I get really confused when americans, when talking about universal health care are like ‘yeh but it’s not free sweaty :) :) you have to pay it through taxes :) so gotcha!!’
and I’m like ….???? That’s the whole point??? Everyone pays their fair share so that no one has to be turned away because they don’t have insurance??? And no one has to set up a Fundraiser page just so that they DONT DIE???? So people don’t put off going to the doctor because they’re scared of going bankrupt?? Because healthcare is a RIGHT and should be free at the point of access?!?
“So no one has to be turned away” she says hahaha go to a universal health care country and get a necessary operation in less than a few years and come back and talk shit.
Look at the cure rates compared to mortality rates in universal health care countries and compare them to ours, then talk shit.
Tear your ACL in a universal health care country and see what the people say if you should go to their hospitals or go to an American hospital, then talk shit.
2010. I’d been feeling a bit ill. Work was going nuts, so I figured it was stress. Pretty good call considering a week later work fired their entire IT department (of which I was part).
But then I got sicker. And it turned out I had cancer.
Burkitt’s lymphoma, stage 4a. It had spread into my brain and spinal column. 90% cure rate, but I needed nine months of chemo - and not the outpatient chemo, nope, talking multiple week stays per round of the magrath protocol. Drugs were about 10k an IV bag. I was unemployed. And there were complications.
Thankfully I live in a country with universal healthcare. And it didn’t cost me a goddamn cent to save my life. I’m now officially past the five year mark to move me from “remission” to “Cured”.
I’ve lived in a universal healthcare country my entire life. And I’ve seen the US system in action. Your system is fucked. Straight up fucked. You’ve got fucking Dickensian shit going on there, people dying on streets from preventable causes or ending up broke for breaking a hip. Your health insurance companies have you by the balls and people like you are begging them to squeeze harder. What the actual fuck is wrong with you?
“But but but TAXESSSSSSSSS”
yeah no shit. That story above? Happened when I was 32. I’d spent 14 years of my life paying those fucking taxes that funded the system that saved my life. And guess what? Now I’m cured, I’m…Back..at work..And have been for several years…earning waaaay more money and paying back into the system. This shit doesn’t exist in a vacuum, dickhead. You’re not feeding some imaginary pack of leeches, you’re paying forward on your own damned healthcare so you don’t have to argue with an insurance company while trying to heal.
i also don’t get why americans can’t wrap their heads around the fact that universal healthcare is actually cheaper
like yeah your taxes might go up (hell, take a chunk out of the military budget, they might not even change) but you won’t have to pay ridiculous health insurance premiums. it’s a net saving, dumbasses.
Also I care about people that aren’t me
Also I care about people that aren’t me
the only people I have ever known who voluntarily went to an American hospital instead of a Scandinavian one (Scandinavian hospitals being all universal healthcare), was my big brother’s family who have a son with a heart condition. They’re Icelandic. Iceland, with a population of about 300.000 people, does not have a specialised children’s hospital so the surgery they needed for their child just wasn’t available in the country - not uncommon, so what the Icelandic health care system does in those cases is pay for the surgery to take place abroad in a hospital with doctors who can perform the surgery. So they decided to go to America (Iceland paid) to some hotshot children’s hospital to get surgery for their baby, and they had to wait 4 months for this vital and urgent surgery even though it was paid for up front. In your so-called amazing American hospital. For comparison, the same kind of surgery here in Denmark is actually urgent, so the child has to wait 2 days tops to get the damn surgery.
So miss me with that “waiting time of a couple of years” bullshit. That’s not a thing.
“But you’ll have to wait” – we still have to wait if we’re not rich. At least I won’t be bankrupt by the end of it.
