Atrocious US Health Care

I hung out primarily with 20 something black employed people when I lived in San Francisco in 1985. To my surprise none of them had health insurance. They could not afford it. It drove me nuts. They always had some problem you would get fixed immediately if you lived in Canada. They would let it get worse and worse, trying to ignore the problem.

I don’t think Americans have any idea how terrible their health care system is and what a rip-off it is. It has outcomes on par with Cuba, below every other developed country. Americans are not aware of this because few people travel outside the USA to see what other countries are doing.

When you total up the bill for taxes, fees, hospital care, copayments, pills… in the USA you will spend twice what you do in Canada. The US system is designed to make extremely large amounts money by extracting as much as possible from patients. In contrast the purpose of a universal health care system is to keep people healthy.

The big advantage of universal health care is there is no excuse for sick people wandering around infecting others and getting worse. You just go into the nearest clinic and get in fixed. No extra bill. No paperwork. Riding a bus in the USA scares the heck out of me. It looks like half the passengers have some reportable disease.

In Canada, even the druggies and alcoholics get treated. The big benefit of that to everyone is this policy helps prevent the spread of infections.

I am absolutely baffled by the Tea Party desire to die for the right to pay twice as much as necessary for their health care so that billionaires can profit. They have a knee-jerk phobia over the word socialism but they have not the first clue what it actually means. They react as if it meant being put in a cage and tortured. It is just you set up a super insurance scheme to cover everyone. Because it is universal and gets economies of scale, it can afford to cover everyone, and offer very low rates, can be collected many ways, including taxes.

Dentistry has problems too. It is like putting yourself in the hands of the Mafia when you walk into a US dentist office.

~ Roedy (1948-02-04 age:70)