Among modern industrialized nations, the United States stands out as one of the very few that still lacks universal healthcare. Why do Americans accept this situation?
Universal Healthcare?
Ted Rall
Ted Rall is a syndicated political cartoonist for Andrews McMeel Syndication and WhoWhatWhy.org and Counterpoint. He is a contributor to Centerclip and co-host of "The TMI Show" talk show. He is a graphic novelist and author of many books of art and prose, and an occasional war correspondent. He is, recently, the author of the graphic novel "2024: Revisited."
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Why?
Real simple. The people controlling the debates are damaged goods. I could type for pages and pages, but that’s all it really boils down to, in the end. More accurately, the people in charge of the debates are damaged goods who haven’t learned how to control their traumas like adults. They’re still the scared little kids waiting for Unka or Poppa to open the door very quietly so Mama, who knows what’s going on, won’t have to be forced into an uncomfortable confrontation with her meal ticket. They clutch their traumas like fetish dolls and invoke them whenever they want attention or feel the discussion is not centered on them, which is to say almost constantly.
I have to agree that child abuse is way too common. (Even one case is way too common, and there’s much more than that.) However, I would guess that greed is a more common problem when it comes to thwarting reasonable solutions for healthcare and college. Greed, and also distrust of the system from people who rightly have determined that the system pretty much always manages to screw them over. To move in the right direction for healthcare and college, I’d be addressing greed and distrust.
Illustrating that “exceptional” applies to both the favorable and the UNfavorable ends of the spectrum of situations/characteristics/abilities, etc., under discussion.
Those who oppose universal health care are claiming that the current system is better. They find the occasional fault in a country with universal health care and play it up as typical of the whole system. And this is working, as evidenced by how many candidates who are against universal health care are getting elected in the USA.
If stories are the key, proponents of universal health care need to be telling the stories of all those who are being failed by the USA healthcare system. Spread the real stories!
The US doesn’t have universal health care because our current health care system is a wealth extraction system for our country’s oligarchs. Ditto for free college, plus it turns people with college degrees into debt peons.
Those may be the underlying motivations, but what are the mechanisms of keeping healthcare and college from the people? To the extent that it is misleading narratives, we can beat that with true narratives. To the extent that the mechanisms are something else, what do you recommend to overcome them?
The government is owned by the oligarchs. They are pretty much immune to popular pressure on this and any other issue that matters. The last time popular pressure worked was when the Nixon regime realized the country was going to go up if they pushed any harder in Vietnam. Their long-term response was to do everything they could to make defuse the possibility of popular pressure getting to that point again. They seem to have succeeded. Note that the largest demonstrations in history, against the Iraq war, had zero effect.