What Do Americans Know About Universal Healthcare?
During the 2016 election year, suddenly, for the first time in the history of America, people from all walks of life began to talk openly and a LOT about universal health care. Yeah, we were sorta prepped for that conversation during the rise of Obamacare, but frankly, health care became a ball-buster issue when Clinton was running against Sanders.
I’ve lived and traveled all over the world since I was a kid and have accessed health care in Mexico, Spain, Ireland, Guatemala, and Malta to name a few places.
In fact, I’ve kept a dentist and a doctor in Spain for the past 16 years since I started wintering there. I’ve always received good treatment. However, no one back home in the good old USA seemed very interested in my health care stories.
Then along came the NEW progressives.
You know, the group of patriots that adamantly opposed Hillary and adored Sanders. I don’t know where this group hid themselves prior to this, but certainly Sanders had been promoting universal health care for a very long time without garnering much attention.
I guess an American motto should be BETTER LATE THAN NEVER.
Because we fail to understand that calling one’s self a progressive simply because you are finally interested enough in universal health care to declare it publicly, doesn’t qualify one as a progressive.
The universal-health-care ship sailed about 80 years ago.
America is so far behind the rest of the world that it’s embarrassing to see progressives pretending to be on top of things. Talk to me about universal basic income or new technological developments to solve climate change issues, but universal health care is an old idea, my friends. We should’ve been fighting for it like it mattered 80 years ago.
We didn't fight for it in the last 80 years because Americans have little to no interest in what other countries do to solve problems.
We’re so convinced that everyone wants to be us that it’s a wonder that the U.S. doesn’t have it’s own FB page in order to see how many loyal followers it could attract. It would go viral, don’t you know.
Yet, there’s a long list of OTHER countries who have long ago, decades ago, developed different ways of providing health care to every citizen in their country.
No one goes bankrupt in these countries when they get sick either. Their health care isn’t tied to their employment. They can start a business much easier because that’s one less thing they have to worry about. And, if they lose their jobs, they can still go to the doctor. There’s generally a cap on the price of prescription drugs because the government negotiates and sets limits.
Sigh … Sounds like a dream world, doesn’t it?
And yet, most Americans haven’t a clue how Germany’s healthcare compares to England’s or Norway’s or the Netherland’s. We don’t know because we don’t care. I daresay that there are many Americans who are totally unaware that Germany doesn’t actually have universal health care or that England’s NHS isn’t exactly like Sweden’s health care system. It’s true. And, yet, they’re all superior to ours even while they may compete with one another.
During the last 80 years, why didn’t we study these systems and compare what they have to offer?
We didn’t because we aren’t remotely interested in ideas from other countries. For example, did you know that there are a number of countries, including England that offer supplemental private insurance to the basic universal health care system to those who want it. And, Germany isn’t actually a true universal health care system but instead offers a universal multi-payer health care system paid for by a combination of statutory insurance and private insurance.
Are we even remotely curious about the details?
In most cases, probably not. In fact, I daresay that many Americans couldn’t explain how the most popular proposal, Medicare for all, would actually work if we were finally able to garner enough support to change our current fire-breathing-dragon of a health-care system.
There’s no doubt a scholarly schmuck somewhere who has collected data from the various systems worldwide.
I refer to this person as a schmuck simply because the general opinion of such dedication by the majority of Americans is rarely complementary. By in large, we have a long history of anti-intellectualism and a disdain for higher education.
Be that as it may, this schmuck, wherever she is, could provide general education to some Americans if she dumbed it down enough and the presentation didn’t last more than four or five minutes. We have very short attention spans. That would be better than nothing, however, which is what we have now — nothing.
But that ain’t never going to happen.
Apparently, this is how we solve problems in the US. We don’t. We haven’t solved problems in the US for a long time. We can’t. We have the attention span of a four year old. I’m sorry. That’s not a good comparison. After all, when my granddaughter was four, she spoke two languages. I’m drawing a blank here, folks. I guess I’ll pass on supplying a nifty metaphor.
We need help!
Suffice it to say, we’re shooting blanks in a social war that’s slowly but surely driving us closer and closer to our own self-imposed decline. There’s so many solutions to big problems and so much information available to us, but we’re not really interested. And because we aren’t interested, we remain uninformed, only able to explain our position with a few catch phrases and a stolen FB comment or two.
There’s no deep understanding of any of the problems that we face.
We can’t fix anything. We never will. And, even though learning new things is too hard for us, we still won’t allow someone else to do the difficult work in our place. No, they’re denied the respect let alone interest they deserve. So, Americans struggle on. Never able to agree on a solution, because we can’t understand what’s real and what’s not. Turns out that even charts, pictures, and catch phrases aren’t able to hold our attention for long. We’re too accustomed to reading the headlines but skipping the article. So, we rush to the conclusion that we know everything even though we know nothing about anything.
Folks, that’s a recipe for disaster.
Most likely, we’ll continue to stumble along pretending to be progressive, acting like we have it all figured out but unable to supply any specific details about what our BIG plan really entails or whether it’s better or worse than all the other systems throughout the world. And, if someone asks us tough questions, we’ll just throw our toys down on the ground and stomp away in a fit of rage.
That’s all an uninformed, uninterested, uneducated person can do — act like an inexperienced, monolingual child.
Teresa Roberts is a retired educator, author, world traveler, and professional myth buster. You can find her books on Amazon.
