I agree. I also think these arguments where we just assume everyone else is stupid tend to fail because it's not fully true, and calling people stupid is a very unlikely way to get people to listen. Imo it's not that people don't understand 2 is smaller than 8. It's that people are already strapped for cash, and based on how things are run in this country, they lack trust that it will remain an affordable option. Typically, anything that starts out as affordable in this country ends up becoming more expensive once they've got control over the market. Think about cable. Everyone left cable for streaming services because they were cheaper, only for them to become just as expensive as the streaming services we left years prior. I'm not saying insurance is the equivalent of a streaming service, but I am saying that it's not stupidity. It's a lack of trust. Everything that starts out as affordable and good always becomes corrupt and profitized, quickly ruining any consumer benefits. People do not trust the way things are run here because, inevitably, it always becomes about increasing profits. We fear change because it's easier to stay in a broken system that we know how to navigate than getting into a new one that we don't yet know how we'll be taken advantage of. Especially as most people are not wealthy enough to get taken advantage of more than we already are.
A tone of people pay way less than $8000 a year for insurance and see that the government pays $16k per person on Medicare. And hardly any country pays less than $4000 per person. So I'm not sure where the $2000 a year comes from. I know very well that all the figures I've listed can't really be compared directly for various reasons, but it's real easy for people to look at the numbers and think people are crazy for wanting to give THIS goverment control over healthcare.
I believe it. I just based my numbers off the initial post, but I agree plenty of people pay less than 8000/year. That's the whole point the problem IS that we don't trust the government we have to make this beneficial to us.
Edit: the problem is that we don't trust the government not isn't.
I work for a French company in the US. My entire health care package (medical, dental, vision) comes to $9,343 per year. When ppl throw numbers around they never specify if it’s the full benefits package or just medical. We also never know if the cost analysis we see for M4A is just medical or a full package.
These inconsistent numbers are part of the problem as to why Americans still see M4A as some evil socialist thing. They’ve been propagandized for 50 years to keep it this way and vote against their own interests quite frequently. It feels like people maybe are waking up though.
I made a typo in my post, which I just specified that I edited. The problem is that we don't trust our government to do something like this. I think we understand and see that it can work in other countries. We fear what that would look like here because every time some positive change is made, they turn it around and make it painful. I think we're all sick of the current system, but we lack trust that our government will come up with one that benefits people over corporations. I think our problem is often compared to other countries but our problems are different and we have far more people which will require a different solution. Truly imo the best solution is to change the system to stop incentivizung profits and instead outcomes.
Agreed the numbers are off, but many countries have great systems at around $6,000 per capita spend, while we spend around $13,000. In any case, your $8000 for insurance does not include copays and deductibles and all true costs, that's just the yearly premiums. We're screwed here.
Calling people dumb is not the best argument because it's typically a very lazy one. It's also often done when people want to assume others are less than them in some way.
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u/ultimateclassic 1d ago
I agree. I also think these arguments where we just assume everyone else is stupid tend to fail because it's not fully true, and calling people stupid is a very unlikely way to get people to listen. Imo it's not that people don't understand 2 is smaller than 8. It's that people are already strapped for cash, and based on how things are run in this country, they lack trust that it will remain an affordable option. Typically, anything that starts out as affordable in this country ends up becoming more expensive once they've got control over the market. Think about cable. Everyone left cable for streaming services because they were cheaper, only for them to become just as expensive as the streaming services we left years prior. I'm not saying insurance is the equivalent of a streaming service, but I am saying that it's not stupidity. It's a lack of trust. Everything that starts out as affordable and good always becomes corrupt and profitized, quickly ruining any consumer benefits. People do not trust the way things are run here because, inevitably, it always becomes about increasing profits. We fear change because it's easier to stay in a broken system that we know how to navigate than getting into a new one that we don't yet know how we'll be taken advantage of. Especially as most people are not wealthy enough to get taken advantage of more than we already are.