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The US has near universal health care. Most people have it through their jobs, old people have it through Medicare, and people without jobs, in most of the states in the US have it through Medicare expansion.

There is still a coverage gap, it's small and shrinking.

Using that as some sort of explanation for why people are dying on the roads in the US compared to the rest of the world explains nothing.



> near universal

For those that prefer numbers, nonelderly Americans were ~17% uninsured pre-ACA, ~11% uninsured post-ACA:

https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/key-facts-about-th...


Among the uninsured--

- 25% are eligible for Medicaid/CHIP, but have not enrolled.

- 38% are eligible for a health insurance subsidy, but have not utilized it.

- 28% are ineligible for financial assistance (i.e. Illegal immigrants or folks who can afford a plan for less than 8.5% of their income)

- 7.5% are "in the coverage gap", (not sure what that means).

https://www.kff.org/uninsured/issue-brief/a-closer-look-at-t...



Coupling healthcare to a job is exploitative. Those business owners are not owed anyone’s labor. If they can only survive given politically correct shackles on social agency, they should not exist as businesses.


Healthcare was not coupled to jobs in order to exploit employees. It was a response to government interventions preventing companies from paying employees more and so the companies started offering healthcare plans as part of their benefits in order to pay people more [0].

[0]: https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/05/upshot/the-real-reason-th...


An origin story that, if true, we weren’t there, means nothing. The justification to avoid change now is, often but not always, the impact it would have to employers ability to hire.

It’s a problem that can be legislated away with public scrutiny and effort. This kind of history is irrelevant to next steps; it’s not like advocating for a literal holocaust. The figurative identity of a business owner is not my problem.

Just expressing where my indifference for others lies. Keep people alive, figuratively kill coddled businesses.


Just to make sure that you get that we're mostly on the same page, I think the current insurance situation is overall insane (see billing and prices as an example).

That being said, this kind of history is absolutely not irrelevant to next steps. It is incredibly relevant since the situation we're in now is a direct consequence of a previous set of heavy handed restrictions introduced by the government.




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