How do you convince your everyday person about the free market solution to Health Care? The general public generally doesn’t care about politics, but cares about being able to live life. A lot of people buy onto the myth that Canada’s health care system is “flourishing”, I don’t know why but everyone seems to think that Canada has a great system. Its hard to convince your average person that it was the HMO Act of 1973 and The FDA’s regulations that are responsible for our current problem, especially if its someone that the health care issue effects personally.
If this is the collective delusion on Health Care, then we face a statist beauacracy as the solution. We need to convince your average person, little by little or we will never see this solution in the U.S. I honestly don’t know what more to say other then talking about the HMO’s.
Some people are just ignorant sadly, and there’s probably nothing we can do to stop Universal Health Care in the U.S or a free-market solution.
That she’d be able to pay for her medical care if drugs weren’t produced by monopolies, if her doctors weren’t cartelized, and if she would stop relying on the same government that has been bribed and bought by special interests who don’t give a damn about her problems.
I have conversations on universal healthcare fairly often. My mother is a nurse, and we both have experience with the Spanish universal healthcare system. She wholeheartedly supports the public option. It comes down to ignorance, though. She refuses to factor in facts such as the expenses of insurance regulation, medicine patents and other things that are driving medical costs up today. She also does not take into consideration the unsustainability of universal healthcare in terms of costs, which is incredibly surprising given that we both have experience first hand in regards to Spain (although, admittedly, Spain has not yet reached the level of France in terms of deficit spending for healthcare; besides, we are from Madrid, where ~50% of the residents have private health insurers). People simply refuse to look beyond the fact that “everybody” will be covered. Nobody wants to take into consideration the weaknesses of such a plan; such actions would not be egalitarian.
And so, as aforementioned, the problem comes down to ignorance.
I am not trying to apply a blanket term to all those who currently agree with universal healthcare. There are many who are open to ideas and have been persuaded otherwise.
Tell that to someone who faces a life-threatening illness because she can’t receive medication. Her insurance company stopped covering it. My friend has Cystic Fiberosis, I don’t think you know the extent of the worry unless you had to actually be concerned of a friend’s death.
I generally don’t talk a lot about health care. About half the guys at work are waaaaay to the right, the other half waaaay to the left. I’m sitting in the middle with one other guy. The ones on the polar ends have such closed minds there is no use talking about it with them (kind of like abortion and gay marriage, you ain’t changing anyones mind). So we talk about girls.
The current bill does not take us to universal care but I think we are heading that direction. It may be a while yet but we’ll most likely get there. I know a lot of people that say the feds should run everything, the need for states is a thing of the past. Since health care is a basic human right the feds should run it.
I’ll usually ask them if they are happy with the DMV, Post Office, school taxes etc. Then ask how would universal health care be any different.
Then again I use the VA hospital for all my health care needs and couldn’t be happier. So I’m a bit hypocritical I suppose.