His message is for those who would rather suffer than have “those” people get help.
Ironically, most of those people are on social security and Medicaid.
I have a cousin who I wouldn’t say is a 1%er, but maybe a 5%er. Very well off. You know why she’s against universal health care?
Because “they” (poor people) would be able to see “her” doctor. And “she pays for a doctor that is good enough where he doesn’t have to work for ‘those’ people”. And she shouldn’t have to wait extra time for an appointment, dammit! Do you know who she is?!?!?!?!?
Yeah, she’s one of them. Needless to say, we don’t talk much. I just wanted to say that there are plenty of people who are against universal healthcare because they think that somehow a kid going to see a doctor for the first time will somehow inconvenience them.
Some people don’t pull the ladder up behind them. They kick it down, then wave bye-bye to you while watching you fall.
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She is, in every way, the standard, stereotypical 1%er Karen. Knowing that would mean she has awareness of the world around her.
She would probably complain about having to pay more. Make it make sense.
I wish I could.
She could find a doctor who only accepts private insurance if she wants. Does she not know that?
Remember through, he loves “the uneducated”
I have a Trumper friend that works at the VA. He is anti-government.
Does… Does he know?
I have no idea. I keep telling him I’m a communist and he freaks out and hangs up. 😂
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You’re going to have so much healthcare you’ll get sick of having healthcare!
Which is super convenient…because healthcare
He tried it before, but McCain was thumbs down.
Who is going to stand up for the bankruptcy attorneys?
Oh no! I’m devastated!
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It’s not just that. It’s also the “I don’t want my tax dollars paying for some other person’s health care” crowd.
“I don’t want to pay $30 in taxes. I’d rather be bankrupt the next time I need medical care”
yeah… bombing kids in hospitals in Gaza and corporate tax breaks are aok… but god forbid a poor person gets affordable treatment for his cancer ?? communists !!!
Yeah my dumbass neighbor used to argue that he shouldn’t have to pay for women’s feminine care when he pays for his medical insurance. And I’m like, “Are you fucking kidding me? Do you have any idea how many male-centric diseases are covered by insurance?” Fucking stupid self-centered dipshits. And it was dumb because in every other way this guy was pretty intelligent.
“Fellas, is it gay to subsidize gynecological healthcare?”
I don’t want my taxes to pay for someone else’s healthcare. I want my post tax dollars to pay for wealthy CEOs’ yachts, and my tax dollars to pay for some other person’s healthcare but at ridiculous rates.
Particularly those people, you know? The ones I can’t mention directly so I have plausible deniablity, but we all actually know who I’m talking about and it’s not even a dogwhistle anymore.
I wouldn’t want those people to receive qualitative care. I’d rather pay for some other person’s new yacht than for these people’s bare necessities.
(Sarcasm)
90% of the T**** supporters I know are just straight up assholes. The rest are confused idiots, some of whom are salvageable.
You forgot to put “millionaire” in quotes.
Right, definitely one of those things I don’t understand. For most of those people, universal healthcare can only be better than what they currently have. Haven’t they seen the mess they’re in?
I do have better health insurance than most, so there is every chance it will be worse for me. That is so worth it! At least it would be cheaper and hopefully less paperwork
I hate to break it to everyone but she does not currently support single payer nor will her presidency push for it. (At least, that’s the message they’re putting out right now.)
Never forget that everything Trump says is a lie, even if it’s one you want to believe.
That said, I think it would be easier to drag her into it than Biden.
https://kamalaharris.medium.com/my-plan-for-medicare-for-all-7730370dd421
In 2019 she was for it.
Democrats don’t want to push the envelope though so it won’t happen.
If we get supermajorities in the House and Senate it might. Otherwise, you’re probably right. When we have 50 dem senators and one of them is Joe Manchin, well…
Good news is we don’t have to worry about Manchin anymore. Bad news is that’s pretty much a GOP seat now.
Yeah, all the people removed about Manchin never seem to get that the choice was always Manchin or a far right Republican, not Manchin or a west coast progressive.
You lost the ability to get anyone left of Manchin out of WV in 2000.
Guys, no, we just need to run a far left lefty candidate in WV. This R+40 state is absolutely clamoring to vote for socialism because reasons. The Dems won’t do it, though (both sides bad). Also it has to be a Dem and not a grassroots movement because this R+40 state clamoring to vote for a real socialist needs a socialist with DNC backing before they’ll stop voting for racism.
Interestingly enough, WV used to be a safe blue state for most of the state’s history. Literally Gore ruined that.
Because they weren’t blue due to progressive social policy, they were blue because of the unions. Gore went after the biggest union industries in the state, and no Dem since has thought how to fix it.
Of all people, Bernie did really well in the 2016 primary, but since Clinton got ~35% compared to Bernie’s ~53% she of course got a majority of our state’s delegates (by one).
If you wanted to get a Dem to poll well here, you’d have to drop the gun stuff almost entirely (a lot of rural folks and a lot of hunters, a lot of woods full of wild animals [and those woods are directly adjacent to most populated areas - the entire state is forested mountains], etc), not lead with the progressive social justice stuff (not denounce it, not ignore it, just not treat it as the top priority and focus of your message - it’s there but it’s not what you’re selling yourself on), and then double down on working class concerns (this should be what you lead with and emphasize). Think something adjacent to social populism.
hilarious a state filled with fentanyl addicted welfare-queens is against socialism lol
I live near the border. that place is a dystopian redneck hellhole
Yeah well if it’s anything like the Democrats were in Arizona until recently the state party is basically defunct. You’ll have professional politicians running against single issue school teachers. The DNC is not good with reaching out to help state parties. A large part of the reason the GOP hasn’t died from going far right is the Democrats seem happy to let them have rural states without any fight. Which of course means the people there only get one political point of view too.
We have elected officials literally making up lies about teachers here to get them fired. Our sheriff got away with it because he is immune. They used our tax dollars to pay her off he wouldn’t have to get embarrassed in court before re-election
He is a hardcore Trumper
~~Democrats ~~ Liberals don’t want to push the envelope
Spineless liberals are losing ground in the party. Status quo and subservience to banks is no longer popular in our party. Progressives are slowly overcoming liberals.
Liberals want to throw money at problems, ignoring root causes Progressives want to tackle the root causes
That dream was gone when Bernie got screwed over. Won’t happen for a long time anyways.
That dream was gone circa 1993 when Hilary Clinton started stumping for it and became the GOP’s public enemy number one.
the article says she doesn’t support it
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I hate to break it to everyone but she does not currently support single payer nor will her presidency push for it.
Yes, she is a Democrat.
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
It’s great when a quote is taken out of context, and then you look at the context, and it’s even worse.
“She cosponsored legislation to abolish very popular private health insurance, which 150 [million] Americans rely on, dumping everyone onto inferior socialist government run health care systems with rationing and deadly wait times, while massively raising your taxes. She wants to take away your private health care.”
As if 150M Americans have a real choice in private insurance, or that the bureaucracy of the system doesn’t already result in rationing and deadly wait times.
As a side note, Project 2025 does something similar with cars. Something to the effect of “Americans overwhelmingly prefer cars” to justify ignoring bikes or public transit projects, again as if there was a real choice being offered.
I just don’t think grandma should be in front of an Obama Death Panel.
The Death Panel should be guys trying to sacrifice her to the line, someone with zero knowledge of her care typing “no” in a spreadsheet, or, fuck it, let’s get an AI with a 90% error rate (always errs towards denial). Those are the right arbiters to decide the value of someone’s life.
Our current death panel is just “well, she can’t afford it”… just as American Jesus wants.
“Her husband should have made more money.”
"You could have this appendectomy and live 30 more years perfectly healthy, but we see that you are retired and not generating revenue for your betters. Denied. "
That is a bleak take on why insurance is tied to employment in America. Sounds right.
Hmm. By thinking about it at all, you thought about it for too long. I have concerns if you’ll be able to deny enough people per hour. Well, we could have you do gig economy denials as a contractor until we can replace you with the LLM.
I hated that attack line so much. It was about an optional benefit that my representative wanted to add for Medicare recipients, a voluntary consultation on living wills. This had been requested by the AARP. Sarah Palin latched onto it, lied that it would press people into ending their lives, lied that it would be mandatory, lied, lied, lied, and lied some more. It really demonstrates how much Sarah Palin was a large part of the Republican Party’s descent into Trumpism, though you could also trace that back to Reagan’s lies about “welfare queens”.
Says the guy who never came up with an alternative to Obama Care and said “who knew health insurance was so complicated?”
Get rid of private insurance! We pay a ton in premiums and they still get to decide what they want to cover. Private insurance is bullshit. I’ll just laterally move that premium to socialized health care so everyone has it.
Not only do we pay a ton in premiums, when you do actually get sick, you still have to pay enough that most can’t afford it. My wife was diagnosed with cancer in December 2022. I spent more than $15,000 the last two years on her treatment. I am fortunate that I could afford that (it was definitely a strain). Most cannot. I have pretty good insurance because I work for a huge company with over 100k employees. The amount of money the insurance paid would financially destroy all but the most extremely wealthy.
My dad’s medical bills were over $100,000 in his first year of cancer alone. He had liver cancer which is generally hard to beat and by the time they found it, his liver was 1/3 cancer. It permeated throughout his liver and they couldn’t cut it out. Chemo and radiation were the only options. He had so many drugs costing thousands of dollars each. He had a team of doctors, one for each organ system, including the oncologists. The last year or two, he spent more time in the hospital than out of it. That’s no way anyone could afford that without obscene wealth.
very popular private health insurance
Bet even his base hate private health insurance companies, even myself as an actuarie hate them.
There’s a polling paradox. The majority of insured Americans rate their insurance as good or excellent, according to Kaiser Family Foundation polling. But if the cost, especially if they are paying full cost, polls much lower.
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I think that he’s trying to rile up wealthy workers and small business owners who view their (better, but more expensive) private insurance as a luxury good and fear it might be made worse or more expensive if a national Healthcare scheme were implemented. I think it’s pretty clear he’s also flailing and making mistakes because of it, but we shouldn’t overlook that Trump does have a handle on what some slice of Americans interests are, and his stament there isn’t totally insane. Shit, it might just be a reflection of his own personal fears, but there’s absolutely a real constituency for it.
I’m still waiting on the taco trucks. They’ve barely increased in number over the last four years.
The real reason Biden’s popularity was in the toilet.
What a great username
Every. Corner.
I’ve only seen like one since 2016. I don’t get out much but he promised them on every corner so I feel like that number should be higher.
Don’t threaten me with a good time.
Seriously though, no such bill would ever make it to her desk. So I don’t know what they’re crying about.
Never let the truth get in the way of a good ol’ fashioned fear-mongering!
How messed up is the US that universal health care is fear-mongering?
But I guess I shouldn’t be surprised. I used to have an American boss who felt like she needed to convince me to leave the hell-hole country I was living in. I live in Europe in one of the World’s safest, most democratic, wealthiest countries. And this was during the W. Bush era. I bet she became a full MAGA trumpist.
War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Healthcare is Threat.
Healthcare is Threat.
I mean supposedly MAID gets suggested or even approved way too often in Canada according to some media, so yeah? Kinda? Maybe?
Tobe fair, MAID does reduce future medical costs per patient more than most other treatments, so there is that.
It’s so incredibly messed up.
I think that the primary reason that anyone not standing to directly profit from the current system opposes universal healthcare is selfishness; they’ve worked hard to earn their (probably shitty) health insurance, and giving free health access to those they deem ‘undeserving’ devalues their own efforts.
Never mind the positive economic impacts; they wont move the needle. It’s like that one MAGA supporter said when interviewed; “they’re not hurting the_ right_ people”
Easily the single best description of American politics.
If Repubs didn’t lie about their opponents, how would they campaign?
A president can do ANYTHING in an official capacity now dontcha’ know
like have Trump put down? Didn’t the USSC rule that is A-OK?
She could have him drone-struck in Mar-a-lago and no one could do a damn thing about it
Yup. I’m curious what “official capacity” means here. Does that mean anything goes if he says the magic words “official capacity”? Or is it more complicated than that
It’s slightly more complicated than that. You have to ask “are they a Republican or a Democrat?”. If the answer is Republican, it’s probably an official act. If the answer is Democrat, it is not an official act. If the answer is “It’s Donald Trump”, then they follow up with the question “how high?”.
Wow, the law is so complicated, I tell you what. Thank goodness we have highly qualified, politically neutral judges to interpret it for us.
It’s carte blanche.
A president could start a national drug cartel and it would be legal
Oh dear god, You mean I’d finally have coverage, like an actual first world nation, to get my hereditary issues looked at, and treated?
DEAR GOD, THE INHUMANITY OF IT ALL.
During a rambling press conference at his golf club in Bedminster, New Jersey, Trump said of Harris, “She cosponsored legislation to abolish very popular private health insurance, which 150 [million] Americans rely on, dumping everyone onto inferior socialist government run health care systems with rationing and deadly wait times, while massively raising your taxes. She wants to take away your private health care.
“It’s the best health care in the world,” he continued, adding, “You’re all going to be thrown into a communist system … You’re going to be thrown into a system where everybody gets health care.”
She’s going to give you the bad health care. The kind that the foreigners and the blah people get. You’re not going to receive the special elite luxury care. You’re going to get the same care as everyone else.
You mean like medicare/medicaid?
I know people on both, they get fantastic healthcare.
Its a lot better than the big bowl of fuckall nothing I got now.
You mean like medicare/medicaid?
The conservative theory is that Medicaid is shit and will kill your mum.
Medicare is gold, but it only works if we ration it for Boomers exclusively.
If you “steal” private health insurance to pay for Medicaid, you’re basically murdering people. If you open the doors to Medicare, you’ll use up all the good medicine and “swamp the boat” as it were, ruining it for everyone currently on the plan.
Its a lot better than the big bowl of fuckall nothing I got now
Obviously, you don’t need health care. You just need better bootstraps and a stronger pull.
It was always a war cry for the elites. “You won’t be able to buy superior healthcare anymore. You’ll have to wait like the rest of the plebs”.
We already have ridiculous wait times. I got told by my doctor that I couldn’t reschedule my appointment because it was booked out 2 months. I had to reschedule because the office was closed for a week due to a fucking Hurricane.
And lets not even start about the state of seeing either specialists or especially mental healthcare.
Brain is acting funny and flooding you with feel-bad chemicals every day and it’s impacting your life to the degree that some days you don’t even want to live in a constant state of despair for no reason? “Sorry, that will be three months to see a psychiatrist, try thinking positive and taking walks!”
Could you imagine universal healthcare that’s probably cheaper than the insurance you pay now?
Not having to worry about who’s in and out of network?
The horror!
The stress of not knowing if you have enough change to pay for the hospital’s parking is unbearable. Worse, can you imagine the danger of living a life without the financial stress of breaking a leg?
I could finally be brave enough to pursue my dream of acting!
Not having to wait 45 business days to get your out-of-network claims reimbursed just for your insurance to tell you they never got the claim and please resubmit. Which I’ve done. At the end of September it will be another 45 business days. This is for a weekly therapy that I expect to be covered 80% because it’s out of network but maybe it isn’t because fuck me and I won’t know until I’ve been going for at least 15 weeks.
Someone in my family has medicare and it is absolutely fantastic insurance. You automatically get the very best prices on everything, because all the profiteering charges are automatically removed. I live in a large city and every doctor I’ve ever dealt with takes it because there are no insurance hassles, either for the doctor or for you. I’m talking about real medicare and not medicare disadvantage.
She’s a monster! A monster I tell you!
Frame Canada
Wendell Potter spent decades scaring Americans. About Canada. He worked for the health insurance industry, and he knew that if Americans understood Canadian-style health care, they might… like it. So he helped deploy an industry playbook for protecting the health insurance agency.
As a Canadian, I’ll be the first to say that our system isn’t perfect. If you’ve got a chronic but not life-threatening condition, like a need for knee or hip surgery, you could spend a long time on a waiting list. There are certainly lots of affluent Canadians who opt to step out of that line to get treatment at private for-profit clinics, both domestically and abroad. There’s always a shortage of something. Qualified doctors, nurses, family practitioners, CT or MRI machines, etc.
That being said, if you do have a life-threatening condition, the Canadian healthcare system can work pretty well. My step father had pneumonia Nov./Dec. last year, chest xray revealed something concerning beyond the pneumonia, by early January biopsies has been done, by February he’d started radiation, six or so weeks of that, then monitoring for a while and now he’s in remission. Everything moved fast, because he had a time-critical condition. Total cost to my family: zero dollars (setting aside costs for gas, parking, snacks for stress-eating, etc.). I couldn’t imagine a family going through the same situation in the US.
you’ve got a chronic but not life-threatening condition, like a need for knee or hip surgery, you could spend a long time on a waiting list.
This is going to sound crazy, but that’s also the case in the US. Months to see a specialist. Referred to another specialist. Wait months for an opening. It took me over a year of sporadic appointments just to get an epidural for back pain. It was ridiculous. All using “efficient” for-profit organizations where you pay out the ass for premiums and then they extract the rest through your dickhole if you dare to seek care.
There’s also the self-imposed delays. How many days of waiting are racked up by Americans saying “let’s see what happens” because of the prohibitive cost of accessing care?
I wonder what it looks like if you start the clock not at “You need hip replacement” but rather “My hip is acting up”.
My aunt in Canada has had 2 hip replacements. And while she did have to wait, which is worse: waiting and not being in crushing medical debt? Or waiting a bit and having almost no costs?
Same for my father in law. If he were a US citizen he’d probably be bankrupt right now, or more likely just still be in pain because he couldn’t afford the surgery in the first place.
If you compared wait times in Canada versus wait times in the U.S., Canada would probably be shorter overall.
The U.S. system creates artificial shortages in many different areas. They seek optimal profitablity by staffing slightly below what the need requires. This shortage justifies charging higher prices.
You can also probably blame some of the long wait times in Canada for things on the U.S. Specialist in the U.S. make a lot more money.
It depends who you’re comparing. For the average US or Canadian citizen, I’m sure you’re correct. If you look at income levels I bet it’s a different story. The poor and middle class (whatever’s left of it) have to wait, the rich have the option of paying out of pocket. If I wanted to have a whole-body MRI scan done, I could get one next week for $3200. Wouldn’t even need to be sick! Requires a referral, but you can “obtain one virtually from (their) physician partners” and you know their “physician partners,” aren’t going to turn away business.
Here is Texas it is not uncommon when you have a health issue and call your primary doctor, to be told that they don’t have any open appts for weeks and be told to go see an urgent care clinic instead. For profit primary doctors tend to arrange things so that all their time is filled up with non urgent “routine followups” or “annual checkups” and stuff that they have no time for any urgent medicare problems.
As a selfish American I’ll still gladly wait for treatment I want/need that isn’t life threatening if it means way fewer people die or drown in medical debt.
You get told it’s just pneumonia, but it keeps coming back for years.
Eventually someone figures it out and says you have mesothelioma. You travel the country for a few years, looking for treatment wherever you can. It costs everything you have.
Somewhere along the way, you have to put down $120,000 in cash for a surgery that gives you a few more years. But your last years are still mostly pain and exhaustion.
I wish my uncle hadn’t died the way he did.
there isn’t a Canadian system, there are a bunch of provincial systems.
Don’t threaten us with a good time, orange man!
The reach around we’ve been waiting for!
Is he threatening us with a good time?
Oh the humanity
