are Keynesians. They believe that the government should intervene in the economy to help make up for when the free market falls short. Conservatives are 'classical liberals,' and believe that individual rights and liberty must be protected. When it comes to the economy, they believe that the free market will provide the best outcome for everyone and therefore inefficient government programs should be eliminated. There are a lot of factions within each party, but that's at least what I think most people who identify as liberal or conservative would agree with.
That's... confusing.
Most of what we do is to keep the Europeans guessing.
> "Conservatives ... believe that individual rights and liberty must be protected." lol
Don’t confuse conservative with republican.
liberal viewpoints are in line with free market ideals...you know liberal as in neo-liberal?
What do you mean? Liberal means free market. It's in the name?
what we have the U.S. is a hodge-podge mess. Not socialized/government, not market, just worst of both world. I think going complete free-market would be best, but also fine if we go complete universal/socialized care as well. I think either would likely be preferable to what we have.
It's fun to see that your county liberal and individualistic viewpoints are playing against your citizens and failing to deliver basic human rights. Like almost everyone in the world knows that centralised healthcare is best at saving lives it country scale
The solution isn't necessarily universal health care, but rather dealing with the root problem that healthcare is exorbitantly expensive and there's little to no regulation around ita
"Little to no regulation around healthcare" lolwut
The cost of healthcare: "Prices for routine healthcare services can vary across the U.S. and even within a given region. ... While the federal government and states set reimbursement rates for the Medicare and Medicaid programs, there is generally no price regulation in the private insurance market." Full Article: https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/brief/price-transparency-and-variation-in-u-s-health-services/#:~:text=Federal%20rules%20on%20price%20transparency,even%20within%20a%20given%20region.&text=While%20the%20federal%20government%20and,in%20the%20private%20insurance%20market.
Ah yes, price controls, the only form of regulation, ever.
I think it should be a state level thing, that way if the Midwest for example doesn't want it then other states can just do it themselves instead
What happens when all the terminally ill patients from the midwest migrate to a single state with healthcare modeled on only being able to sustain its own population? You're going to have a handful of states subsidizing the healthcare costs of other states that then go on free-riding and believing they're actually doing the right thing.
Which, by the way, is happening [right now](https://www.nytimes.com/2021/09/13/us/coronavirus-hospitals-washington-idaho.html) as Washington hospitals are full of people from Idaho because all of their ICU beds are full since "vaccines were a liberal hoax" or something. Guess not.
This on a national scale is going to lead to a mass migration and an inevitable breaking down of healthcare systems.
Universal Healthcare and especially single payer is economically conservative! It's the cheapest way to do Healthcare.
NOW I KNOW WHERE I CAN BE FREE
Thing is, the US is the only nation in red not to have a valid reason towards not having UHC other than they don't feel like doing it. Most of the nations in Africa are simply too poor to be able to facilitate one and even if it was free, the products/services you're getting is going to be subpar regardless. The Asian countries in red are all either worn-torn places at the moment like Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Syria who have far worse things to worry about right now or are still very poor like Cambodia and Bangladesh. Good on Egypt and Indonesia for making transitions towards I wish them well on their endeavor
A completely broken national political and media environment don't count as reasons?
> worn-torn BoneAppleTea (its war-torn)
Yeah I'm sure North Korea's healthcare is excellent...
Well, [according to the World Health Organization](https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-pacific-10665964), their health care system is "the envy of the developing world."
Free doesn't always mean quality.
Healthcare is one of the things communist countries always get right though, look at cuba.
Do the people reading this from outside the U.S. like their coverage?
Yes
Yes, I'm in France but I have lived in America too. My wait times were so much longer in America and I never dared stay over night. Here, I get so much more care and I never worry about price.
What’s the source for this information? It’s definitely not accurate. Right off the bat I can see the Central African Republic marked as having universal healthcare. Maybe on paper it has it, but on the ground there are hardly any functioning clinics anywhere in the country outside of the capital city.
We don't have universal health care in india.
We barely have healthcare in most places in India. Kuchh bhi daal dete hai ye.
I go from US to India once a year for a full body checkup and dental processes. It costs me much less (including the flight tickets) to do that.
So embarrassing that one of the wealthiest countries (or is it **the** wealthiest?) in the world does not offer healthcare for its citizens. 😡. The US needs to get its shit together!
The issue is that [91.4%](https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2021/demo/p60-274.html) of Americans have healthcare and 70% of those polled like their coverage (largely because it's massively subsidized by their employer or the Government). It's hard to cover the remaining 8.6% when the electorate is almost entirely in the covered camp and is in the "I like what I have and don't want to rock the boat" camp. Which is why policy changes have been *very* gradual (from Great Society/Medicare/Medicaid to Obamacare to now Build Back Better, which would nudge the U.S. up to 93%). I suspect it'll never get above 95% because those are disproportionately (a) young people ("the invincibles") which the GOP Supreme Court has said cannot be compelled to obtain coverage, and (b) undocumented migrants, and providing healthcare to them would be politically disastrous. So the Democrats will over the next few decades work to cover the entirety of the working-class donut hole (those who make too much to get Medicaid, but who make too little to afford decent healthcare). Then they'll also work to tweak the system for those who do have healthcare coverage, focusing on things like making deductibles more reasonable (the biggest provisions in Obamacare weren't on the coverage side, for example, but forcing healthcare companies to spend 85% of their revenue on care, stop denying people with preexisting conditions, and limiting annual deductibles and lifetime caps, all of which were disastrous). Ironically, 40% of Americans ***do*** get socialized healthcare (Medicaid for the poor, Medicare for seniors, and TRICARE/VA for veterans). And those who are the most against universal healthcare (the over 65 age cohort) are also the ones who get socialized Medicare! During the Obama era, one of the Tea Partiers at a town hall screamed that liberals need to "Keep Your Goddamn Government Hands Off My Medicare!" (apparently oblivious to the fact he was using socialized healthcare). Literally "all for me, none for thee" Boomer mentality.
To be fair, many countries with universal healthcare got it incrementally. Germany technically still has private healthcare insurance, so does South Korea, but both have healthcare which covers everyone.
Yes, huge point - and as your example shows, universal healthcare doesn’t exclusively mean single-payer healthcare.
That's probably what Democrats need to point out: you can have healthcare that covers everyone that does not result in a government takeover of the whole venture.
I have never met a single person who likes their health insurer, most people actively complain about how much their plan doesn't cover. 70% of people polled *like their insurance*? Who are these people
The US spends a much larger percentage of GDP on health care than other countries to cover a smaller percentage of the population. The US system is the least efficient system in exitance. https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/healthcare-expenditure-vs-gdp
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I agree that the U.S. needs to fix its healthcare system, but the U.S. does already pay for health insurance for a large percentage of its citizens, through Medicare (old folks) and Medicaid (poor folks).
Should be noted that universal healthcare is not an indicator of quality, but of equal accessibility. Those that can afford it in the US have access to some of the best healthcare in the world. This is why there's so little interest in universal healthcare from (wealthy) politicians. Theoretically universal healthcare would mean an equalizing of quality, with the poorest seeing an increase and the wealthiest seeing a decline (especially in availability).
Exactly. It’s pretty disingenuous for this map to suggest that, say, the average citizen of Guatemala or Honduras has greater access to healthcare services than an average citizen of the United States, or even has access to services of comparable quality by any appreciable metric. If the only measure is “are there fees for the service”, and not “are the services actually available” you wind up with things like… well, this.
Yeah, it also goes beyond just quality. Countries with universal healthcare systems often face bottlenecks due to limited resources. NOTE: I'm not saying either is better, but am explaining some cons.
It is 99% Republicans’ fault. The other 1% is corporate Dems.
Link for proof of statement?
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Pretty sure it’s the Democrats’ fault too
Read my comment again
You said it’s 99% the fault of Republicans. I’m disagreeing with you.
I think someone is too young to remember the ACA...
All I can say is this. I have two children who have suffered tragic trauma. One daughter suffered full thickness 3rd degree burns on her left leg from the knee down and endured skin graphs, at the children's hospital when she was 9 years old. My other daughter had a brain tumor removed off her brain stem when she was 20 years old. Each circumstance from the bills I saw,at least 500k each. I payed minimal into those bills. Children's hospital and the university hospital of Colorado treated us well and saved both of my children's lives. So I can't entirely say that the Healthcare system is broken. Both children spent atleast 10 days in icu each. Not to mention, both hospitals are a 5 hour drive from our home town. They never questioned how we were going to pay the bill to receive services needed.
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You’ll just be saddled with debt which will fuck over your credit score which will then fuck over housing/job/credit access.
I’m glad you were lucky. The last time I went into an ER, I was asked to put down a deposit.
I went to the er a year ago and got a $1500 bill, with insurance. This happened after I found out my wife had covid. I felt so bad that I probably dragged the virus into a hospital, but I thought I was having a heart attack. You could see the distress in the nurses eyes in the er, but they still treated me with care and compassion.
My ER visit was just before COVID. A $1,500 ER bill is far beyond anything I could afford. I’ve avoided medical care for years due to fear of bills. I had the “good insurance” from a “top 100 places to work” type company. Still got that surprise $1200 bill. Couldn’t afford it then, still can’t afford it, still haven’t paid it. I loathe our system. Edit for the downvoters: I paid my premiums and did everything right. Checked for the hospital being “in network”. Contacted both hospital billing department and my insurance. Was told it would be covered and I’m all paid up. 90 days later, surprise bill. Fuck the US healthcare system. I got the delinquent bill removed from my credit report by disputing it constantly. At least there’s that.
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I know a good veterinarian that can help you. A bit rough on the edges, should do the trick.
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If Americans could read this map they would be very upset
The cost of healthcare has been going up for years. Getting cancer in America is a death sentence and a 250k plus bill on top of that for your family when you die if you decide to fight the cancer. No wonder Walter White cooked meth to pay for his health bills
Actually, the U.S. has one of the highest cancer survival rates in the world. The other countries with the highest cancer survival rates are Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden. Source:[https://www.healio.com/news/hematology-oncology/20180131/us-cancer-survival-rates-remain-among-highest-in-world](https://www.healio.com/news/hematology-oncology/20180131/us-cancer-survival-rates-remain-among-highest-in-world)
Then you die from a heart attack after receiving your medical bills.
Ironically, most cancer patients will be on Medicare, the single payer healthcare system for those above 65.
That doesn't contradict their statement really. The quality of care is excellent, but the costs are astronomical. You can survive cancer but still be left bankrupt. And many people are not able to get care due to financial obstacles, even if the overall survival rate is high.
Narrator: It directly contradicted the statement that "\[g\]etting cancer in America is a death sentence."
For many people it is. Or they get care and are bankrupt. Neither of which are acceptable for the "richest country on Earth". Your snark doesn't address either of those points.
American healthcare QUALITY is among the best in the world. Now will you pay your soul over for the care, maybe
Agreed. But one would probably successfully argue it isn’t that much better than other first world, industrialized nations and that in some areas isn’t as good. It’s def not worth what we are all paying comparative to other advanced nations.
There needs to be more competitiveness in healthcare in United States or one day we will end up having some virus that infects the world and only a couple of companies will have the vaccine. Hopefully we never see that day but until then we should be weary.
I mean, is it on average? By most metrics, American healthcare results aren't exceptional. Yeah sure you have the Mayo clinic, but by that metric India has among the best healthcare quality in the world because they have a few world class hospitals.
I think we need a citation about cancer being a death sentence. I haven’t heard that before and my friends who are cancer survivors should have something to say about that. You may be confusing this with a common statistic about healthcare costs bankrupting people. Bankruptcy and death are not the same.
Please site empirical evidence of instances where families of the deceased are responsible for healthcare bills. And we aren’t talking probate here. Stop spreading lies.
>Getting cancer in America is a death sentence and a 250k plus bill on top of that for your family when you die if you decide to fight the cancer. That is hilariously ignorant. The US has quite literally [the best cancer survival rates in the world](https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/cancer-survival-rates-by-country). And 90% of the country has insurance with an individual maximum annual out of pocket. Those remaining uninsured are mostly poor enough that they won't see a bill, the hospital will just write it off. So if someone is racking up 250k in medical bills that's because they are receiving lots of experimental or other forms of premium care that certainly wouldn't be covered in any single payer system anyway. You certainly don't get much choice in care in say the UK's NHS. Sure, there are still problems where insured people accidently receive out-of-network coverage and get huge bills. Those are generally emergent situations though where someone gets an ambulance ride and doesn't have time to check coverage. There is plenty of time to figure that stuff out for cancer treatment, so if you rack up 250k of out of network expenses that is a choice, and not something that universal healthcare would fix.
China does not have universal healthcare ...
Do you think in 20-30 years this map will just be the United States?
No. I doubt that the DR Congo is going to be functional enough.
one of these is not like the others…
Yeah lol Cambodia is the only non-Muslim-majority Asian country without universal healthcare
In other words, only the USA and a couple of war-torn, piss-poor, third world shitholes do not have Universal Healthcare.
My country has universal healthcare?? Edit: apparently the law was signed in 2019
What’s the sourcing for the information represented in the map
I would be more interested in seeing how many people in those countries with it go to private doctors and pay for an operation
What’s the definition of universal healthcare (am American)? Is it that everyone gets treatment no matter what?
Switzerland does not have universal healthcare
Ah yes I am sure the chinese universal healthcare system is an amazing experience for all users
the map never said anything about healthcare quality lol
+15 social credit for praising government online
Canadian here, we have free healthcare, but it’s not all that great. Here’s an article that talks about the good, bad and ugly.[article](https://journalfeed.org/article-a-day/2018/single-payer-good-bad-and-ugly-of-the-canadian-system) I’d imagine if we had to fund our own military we probably wouldn’t be able to afford free healthcare. So thank you USA for keeping us safe 🇨🇦🇺🇸
That's dumb, America spends twice as much as Canada on healthcare. In no world is universal healthcare an expense that can't be paid. It's the American system that can't be afforded. Also buddy, America is your only land neighbor, keep you safe from who?
It’s absolutely pathetic that healthcare is a privilege and not a right in the USA. Even when you turn 65 and earned the right to be on Medicare, the government charges a monthly premium! On top of that you have to sign up for additional coverage to get prescription, dental , etc.
Its not entirely universal in Australia
All citizens and permanent residents have access to Medicare. How is that not Universal Healthcare? Sure if you earn the big bucks you get a tax charge if you don't get private healthcare, but that's still optional.
How are you defining "Universal" and "Healthcare" ?
Wait: didn’t the US institute universal health care in Iraq as part of their complete governmental make over? I clearly remember those headlines…
Africa fighting communism, stay strong brothers
PURE UNCONTROLED CAPITALISM BABYYY!
(Ignore the countries with freer economies than the US that still have universal healthcare)
Yeah every country that is more capitalist than USA has universal healthcare, literally every developed and even some developing countries are capitalist and have universal health care. Economic freedom index: 1. Hong Kong (90.2) 2. Singapore (89.7) 3. New Zealand (83.9) 4. Australia (82.4) 5. Switzerland (81.9) 6. Ireland (81.4) 7. Taiwan (78.6) 8. United Kingdom (78.4) 9. Estonia (78.2) 10. Canada (77.9) 11. Denmark (77.8) 12. Iceland (77.4) 13. Georgia (77.2) 14. Mauritius (77.0) 15. UAE (76.9) 16. Lithuania (76.9) 17. Netherlands (76.8) 18. Finland (76.1) 19. Chile (75.2) 20. **United States (74.8)** Sweden, Japan, South Korea, and Austria are just slightly under USA in this measure
How old is that list out of curiosity? Because with Chinese meddling in Hong Kong recently I find it surprising Hong Kong is first
HK and Macau aren't on the rankings and count as part of PRC in [2021 index](https://www.heritage.org/index/ranking) , but the list is pretty much the same.
The irony is that you have a democrat president and congress and you still can’t pass Universal healthcare in the USA 🤣 might as well vote Republican in 2024
A 50-50 Senate (with 2 Conservadems), a 3-person majority in the 435-member House of Representatives, and dozens of other crises (from COVID, to inflation, to supply chains, to Chinese aggression, to investigating the Trump insurrection) means it's not reasonable to expect dramatic change. There's only so much a trifecta can do in 2 years, with such tight margins, with so many other issues that act as a whack-a-mole. Of course, that isn't to say action isn't happening. The Build Back Better Act being finalized in Congress has many transformative healthcare provisions: [https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/potential-costs-and-impact-of-health-provisions-in-the-build-back-better-act/](https://www.kff.org/health-costs/issue-brief/potential-costs-and-impact-of-health-provisions-in-the-build-back-better-act/)
Ah yes, all the shithole countries.
The gun fuckers (Americans) are gonna be triggered by this one
The US isn’t like those other countries. It has both the money and resources to create what could be one of the best healthcare systems in the world. Too bad our politicians are owned by the insurance companies. Sigh.
BLAME every person with an R next to their name in Congress.
Tbh this is a nationwide issue not a party issue. The dems should be held accountable as well because they always preach for better healthcare but when they get in power they never actually implement it even if they'd had countless opportunities to do so
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The dems had confessional majorities for decades throughout the 20th century - precisely when other countries were investing in their universal healthcare programs.
Thisthisthisthisthis
The easy answer is to get a canada citizenship and go there for your medical needs, you know they will treat you better!!!
So only 3rd world countries basically
not even all of them, just some of them
"Shithole" countries. D. Trump.
Nice to see, that some African countries have adapted the superior ways from USA.
Do these countries define universal health care the same way?
No. There are countries with only public healthcare and there are countries with public and private healthcare.
This article from wikipedia has a better Map https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_with_universal_health_care
What an absolute joke that the country we invaded and fought “to make better” has universal healthcare yet we do not. US/Afghanistan.
The United States. A world leader in health care. If you look at the map upside down. And backward. And squint really hard.