Thanks for spotlighting America's lack of universal healthcare, aka Medicare for All (M4A). But please make clear that "expand Medicare to cover all Americans" is a far cry from M4A. It does not come close. Please don't conflate the two.
I refer you to HR 3421, the Medicare for All Act of 2023, Title II, Benefits. It shows that M4A is much more comprehensive than Medicare. I'm on Medicare and am grateful for it. But on my fixed income, I still shell out hundreds a month in private-insurer premiums that M4A would automatically cover at *zero* out-of-pocket cost. And that's before I pay a nickel for actual care.
I can't wait till a corrupt, corporate-captured Congress finally enacts M4A.
Conservatives here continually point to the gdp per capita that is much higher for the US compared to Canada and other “socialist” countries. In this global economy it is social services that lessen the inequality and US is high on the list of inequality. AOC was right “system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong”
Please do! I'll publiash your translation too, for the Latinow in the US who don't speak or read English well enough to read the article! Thanks for the offer!.
I've always believed that our healthcare system in America is a scam. But I wasn't aware of the way it affects competition with other countries who have universal healthcare.
I also wasn't aware that Canadians have unions that work compared to the US. I feel like the US unions have mostly sold out the membership. Trump's not going to take $ away from these medical insurers. I'm amazed that this is the issue from a competitive standpoint, and yet no one is talking about it? Thanks! I'm subscribing.
However you point out that your research on the Canadian health care system is a couple of decades old. As any Canadian (except a government official) will tell you, Canadian healthcare has got hugely worse steadily over the last decades.
I would suspect that a key root cause is the same as what you are pointing to - spillover of the ridiculously costly practices of US healthcare into the Canadian sector.
No, you got that wrong: I have been writing aboutg Canadian and UK health care systems as well as the US's uniquely awful and costly "system" (if it can even be called that). I said I wrote about how the US executives at American subsidiaries of the auto and other major industries preferered and evedn lobby the Canadian government for expansion of coverage a decade or so ago. And by the way, I know many Canadians (some who left the us and emigrated to Canada and know both systems, who love the Canadian Meddcare system and would never swap it for the nightmare of healthare in the US.
I didn’t say Canadians prefer the US system. I say they all think it’s gotten way way worse.
Your article isn’t clear about when you were talking to the auto CFOs. Maybe they prefer it because it’s cheaper for them? You should probably also ask the Canadian workers what their experience is like. You also need to distinguish between the different provincial systems. Although most auto workers are in Ontario.
Canada's auto workers made their views cear when they voted overwhelmingly to split from the UAW, which was agreeing to serious give-backs.
Also, I know that even though both the Canadian Medicare system, both nationally and in it's various provincial iversions has suffered under ra string of Conservative governments and even under liberal administrartions that have been less progressive than in the past, just as the NHS Ihas suffered from decades of Tory rule and Blairite "New Labour" policies of privatization, etf. But no government in Canada or in the UK, regardless of how conservative or right wing, even Harper in Canada and Thatcher in the UK has dared to undo those two health care systems knowing it would be electoral suicide to do so.
You raise a very important point and it would be great if someone could get this argument in front of RFK Jr at HHS and also dig up those hard to find facts and figures.
I'm afraid RFK Jr. is beyond the reach of rational discourse. I was once interiewed by him about a story I had written, not about health care, on his radio program. After we had discussed my article, which he did a good job of questioning me on, he jumed to vaccines and wanted me to agreee with his loopy pseudo science denial of how innoculations work to create an immune response. i told him firmly, No Robert, you are wrong and I'm not going to go there. It's the last time he invited me on his program. It's kind of sad, but I think maybe he has been damaged by that brain eating worm he had growing in his brain.
Well maybe give him another try. There is clear common ground because he shares your view that US healthcare is systemically overpriced due to multiple layers of perverse practices. Your insight that this also affects national competitiveness could give him more clout with Trump to fix some of the systemic problems in health care delivery.
Trump doesn't want to fix the US economy, he wants to profit off it as do his oligarch backers. We're in an age of pirate capitalism. The model Trump wants is illustrated by hiis support for cryptocurrencies, which are nothing but a means for get-rich-quick pump0and-dump investors who rely on the mass of desperate rubes willing to pour their puny assets into a ponzi scheme in hopes of winning the lottery, only to lose everything while the wealthy get out early and make a killing.
First there's thje family thing; my daughter has a tenured position ast Oxford and her partner is a tenured prof at another nearby university pluse her two kid\s four and not yet six months old are here, so that's one attraction. Ir'a nort as crazy either. Mass shootings are.rare, and whenn crazy people or muggers try to kill someone they typically use knives, because guns are hard to come by and the punishments for having an unlicensed one are severe and hard to escape. As well, automatic or evensemi-automatic assault rifles, pistols and large magazine add-ons are not found, so, coming from that's a plus. I have been here sionce last Oct. 1 and have only heard one horn honked in anger, either in Cambridge or London. People just don't to be living their lives filed with rage and angst. And I'm enjoying the distance from Washington. It gives me some needed perspective. But who knows? I LOVE THE NHS, which despite decades of underfunding by both Conservative and "New Labour Blairites, still delivers for no charge, and to everyone, better healthcare than the US so-called "system' non-care. Justice for Louigi Mangione! (and by that I mean jury nullification of the charges!)
Most of what you posted I am not sure I am in total agreement.
However the last part: 'Justice for Louigi Mangione! (and by that I mean jury nullification of the charges!)' is 100 percent wrong.
If the state proves their case, justice is Mangione being found guilty and sent to prison. If the jury ignores the evidence and uses jury nullification to spring him, which BTW, jury nullification is always 100 percent wrong and should never ever be done, then we have to overhaul the jury system.
If a jury decides that what he did was correct and uses jury nullification, you have to allow every act as violence and terrorism that will occur as a result. IF you think things are violent now, jury nullification will create total hell.
His willingness to achieve power and influence doing the bidding of a person whose politics are antithetical to many of the values I know RFK Jr. still holds, renders him basically useless as a progressive inside the Trump administration.
Thanks for spotlighting America's lack of universal healthcare, aka Medicare for All (M4A). But please make clear that "expand Medicare to cover all Americans" is a far cry from M4A. It does not come close. Please don't conflate the two.
I refer you to HR 3421, the Medicare for All Act of 2023, Title II, Benefits. It shows that M4A is much more comprehensive than Medicare. I'm on Medicare and am grateful for it. But on my fixed income, I still shell out hundreds a month in private-insurer premiums that M4A would automatically cover at *zero* out-of-pocket cost. And that's before I pay a nickel for actual care.
I can't wait till a corrupt, corporate-captured Congress finally enacts M4A.
Conservatives here continually point to the gdp per capita that is much higher for the US compared to Canada and other “socialist” countries. In this global economy it is social services that lessen the inequality and US is high on the list of inequality. AOC was right “system that allows billionaires to exist when there are parts of Alabama where people are still getting ringworm because they don’t have access to public health is wrong”
Am leaving a link to this article on my Bluesly account. I hope it gets you a teensy bit more attention. Great article.
Universal Healthcare is a must!
Great article!
Would you give me permission to translate it into Spanish and share in Venezuela?
Please do! I'll publiash your translation too, for the Latinow in the US who don't speak or read English well enough to read the article! Thanks for the offer!.
Thank you!
I've always believed that our healthcare system in America is a scam. But I wasn't aware of the way it affects competition with other countries who have universal healthcare.
I also wasn't aware that Canadians have unions that work compared to the US. I feel like the US unions have mostly sold out the membership. Trump's not going to take $ away from these medical insurers. I'm amazed that this is the issue from a competitive standpoint, and yet no one is talking about it? Thanks! I'm subscribing.
However you point out that your research on the Canadian health care system is a couple of decades old. As any Canadian (except a government official) will tell you, Canadian healthcare has got hugely worse steadily over the last decades.
I would suspect that a key root cause is the same as what you are pointing to - spillover of the ridiculously costly practices of US healthcare into the Canadian sector.
No, you got that wrong: I have been writing aboutg Canadian and UK health care systems as well as the US's uniquely awful and costly "system" (if it can even be called that). I said I wrote about how the US executives at American subsidiaries of the auto and other major industries preferered and evedn lobby the Canadian government for expansion of coverage a decade or so ago. And by the way, I know many Canadians (some who left the us and emigrated to Canada and know both systems, who love the Canadian Meddcare system and would never swap it for the nightmare of healthare in the US.
I didn’t say Canadians prefer the US system. I say they all think it’s gotten way way worse.
Your article isn’t clear about when you were talking to the auto CFOs. Maybe they prefer it because it’s cheaper for them? You should probably also ask the Canadian workers what their experience is like. You also need to distinguish between the different provincial systems. Although most auto workers are in Ontario.
Canada's auto workers made their views cear when they voted overwhelmingly to split from the UAW, which was agreeing to serious give-backs.
Also, I know that even though both the Canadian Medicare system, both nationally and in it's various provincial iversions has suffered under ra string of Conservative governments and even under liberal administrartions that have been less progressive than in the past, just as the NHS Ihas suffered from decades of Tory rule and Blairite "New Labour" policies of privatization, etf. But no government in Canada or in the UK, regardless of how conservative or right wing, even Harper in Canada and Thatcher in the UK has dared to undo those two health care systems knowing it would be electoral suicide to do so.
You raise a very important point and it would be great if someone could get this argument in front of RFK Jr at HHS and also dig up those hard to find facts and figures.
I'm afraid RFK Jr. is beyond the reach of rational discourse. I was once interiewed by him about a story I had written, not about health care, on his radio program. After we had discussed my article, which he did a good job of questioning me on, he jumed to vaccines and wanted me to agreee with his loopy pseudo science denial of how innoculations work to create an immune response. i told him firmly, No Robert, you are wrong and I'm not going to go there. It's the last time he invited me on his program. It's kind of sad, but I think maybe he has been damaged by that brain eating worm he had growing in his brain.
Well maybe give him another try. There is clear common ground because he shares your view that US healthcare is systemically overpriced due to multiple layers of perverse practices. Your insight that this also affects national competitiveness could give him more clout with Trump to fix some of the systemic problems in health care delivery.
Trump doesn't want to fix the US economy, he wants to profit off it as do his oligarch backers. We're in an age of pirate capitalism. The model Trump wants is illustrated by hiis support for cryptocurrencies, which are nothing but a means for get-rich-quick pump0and-dump investors who rely on the mass of desperate rubes willing to pour their puny assets into a ponzi scheme in hopes of winning the lottery, only to lose everything while the wealthy get out early and make a killing.
How much difference do you see between Trump and his oligarch backers vs Biden and his oligarch backers.
Whatever. I follow you for an insightful critique of the healthcare system, not dinosaur Democrat tropes and TDS.
Fine, literal Hitler is in power. I take it you’re fleeing the country?
I admit it's tempting.
First there's thje family thing; my daughter has a tenured position ast Oxford and her partner is a tenured prof at another nearby university pluse her two kid\s four and not yet six months old are here, so that's one attraction. Ir'a nort as crazy either. Mass shootings are.rare, and whenn crazy people or muggers try to kill someone they typically use knives, because guns are hard to come by and the punishments for having an unlicensed one are severe and hard to escape. As well, automatic or evensemi-automatic assault rifles, pistols and large magazine add-ons are not found, so, coming from that's a plus. I have been here sionce last Oct. 1 and have only heard one horn honked in anger, either in Cambridge or London. People just don't to be living their lives filed with rage and angst. And I'm enjoying the distance from Washington. It gives me some needed perspective. But who knows? I LOVE THE NHS, which despite decades of underfunding by both Conservative and "New Labour Blairites, still delivers for no charge, and to everyone, better healthcare than the US so-called "system' non-care. Justice for Louigi Mangione! (and by that I mean jury nullification of the charges!)
Most of what you posted I am not sure I am in total agreement.
However the last part: 'Justice for Louigi Mangione! (and by that I mean jury nullification of the charges!)' is 100 percent wrong.
If the state proves their case, justice is Mangione being found guilty and sent to prison. If the jury ignores the evidence and uses jury nullification to spring him, which BTW, jury nullification is always 100 percent wrong and should never ever be done, then we have to overhaul the jury system.
If a jury decides that what he did was correct and uses jury nullification, you have to allow every act as violence and terrorism that will occur as a result. IF you think things are violent now, jury nullification will create total hell.
His willingness to achieve power and influence doing the bidding of a person whose politics are antithetical to many of the values I know RFK Jr. still holds, renders him basically useless as a progressive inside the Trump administration.