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this post was submitted on 20 Jul 2023
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But you still have to pay back your student loans and pay a small fortune for healthcare because fuck you.
Two have basically nothing to do with each other.
We are still the richest nation in the world. 2.3 billion sounds like a lot, but its nothing to the us gov, it's nothing to the defense budget alone, and it is actively wrecking the military capabilities of one of our top geopolitical rivals.
I'm not going to pretend to understand the intricacies of the Russia/Ukraine situation, but I know this is peanuts compared to what it could cost us, and we don't even have boots on the ground. This is the deal of a century.
Be mad at the corrupt piece of shit republicans forcing you to go into crippling debt for healthcare and education, not the innocent Ukrainians fighting for their lives and democracy.
The good thing about a 2-party system is that you can always point to the other party as to why things are the way they are. :)
Why would I only be mad at the Republicans? Joe Biden and most of the Democrats don't support single payer or free tertiary education either.
American pays mores per capita for healthcare than most countries with a single payer system.
You'd actually save money if you changed.
I get your point, but I’m not sure if that’s true. Americans in general are very unhealthy. I think that might explain why it’s more expensive at least somewhat.
Do you not see the chicken-or-egg situation here? They're more unhealthy because of bad healthcare. That (bad) healthcare is more expensive because they're more unhealthy.
Moreover, much of the reason the healthcare is so expensive is because of insurance overhead, for-profit middlemen (including hospitals, private equity owning doctors offices, etc), massive prescription medication markups because people can't go without medication, and other inefficiencies in the system. Even with an unhealthy population, it doesn't need to be nearly as expensive as it is.
That is true. It is possible to eat only healthy options if you make a concerted effort to, but if you casually just eat what's convenient, or eat at restaurants, you will be consuming astronomical portions and really wacky macro ratios.
People in the USA make the "well unhealthy food is cheap" argument which is only partially true; the more accurate claim is "convenient food is unhealthy". I spend significantly less money on healthy ingredients and make my own food than someone who is buying convenient microwavable and prepared meals; but, it takes me a decent amount of time each day to cook versus a minute watching a microwave. I think cultural aspects of being overworked sneak in to this situation as well: when you have so little free time, and have worn yourself out at work, unless you really enjoy the act of cooking, you are likely to just reach for convenience rather than putting in effort to cook something healthy. Then, you have the interaction of eating unhealthy foods to self-soothe as a method of coping with the reality of being overworked.
There are a lot of moving pieces but, all else being equal (that is, the population eats the same things and keeps the same activity level): the healthcare system in the USA could have a lot less waste and overhead (read: siphoned profits) and thus be a lot less costly to interact with.
I see it. It makes sense. I just don’t know if it’d initially be cheaper. I still think it’s the right thing to do, but it might take a generation for the savings to start happening.
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That doesn't help, but there's genuinely a huge amount of money being siphoned off in the form of profits along the way.
Americans aren't that much worse than other countries.