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Canadian here. ELI5 why Americans don’t just demand healthcare?
Ask any random person in the US and you'll get some variation of "I have a friend in Canada/UK (they don't) and they said they have to wait 254 months to see a doctor! I don't want that!"
Or "I work hard, I don't want more taxes just to pay for other lazy people to get free stuff!"
OMG, FFS, I heard exactly that thing in a discussion just a few days ago about Canada extending citizenship to those that have a family history of someone with Canadian citizenship:
"Oh goodie! Then you get to wait for months and months for their healthcare! Hyuk hyuk!"
Imagine you have a house with a fuck ton of annoying lights and you live in an HOA neighborhood. All your neighbors and the HOA have complained and threatened fines against you if you do not remove the lights. Literally all the people around you have asked, begged, and straight up demanded that you take down the lights. Buuuuuut... A foreign billionaire has offered you, personally, $200k a year to NOT take down the lights AND will cover any fines the HOA places on you AND hire you private security so that none of your neighbors can complain to you about the lights.
What would you do? Would you make an effort to take down the lights? Why? You'd be losing money and it's a lot easier to NOT do something than it is to do it. You might even agree that the area would be better without the lights, but again, why would you bother? You have every incentive to not fix the problem, and zero incentive to replace it.
Thats why. Americans may demand healthcare, but that's worthless. Our government officials no longer respond to, or care about, our demands. They don't even pretend to anymore.
Probably lots of reasons. At least one of which is that too many don't want to pay for services for people who "don't deserve it".
Another is a religion-based idea that helping people is bad for them because they won't work without 'motivation'
Doesn’t healthcare poll well across party lines?
About 60% of conservatives don't want it and they've been able to stop progress since Lieberman killed the public option in Obamacare. There's also the issue that while 90% of more liberal Americans want some form of federal assistance, pharma and health insurance lobbies Dem representatives very hard.
He's a guy I like to bring up for the both-siderists that like to pretend to be smart when talking about the "extremes on both sides", LOL.
My retort? "You mean like Lieberman? That kind of extremist on the Democratic Party?"
Usually I get confused looks because the people that talk about "extremists on both sides" are either just reactionary centrists or just low-info trying to come off as being above it all. Either way, they are usually just clueless and full of shit.
Usually they want to talk about someone like AOC or some nameless activists that something something BLM/Antifa/"defund the police". Or trans or the "open borders" that we don't actually have and did not have under Biden or Obama...
Yes but plenty of things do when there's no active push against it via the propaganda networks. For example environmentalism, rail expansion, and green energy generally have a solid bit of Republican support especially in rural areas so long as there's isn't any active war drumming against them.
Wage slavery doesn’t work if everyone gets free healthcare.
We have free healthcare in Canada and people are still struggling with money
Yeah, but it's an extra stick to keep everyone compliant and afraid. Who knows how much we have lost in wages thanks to our lower mobility thanks to having healthcare tied to where you happen to work.
Nixon loved it, of course.
The same reason we're rolling over for fascism. We're comfortable cowards.
The best explanation for everything that’s happened in the last thirty years is that the powers that be in America “beat” communism in 1991 and have no reason to help the working class anymore.
Healthcare is woke.
/jk
The real reason is a lot of dipshits would rather punch down on anyone they think is possibly getting more stuff and they think are not worthy of it. Even if it means they themselves are in absolute misery.
As long as they think a liberal/POC/gay/trans/non-xtian is getting it even worse, they are just fine. Remember, a lot of them are still obsessed with stupid shit like trans and "the border" when neither of those issues are going to affect them one iota.
We can thank the conservatives for weaponizing "last place aversion". You'll see this kind of thing in action when you see someone who is themselves living at the margins, possibly even making use of SNAP themselves, bitching about what other people choose to put in their carts when using SNAP. That's last place aversion in action. People who are living hand to mouth will agonize over nut-picking news articles from the likes of Faux "News" parading around one guy that supposedly bought lobster and steak with his SNAP benefits. Stupid people will extrapolate one (alleged) anecdote into a belief that there is widespread fraud to be worried about.
THAT'S COMMUNISM
Because then healthcare would also be given to the "unworthy" who didn't "earn" it