Summary
A Gallup poll shows 62% of Americans believe the government should ensure universal healthcare coverage—the highest support in over a decade.
While Democratic backing remains strong at 90%, support among Republicans and Independents has also grown since 2020.
Public frustration with the for-profit healthcare system has intensified following the arrest of a suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, reportedly motivated by anger at the industry.
Recent controversies, including Anthem’s rollback of anesthesia coverage cuts, and debates over Medicare privatization highlight ongoing dissatisfaction with the system.
62% seems low.
And the other 40% rely on the help and care of others every day while blabbering on about being “self-made” which actually just means “selfish asshole”.
America just voted to allow Ramaswamy and Elon to cut government by 75%. This will absolutely include healthcare. What will happen to that 75% that was under government? It will go to the private sector obviously. Now they can can become even richer. Holy shit Ramaswamy is like a real life Shooter McGavin
Thats not going to happen.
The only thing they love more than bitching about government overspending, is benefiting from it. The whole DOGE will have less power in the government than the meme it’s based on, and the people who will run it are looking to line their pockets with your money for the least effort on their part.
elon and ramaswamy are idiots sure but republicans will absolutely gut medicaid (first since it’s easier to take from disabled people than seniors) and the aca.
They wont gut Medicaid, they’re just going to force it to take on huge debt while they cut taxes for the 1% and then say that it’s Democrat’s fault for overspending.
That’s nearly 2/3 of Americans, a pretty strong majority. Those other 38% of Americans can go fuck themselves, right along with the corporate oligarchs they worship.
too bad it only matters what the 1% want. can’t wait to see what those 62% will do when their retirement money gets pillaged too. spoiler alert: nothing
Here’s the thing… having health coverage doesn’t mean jack crap.
I’ve told my story before, it got best of’d on reddit and such, but it bears repeating why we need Universal Health Care:
tl;dr lost my doctors due to an insurance change 4 weeks in to a 6 week open heart surgery recovery…
In 2018, my company was in the process of being sold. No big deal, above my paygrade, nothing for me to worry about.
Then I got sick right after Thanksgiving. Really bad heartburn that lasted 5 days. It wasn’t heartburn. I had a heart attack. 12/3/2018 I had open heart surgery, single bypass, and that started a 6 week recovery clock.
On 1/1/2019, the sale of my company closed and we officially had new owners. I also officially lost all of my doctors because the new employers don’t do Kaiser in Oregon. They do it in WA and CA, but each state has to be negotiated and they never had presence here.
1/2/2019 I start working with Aetna to find doctors, hospitals, etc. Beyond the cardiologist I need a new pharmacist, podiatrist, diabetes care and a general “doctor” doctor.
Fortunately, my new employer is a big enough fish, they have their own concierge at Aetna and she gets me into the Legacy Health system.
On 1/3/2019 I start developing complications, but I don’t know it at the time. It starts with a cough. All the time. Then, when I try to lay down, like to sleep, I’m drowning, literally choking and gagging.
The concierge and I try to get an appointment, we’re told 2-3 months. For a dude still recovering from open heart surgery? Best they could do is 2 weeks. 1/14/2019.
I can’t lay down to sleep so I buy a travel neck pillow and sleep sitting up.
I get to see the new doctor at the “official” end of the 6 week recovery. He doesn’t know me or my history so he wants to run tests.
I’m sitting at home playing video games and waiting on test results when the call comes… Congestive heart failure. Report to the ER immediately.
My heart developed an irregular heart beat, which caused fluid build up in my chest. They admitted me and were getting ready to pull fluid off me.
“What happened to your foot?”
“I dunno, what happened to my foot? I can’t feel my feet.”
Remember when I said I was sitting around playing video games, waiting for test results? Yeah, my foot was touching a radiator and I didn’t know it. 3rd degree burns, first four toes. Pinkie was spared.
So I’m in the hospital a week. I lose 4 liters of water per day. 50 lbs. of water. No wonder I was drowning. Regular bandage changes.
So now I’m facing two procedures. Electrocardio version to fix my heart, skin grafts to fix my toes.
This whole time the new insurance covers 80% until I reach the out of pocket maximum of $6,500. Then it will cover 100%.
The old insurance? ER visit for heart attack, hospital admission, 8 days in the hospital, open heart bypass… $250. $100 for meds and all the oxygen bottles I can carry.
So we hit the out of pocket maximum almost immediately. My wife had a problem with her foot running through the Seattle airport. The doctor who did her toe amputation was decided to be out of network so that was another $1,100.
I was never unemployed through all this. I had enough vacation and sick time banked to cover it. Cobra didn’t apply. Continuity of care didn’t apply because the new hospital DID have a cardiac department. Buying my old insurance wasn’t an option, it was far too expensive without employer backing. Income is too high for assistance (thank god) and I took steps to max out my HSA account, which is good because we drained it twice.
Three 1 week hospital stays (2 for me, 1 for my wife), multiple ER visits, two more major medical procedures… That would be enough to break most people even with good insurance.
So if you read any of that, let me ask you something… Why does the quality of my health care and my quality of life have to depend on who I work for and what insurance companies they choose to work with?
Why does the quality of my health care and my quality of life have to depend on who I work for and what insurance companies they choose to work with?
Because Nixon was in bed with big business, then Ford fumbled the gas crisis, and finally Carter naively trusted Congress to transition from employee mandates to single payer.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_health_care_reform_in_the_United_States
Aside from agreeing with you. Question. Why didn’t cobra apply? I would have thought it could. And did you have an option to pay the full cost of coverage out of pocket for any length of time? Not that any of this should matter, just curious in case I, or anyone I know, ends up in the same situation.
. Why didn’t cobra apply?
Because he didn’t leave his company. His company changed their insurance.
I thought it was more about the insurance than the company. :( it should be.
What % of Congress agrees? There’s lots of stuff the public wants that Congress doesn’t get lobbied to get. Health insurance companies spent $113 million on lobbying Congress JUST in 2024. Until the public can pony up that kind of money, Congress is going to listen to their masters.
somehow this doesn’t correlate with the > 50% that just voted against it.
Show me where Kamala or the DNC were promoting Medicare for all (or any improvements to healthcare for that matter) in this election cycle? And don’t say negotiating prices on 10 more prescription drugs or I’ll know you’re completely unserious.
The Dems aren’t saint on the topic, but they also aren’t explicitly against it.
The Rrpublicans have been very clear that taking healthcare away from millions of people is a party priority. The only reason it didn’t happen last time was because of 1 Republican Senator willing to fall on his sword shortly before death and end his career a pariah of the party.
i did’t say that dems are for it. i said reps are against it. maybe take more time to take in what someone says before arguing against something else.
R voters also happen to want good healthcare - shocking I know. My point is that the politicians are in bipartisan agreement that profits and lining their own pockets with bribe money is more important than American lives.
My broader point is that Dems lost so many voters because they didn’t indicate any willingness to change from Biden’s policies on this matter. And, obviously, it’s so bad that the people have reached an extreme breaking point. Sadly this allowed Trump to position himself as the change candidate and win, even though in actuality it will be change for the worse through further privatization and rolling back the possibility of those with preexisting conditions to get coverage at all. It’s barbaric, and the Dems were supposed to do so much better for the working class in this area.
Show me where (evidence there are ANY improvements to Healthcare) except for (evidence of any improvement to health care) or ill know you’re completely unserious. Look obviously it’s not enough, no one should genuinely think it is, but to even compare the two parties when it comes to Healthcare is disingenuous.
Also https://www.self.com/story/kamala-harris-health-policies-2024
That’s not medicare for all.
Never said it was?
The poll in the OP did.
I replied to what crusa said? So what the post said has no bearing on this chain.
What they said was in the context of the OP.
The midterm campaign should literally just be, “Death to Health Insurance, Public Health Now”.
No other issues. Campaign on that as a mandate. If we can only change one big thing at a time then we should only promise one big thing.
But what about the donors?
Historically we can change zero big things at a time. But I agree with you. Our rate of change has got to change. (Mathematics/physics joke goes here.)
Some of Tim Walz’s largest donors are health insurance and professionals. They have financial incentives to keep the status quo. With Democrats like this, who needs Republicans?
Why even complain? We all know Dems will vote blue no matter who next cycle
Walz doesn’t have a seat anymore. And what do the Democrats have to lose by actually moving left?
I’d say the reason the Democrats won’t move left is because the party elite have a lot of donors they’d piss off by actually supporting serious leftist economic policy.
Maybe I’m wrong. Hell, I’d love to be wrong. But I’ve sort of lost hope that the democratic party is ever going to deliver.
Not “coverage”, “affordable coverage”. I don’t want coverage through whatever capitalist exploit insurance company. I want affordable healthcare without lifesucking middlemen
The coverage the fire department provides is affordable. And my Library. And my streets. And the storm water system. And K-12.
Yeah but only sick people use healthcare so fuck them. /s
Capitalist healthcare is class eugenics. CMV.
What about unaffordable healthcare only available to the top 1% – project 2025
Also an important statistic left out of the summary: support among Republicans has grown to 32%
(which is still a hilariously low number, of course)
edit: I was curious so I checked the data in the source of the article, and I had ChatGPT do the math, and it came up with this: (0.33x0.9) + (0.25 x 0.32) + (0.42x0.65) = 62% support = 33% democrats, 25% republicans, 42% independants. That seems about right, even though the latest presidential elections didn’t indicate that, oof.
and yet a good portion of y’all voted for trump and the republicans…
And a lot of people who want healthcare didn’t bother voting.
Your inactions have consequences.
“but I couldn’t vote for the Democrats in good faith!!!”
Well now you’ve helped elect Trump. Hope that aligns with your morals!
(General “you”, not you specifically)
Aren’t you concerned at all with the large number of people that are under represented by their choices in the voting booth?
State level electoral reform will give more political parties the chance to be involved in future elections with no chance of a spoiler effect.
People would be free to vote for their preferred candidate, safe in the knowledge that their vote would still be counted against the republicans.
Who could say no to more democracy? Who could possibly be against ensuring their fellow country men/women/and more are fully represented to the best of our ability? Republicans? Yes, of course they are against democracy. How about the democratic party? Do they support democracy?
More political parties means more chances to beat the Republicans. More political parties means more people are involved in politics. More people being involved in politics statistically means more votes for the democratic party.
Why is the DNC saying no to these easy extra votes? Why wouldn’t democrats use every tool at their disposal to defeat the republicans?
Perhaps they view their poltical party to be more important then the nation state itself. Party over country, at all costs.
Aren’t you concerned at all with the large number of people that are under represented by their choices in the voting booth?
Yes, but they should still vote. Anyone who didn’t vote decided that they’re okay with Trump. Generally, anyone not okay with Trump who didn’t vote is either stupid, ignorant, or lying about not being okay with Trump being elected.
State level electoral reform will give more political parties the chance to be involved in future elections with no chance of a spoiler effect.
Yeah, I agree. But you don’t have that. So we work with the system we have.
Who could say no to more democracy? Who could possibly be against ensuring their fellow country men/women/and more are fully represented to the best of our ability? Republicans? Yes, of course they are against democracy. How about the democratic party? Do they support democracy?
If you think that Trump is worse than the Democrat candidate, then you vote Democrat. Deciding not to vote doesn’t give you more democracy, it gives you less.
More political parties means more chances to beat the Republicans. More political parties means more people are involved in politics. More people being involved in politics statistically means more votes for the democratic party.
Not with FPTP. I’m in Canada, where we realistically have a 3-party system. What happens in some parts of the country (including Federally) is the Left vote gets split and the Right vote often ends up winning.
Why is the DNC saying no to these easy extra votes? Why wouldn’t democrats use every tool at their disposal to defeat the republicans?
If it were that simple and easy, they’d do it. But it’s not. If the Right doesn’t split too, and if FPTP isn’t replaced with something better, then the Left has just screwed itself out of ever being elected again.
Tbf the Democrats aren’t particularly interested in addressing healthcare either… the money has to be removed from the system for it to improve. It is currently working as designed.
So you’d rather live in a fascist dictatorship than a neoliberal semidemocracy?
The world doesn’t have to be this way, dragonfucker. False dichotomies only keep us in our place.
Yeah, you could have protests, and direct action, or even a revolution. Which are all way harder in a fascist dictatorship. You voted for the dichotomy.
Only 23% of people living in the USA voted for Trump
That is 65% more than the percentage of people that, according to this post, dont want health coverage for everyone
23% voted for Trump, and 55% also indirectly did by not voting or going third-party.
The average American is stupid and thus easily confused. Hell, half of us read at a 6th grade level…
TIL 38% of Americans are CEO’s
Temporarily embarrassed CEOs
TIL 38% of Americans are CEO’s and/or bootlickers.
FTFY
Agree 100%. The USA should have universal healthcare.
They’re paying more to have private health care.
What was that figure like before that fella got shot?
* that actually pays out when you need something.
That’s the point of free at point of use health care.
Apologies if I’m preaching to the choir.
