What’s keeping people from demanding it?
Capitalists control the political system of the US. Its not a democracy, it’s a capitalist dictatorship.
What health-care systems it used to have, were only to quell decades of worker struggles fighting for equivalent health care systems the USSR was putting in place in the 1920s.
That article and those linked within are a goldmine. Thank you for sharing.
No probs!
Why didn’t nazi Germany have universal healthcare?
What kept people from demanding it?
Like most of these kinds of problems, the answer can be boiled down to a simple commonality: The people who stand to lose the most from things changing for the better are the same people who have the most power to influence the outcomes. The only thing that can counter that is a strong labor movement.
Now, there is a more complicated question to be asked about why US labor movements have been less successful than their European counterparts, but that I don’t have an easy answer for.
The second thing is actually pretty easy to answer. The same people from the first part of your answer have also been using their outsized power and influence to erode the power and influence of unions over time. Many actions taken by European unions would be considered illegal in America and met with violent state oppression. While Europe has maintained many of their labor rights from the turn of the 20th century, America’s labor rights have been rolled back to almost before the new deal. Most unions barely have the right to strike, and even when they can that power is exceptionally limited. Basically any effective labor action in the US would require people to accept that they are breaking the law, and will likely die, sustain life altering injury, or go to jail for it. Since most Americans that would benefit from strong unions are living in oppressive poverty to begin with they either see the risks of illegal labor action as too large, or have been propagandized against it.
Yeah, but why did it turn out differently like that? Europe surely had its own class of capitalists and other entrenched interests. They could have pushed for similar suppression measures.
Maybe it had something to do with the difference in fallout from WWII? Idk. I’m not super well read on this subject in particular, so I don’t know enough to do anything but speculate.
the Hospital Corporation of America makes $70b+ a year
Isreal, sorry not sorry. America sends isreal 300 billion every year as a donation… The get paid $600 to have a kid and get $1’800 for every child they have. We dont have free health car because they do… Just think about that for a minute.
Follow the money: the current system makes more sense for private insurers, pharma, and large healthcare providers who all benefit from things staying as they are.
But it’s not just about corporations. The US also built its system around employer-based insurance back in World War II, and now healthcare is tied to your job. That creates risk: leaving your job can mean losing coverage, which naturally makes people more cautious and dependent on poor employment. This also makes people more cautious about starting up a business so the economy becomes controlled in the hands of a few - and so more oligarchic
There’s also a cultural angle. In the US, “freedom” is often seen as freedom from government involvement, even if that sometimes means less practical freedom (like being unable to change jobs easily), and the individual spending more on insurance than they would on taxes.
So it’s not one single reason - it’s money, history, and mindset all reinforcing each other.
Rigidity and social control also show up in other countries with strategies like high housing costs.
Seriously? Because that’s money flowing in the “wrong” direction, that is away from billionaires’ pockets.
This is literally all there is to it, along with indentured servitude by tying insurance to employment on top of it. This country’s fucked up healthcare system keeps the billionaires happy and the people stuck appeasing them.
Because the politicians who could allow it are bribed by health insurance lobbyists to not allow it. There’s a lot of money at stake for a relative few people, and they’ll do anything to not risk it.
In the USA, there is little corruption officially; that’s only because bribery is legal. Billionaires, Corporations, Banks and even other nations like Saudi Arabia can “contribute” huge amounts of money without even revealing who they are.
Insurers, drug manufacturers and other interested parties “donate” many millions of dollars through these Super PACs and shell companies to keep things as they like them.
The voters are too busy juggling low-wage jobs to compete with the multi-generational wealth accumulators; on top of this, they pay more taxes in more ways than any other generation before.
Our representatives won’t bite the hand that feeds them willingly, and are legally protected to continue doing so.
People’s standard of living and life spans are shrinking as a result. See Citizens United, Super PACs, Panama Papers and Pandora Papers for more details.
There’s so much, unions squashed, down to 10% of workforce and those are mostly police and government ironically. Check out Patriot Act if you wonder why there’s so little organizing. The FED haha it never ends
If you dare to struggle, you dare to win! If you dare not struggle, then damn it, you don’t deserve to win! Fred Hampton
That is the problem, americans are weak, pacified and subservient.
Bad enough that they already resign in their ‘normal’ pathetic conditions (no healthcare, student debt,…)
Even the current regime can’t motivat them.
Near fascist, and still nothing happens.
No strikes, big riots, etc…
They have their little walks with their edgy signs, complain on social media about the bad orange man or go to their lame No Kings meetings.
There the fake-left Uniparty politician promises to make it all better.
You have to stay nicely between the lines, violence is bad and has no place in a democracy, simply wait a few years and vote for me next time. Trust me!
And they do.The powerful have convinced the masses that paying a single dime extra in taxes is just about the worst thing you could be forced to do, including whatever happened on that Island. So the common people are unable to reconcile that everyone paying higher taxes will make healthcare better for everyone. Normal people get to stay sick, poor, and rely on GoFundMe or die prematurely while the powerful laugh and count their money. It’s a fucking GRIFT.
Capitalism, severely lowered expectations, mainstream news media controlled by the billionaire class pumping out capitalist propaganda. People continuing to believe the Democratic Party wants to enact universal healthcare when all elected Dems really care about is staying in power, doing the bare minimum, and raking in the cash from their billionaire donors. People continuing to vote for Democrats based on that belief when they could be using their votes to vote in anti-capitalist candidates from the real left (Green Party, PSL, etc).
When Democrats are in charge of all of the levers of power, they say: “Darn there are all these rules we have to follow and the Republicans are obstructing us and won’t budge. Oh well, better luck next time 🤷♂️” while behind closed doors they’re listening to the health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies who offer them money and perks and special treatment and job offers in the industry once they’re out of office.
People can demand it, but that isn’t how we could ever get it. The privatized healthcare system makes too much money and the left in the US Empire is only recently beginning to recover from the Red Scare and systematic dismantling by the state in the 20th century.
Now that the Red Scare is largely over, the United States is being dismantled by a compromised president controlled by Russia in the 21st century.Born too early to see the US being dismantled by Russia, born too late to see the US being dismantled by Russia, born just in time to see the US being dismantled by Russia.I am ignorant of modern geopolitics. Have no pity for me. I will go learn.
This isn’t true, though. Trump just isn’t quite as hawkish on Russia as many liberals would like, but if he was actually compromised he would be lifting sanctions and wouldn’t be attacking Russian allies like Iran and Venezuela.
Now that the Red Scare is largely over
It never ended and won’t be over until capitalism is dead. What do you think the bullshit about a “Uyghur genocide” was for?
House votes to denounce ‘horrors’ of socialism ahead of Mamdani-Trump meeting
I can see that I’m not as well-read on the state of affairs as everyone else, and also I just noticed that I’m on .ml.
My apologies. I’ll remove myself from this instance until I am less ignorant about the world I live in.
because they gotta spend a literal trillion a year to kill brown people worldwide instead.
It’s actually cheaper to do single payer healthcare, but because profit rules all the empire does this.
I feel like we Marxists have explained why hundreds of times in dozens of ways already.
