The Purple Revolution (politics)

Healthcare, Medicare for All, and What You Deserve.

Medicare for all.

Now, I could start of this post by talking about the financial benefits associated with Single Payer healthcare. I could talk about going from having a million different insurance companies all with different copays and rates and things they cover that hospitals have to deal with, to one big healthcare insurer in the US government will save us money. I could say that other countries use Universal healthcare and spend less than us only to have better healthcare outcomes. I could say that allowing the government to negotiate with pharma companies will lower drug prices, I could say you'd still have private doctors and hospitals, I could say that so long as the government spent 12% of GDP on healthcare like we do now coverage could only increase,  I could say all that, but I don't think you'd buy it.

Because, at the end of the day this is the way it's gonna be if we have singlepayer. Everyone gets healthcare. Everyone, not just you, not just Bill gates, but people who are lazy. People who don't work, who don't care about work, people who smoke and do drugs, people who are fat and who are drunk, those people are gonna get healthcare even if they can't pay a dime into the system. But if we made an exception for people who don't pay into the system, than it would lose its simplicity and be pointless.

In my time debating conservatives this has been the core thing we seem to disagree on. I think history largely bares out the good that left wing policies can have on the economy and the general well being of the economy. Now that doesn't mean all left wing ideas are good for society, but FDR dragged the US out of the great depression and led us to victory against the Nazis, and he did that largely by spending lots of money building stuff, handing out free money to some people, and raising taxes on the rich. But, if you're a conservative, it doesn't really matter if it works, it matters who deserves what. Do poor people, deserve healthcare. If you don't work and you don't want to work, do you have a right to life at all? Should you just die alone in a ditch somewhere, or should a hospital have to let you in and pay for you to get healthcare? This might sound cruel, but the center of it is this, "I worked for mine, so you should have to work for yours."

Now I know conservatives are going to say "Wait wait wait! That's not our argument, we just don't want to have to pay for other people who don't work. It's not that they don't deserve healthcare, it's just that we deserve our money more because we worked for it and they didn't." Which is honestly quite fair. It's not even a bad point, you spent all day grueling away at your 9 to 5 why should you pay for somebody else who is lazy?

Now as a leftist, and I'd probably do this on some issues but not this one, I'd probably say "because human beings deserve to be alive." But, I won't, because that won't convince any conservatives of my point. The counter to this is that you benefit. You, yes you, you working the nine to five, you benefit from single payer healthcare. Unless you're in like the top 10% of earners, or you're a super young person with no healthcare problems like literally at all, you'll see your healthcare costs go down. The system will get more efficient because hospitals won't have to juggle a million different insurers, we can negotiate drug prices, other countries have...

And I'm going down the same road again. But the point still stands, if you're an honest average working middle class american, the research has shown that you will pay less into the system than you do now for about equal care. But a fraction of the money you do pay, will go towards people who don't work. So that raises the question, "why not exclude them from the system?" Why not just, make a single payer system that excludes the unemployed. If you don't work and you don't pay taxes than you don't deserve healthcare so you don't get any. This new system would be healthcare for the working class, only healthcare for the people who deserve it. 

If you want a longer explanation, I can give one in the next chapter. But in general it's this. #1 the point of the system is that it's supposed to be efficient. If you're asking people for their Income before they get healthcare that's just another administrative hurdle for hospitals that all of us are going to have to pay for.