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I just read a very interesting viewpoint on this subject.
Matt Jones, I live in VA United States. I've lived in Thailand.
Updated Sep 26, 2017
Because America has now become less than a country; it’s currently a rat race. The idea of paying more tax to have another fellow human being covered is so out of place they can’t imagine it without wincing. Saying that other folks should take their own risk and for the poor to go die in the street, however, does not make an American flinch as many commentators do here. All things considered, Americans don’t deserve any more humane system than what they currently have. Like Gore Vidal said: American never learned. This is the least-christian Christian country. They have chosen it to be like this.
Even a developing country like Thailand has a universal coverage for everyone. I lived in Thailand for a long time before moving to America, and I have seen their healthcare system transformed into the envy of the developing world— they became the first country in Asia to eliminate HIV transmission from mother to child in 2016, showing the world that AIDS can be defeated in a few generations from now. How did a low middle income country like Thailand achieve this? - considering also that they have had many military coups over the years. I have pondered this puzzle and in the end the answer is quite simple: Thailand is a buddhist society and the mentality of people there is quite passionate toward the poor and the weak. The universal healthcare was introduced there as a populist program in 2002. Naturally, it was the poor who benefited from it the most. The program was initially criticized by the rich and the middle classes. But after having seen how it had saved many poor lives, nobody dared to say in public that the health scheme needed to be repealed. I think their Buddhist culture plays a great role in shaping the public consensus regarding the UHC. For the Thais, medicine is a profession based more on sacrifice and compassion; it’s not a business. Instead, every successive government, whether conservative or liberal, came and improved upon it - making it more efficient and better. Public research funds were earmarked each year to keep improving the health scheme.
For America’s Republican politicians, on the other hand, being Americans is all about “taking risk”, forming tight upper lip and working hard for oneself. So if you were born poor and sickly, then it’s too bad. If you get old and sick without enough saving, then you just fail in an American way. If you have this sort of heartless politics or a cankerous system of belief, something like a UHC will never happen. But what are the root causes of American failure in this regard?
America believes almost blindly in the market and in the market solution of its healthcare inadequacy. Too many Americans believes that private investments and businesses can do everything better than a government. Ironically, this reduces the role of politicians to mere pawns for private lobbyists. Politicians don’t run America; they run a PR service for the richest companies. Expensive healthcare is only one of the symptoms of this madness. Economists are employed to cook up evidence and reports in order to show that government can’t do a project as well as private companies could. The only goal is to keep the government from actually participating and providing important public services to the people.
America’s faith in the market is so blind that it is the only country in the world that passed a law prohibiting the government to negotiate the price with drug companies and healthcare providers. Thus, even though the government is a huge spender of healthcare, it cannot use that bargaining power to negotiate the price for American citizens. So much for America’s faith in the market. They’d say: “we will wait until someone finds a way to make it cheaper and more efficient.” So people are dying in anticipation of a right “market model”? Tragically, the only market-based incentive that the insurance companies have is to dump more and more expensive claim-dodging paperwork traps on their customers.
But there is no such thing as a market solution to health care — unlike other goods and services, patients cannot refuse to buy healthcare (or pay to see a doctor) because it’s too expensive and wait until it becomes cheap enough, or even safe enough; and healthcare consumers include children and people with no income, with no buying option. Human being cannot be reduced to mere consumers. We will go on believing that we are the richest country and the most technologically advanced country on earth. But our kids will die uninsured in the street.
If you look everywhere in America, public services and infrastructures are crumbling. Metro and subways in DC, New York and other big metropolises are almost not running anymore; and these are public transportation in some of the world’s richest cities. It’s an international scandal. New research says the American political system disfavors public transportation improvement projects because “it is seen as welfare”. It’s the same logic that led to mass privatization during the Thatcher regime in the UK: people deserve improved infrastructures only if private companies can make profits from them, otherwise, it’s socialism.
If you apply the same logic to public school, you’d instantly understand why it has become so bad. To get a decent education, American kids are forced to take huge loans and go to ultra-expensive private schools. If you want to be schooled, you have to be in debt. The wealth of this richest of countries never reached the public hands.
“Everybody is laughing at us”, Trump would say. And it’s true. Who wouldn’t like to laugh at this circus called America.
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