Worried about insurance for your kid? Can't happen here, the government will deal with that. Losing your job? Get paid for one or two years by your work insurance. After that you fall back to a free basic income (for as long as you need). And still this system is generally not exploited: People work hard here.
And it's not just unemployment. There are people begging for money on HN regularly, because they are dying (often of cancer) and are now worried about their families. This is just cruel and can't happen that easily on this side of the Atlantic.
But it seems US citizens want to live like that. Why?
German here who lived in the US for a year. I lived there during the time when obamacare was presented and I had a lot of discussions about this. The main reason which I heard over and over again (and sometimes word for word) "The German system is communism. We don't want that here!". I am not even kidding, there are people who truly believe that a german insurance system would be the beginning of communism in the US. One guy who told me this broke his arm and had to pay about 15000 dollar because he had no insurance. An other couple paid 75000 dollar behause at the birth of their first child there were some medical problems during birth and they did not have insurance. And still both got angry at me when I told them that I'd prefer the German way.
After hearing this stuff for half a year I am really glad to be back in Germany. I am funemployed since a few months and I pay 150 euro per month. Next week I have an appointment at the doctor because of my severe hip problems. I might get some xrays done and perhaps some MRT. What will this cost me? Nothing! I am so glad that I live in a deeply communist country...
I'm an Aussie that's lived and worked in quite a few countries, including the US, and I share this experience.
I was in Mexico partying with a bunch of US college kids when Obamacare was on the table, and we talked about it for a while. All of them said "We don't want it because it's Socialism!".
When I inquired as to what that meant, or why that is undesirable to them, the entire room of 30 of them went silent. Not a single one even know what Socialism meant, or why they had distaste for it, but they sure were certain they didn't want it!
IMHO, people in the US have been lied to for multiple generations, to the point where they don't even know why something is good or bad for them personally, they just know what they're supposed to think about something.
A lot of people didn't like ACA because we would have preferred single payer. Many others felt we would just be sending much more money to the for profit insurance companies who were already treating us horribly and making record profits.
We also have heard many stories of people having to wait months if not years for non-emergency treatment. Such as getting an MRI for an injured knee in Canada for instance. As a very healthy avid runner it would be very frustrating to not be able to pay for something critical to me like that (once again I am not saying this is always or mostly the case but it is a scenario I have heard about). I suppose our imaginations extrapolate if health care is more or less free for all then our level of care will be much worse. I am not really sure.
If it was up to me, I'd kill all insurance companies with fire, have us all pay into a pot for medicare and just use that.
This business about having to wait months for treatment is always an odd objection to me. Here in the U.S., under our existing system, I have many times had to wait months to see a specialist or begin a particular course of (non-emergency) medical treatment. It's hardly as though our current system somehow gets rid of the problem of waiting for appointments.
We just have such distrust in our government that we don't want them running the health care system. Witness, for example, the recent VA Hospital scandals. Our government is dysfunctional. And it's already incredibly intrusive, too, and some of us don't want the feds knowing all of our health problems (even though they probably already do).
I would love government health care, just not from this government. The free market doesn't work for health care.
Most people don't want to live like that, but health insurance companies profit from the current system and they have deep pockets to influence the government to keep it that way.
>But it seems US citizens want to live like that. Why?
Well first, not all US citizens do.
Primarily this seems to stem from a free-market, conservative viewpoint. Central to this viewpoint is the thesis that not only is labor just, but the sociological outcome of labor is also, always, just (unless the government interferes). In other words, those who can afford healthcare have earned the right to it, those who can't were simply to lazy or ignorant to work hard enough to afford it.
Also, there can be a deep aversion to the government (any government) interfering with a person's property and income, where any program which requires people to give for the "greater good" is seen as not only theft, but an existential attack on the fundamental ideals of American individualism and personal liberty. The argument here is that governments are by definition corrupt, fascist and incompetent, and only a free market with as little regulation as possible could handle something like "healthcare" efficiently and fairly.
Therefore, advocates for limited government will see social programs as interference by an increasingly "big government" regime which has no right to force a moral imperative on people or relieve them of their property, and conservatives and free-market believers will feel that social programs undermine the moral principles of capitalism while insidiously creating a dependent class of lazy left-wing radical neo-immigrants.
Also, it's probably worth mentioning that not many Americans appreciate that there is a difference between liberalism, socialism and communism, and nor would they care.
There's a lot (a lot) to be said for universal healthcare, but to answer you question in the general case (why americans don't want to be more like Europe), this might give a good hint:
Becoming Germany, Britain or Sweden would probably be a tolerable tradeoff, but a lot of factors go into that, it's not something that happens as a result of a single policy or two. Do note that in Portugal the rich are worse off than the poor in the US, and Italy and even France aren't far off.
Germans get more benefits provided by the government than Americans because Germans pay more taxes. The trade off is Americans get more take home pay and get to decide what benefits they wish to buy on their own, in the private market.
This also shows Americans work more than the Germans and this doesn't say anything about how hard people are working, but don't forget the old adage: Don't work harder, don't smarter!
"Get paid for one or two years by your work insurance. After that you fall back to a free basic income (for as long as you need). And still this system is generally not exploited: People work hard here."
> But it seems US citizens want to live like that.
US citizens, in aggregate, want to live like that (or, perhaps more accurately, want other people in the US to have to live like that) when opinions are aggregated by effective political power, sure, but effective political power in the US is largely a function of wealth, which is extremely unequally distributed.
It is the health insurance lobby that doesn't want it. Also corporations don't want the flexibility because it encourages people to stay and keeps salaries down.
Worried about insurance for your kid? Can't happen here, the government will deal with that. Losing your job? Get paid for one or two years by your work insurance. After that you fall back to a free basic income (for as long as you need). And still this system is generally not exploited: People work hard here.
And it's not just unemployment. There are people begging for money on HN regularly, because they are dying (often of cancer) and are now worried about their families. This is just cruel and can't happen that easily on this side of the Atlantic.
But it seems US citizens want to live like that. Why?