Originally published at: http://boingboing.net/2017/05/05/pour-encouragez-les-autres-2.html
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It still baffles me that a country like the US can’t get a health-care system that covers everyone.
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If you don’t want to wait 2-4 years for possible change, a mass boycott of private insurance as soon as this is signed into law would be an effective way to monkey wrench this.
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No. This is incredibly dangerous for most people, it’s cutting off your nose to spite your opponent. Replace them.
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Americans have generally been trained that what amounts to capitalist exploitation of themselves is far, far healthier than “dirty” communism (which is equated with central government control of pretty much anything, except perhaps the military). I know a lot of people scraping to get by who openly proclaim that “ANYTHING having to do with the government is bad.”
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Well, we can’t do that because some idiots who perceive themselves to be super hard-working will be jealous that some other people the idiots perceive themselves to be working far hard than just might get something a couple of their tax dollars paid for.
The entire mindset in the US needs a long mental health vacation, but I hear those smart guys in the House just eliminated mental health care from their awesome ACA replacement. Guess we’re just fucked. Sure hope the 20-ish% of Americans who voted for 45 are real proud of what they voted for.
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We can put a man on the moon, but we can’t…
The sound stage theory is looking more and more plausible every day.
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Is there any additional effort being put into a non-partisan fund supporting universal healthcare (of the Obamacare variety, not single payer, I’m not completely nuts) across the aisle to support Republicans who swear allegiance to the principle in areas where a (D) victory is nigh impossible?
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[“Why not both?” gif goes here]
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Sure hope the 20-ish% of Americans who voted for 45…
While people bring this up as an excuse to launch into a tiresome fanfic about Bernie Sanders: A good chunk of your wrath should be aimed at the protest voters and stay-at-homes who knew full well what was going to happen.
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I’ve been saying that for decades, but it’s just a weirdly deeply unpopular idea here; Americans are very selfish people, to be honest, and are obsessed with ‘keeping what’s theirs’… a lot of Americans have the idea engrained in them that spending money to help other people stay healthy is a socialist, communist, marxist (-ist, -ist, -ist) thing to believe.
As @anon15383236 says, a lot of our country simply distrusts The Feds. The whole idea of “federal healthcare” gives them the willies.
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Why not blame Ralph Nader as well? /s
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So the people who oppose a more universal healthcare system oppose it because of the short-term idea that as a “healthy person” they might be paying for someone else’s care? That logic doesn’t really hold up though in a country were people live up to an age where health problems become practically unavoidable.
The idea of avoiding “big government” I can sort of understand if that’s your political view. But you’d think you would first want to reduce the government size by removing the things that don’t greatly benefit society.
The knee-jerk rejection of anything that feels like “socialism” seems like a leftover from the cold-war. I get that a lot of the more conservative people will still equate the term “socialism” with the USSR, North Korea, and Fidel Castro, but a “social” version of capitalism seems to have greatly benefited a lot of countries.
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Non-voters in the safe states: zero impact.
Non-voters in the swing states: how many of them were victims of voter suppression? How many were working class people who risked being fired if they asked for time off on election day? How many black men disenfranchised due to a screamingly racist prison system?
Of those who actually could vote but didn’t: how many were just apathetic, versus those who were justifiably revolted by decades of bipartisan effort to re-pauperise the working class?
You get my point. It’s a matter of opinion, but I don’t think that apathy is the problem in America. There has been plenty of energy available for a long time, but the Whigs once again chose to play for the moderate-slaver vote instead of taking the risk with the Abolitionists.
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Yeah, but in so many American minds, there isn’t ANY other country that comes close to how much better in just about every way the U S of A is. Why, just look at how many people are desperate to come here! etc.
When it comes to national self- awareness, most Americans are deeply, deeply delusional.
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Doesn’t change the fact that something short of half of the people who bothered to vote, voted for 45. It doesn’t matter if those were “protest” votes, they still cast their ballots in 45’s favor.
The outcome does neatly demonstrates how foolish it is to stay home on election day, I’ll give you that. If you don’t vote where I live, other people will raise your taxes for you, sometimes for very unsound reasons, so I never stay home. However, attempting to inject Sanders into a discussion of what Congress does after inauguration day smacks of sour grapes. Let it go. We have to deal with the shitty reality we’ve been handed by a minority of people in the US.
Yup! I believe you’re catching on.
Whadda you, a communist? We have grow the size of our most socialist institution at all cost! (That would be the military, btw.)
Agreed. There’s all kinds of nice things we could have if we could get over this silly knee-jerk (and you nailed that, too) over the notion that there are some things which cost a whole lot less for each person if everyone is paying and rent-seekers are kept out.
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I think a lot of that has to do with (a) lack of education, (b) the education they are getting about other countries is from places like fox news, and (c) they’ve never been anywhere else and had a chance to see what other countries are like. In Europe, you can do a weekend in a different country and kids are often taken on field trips to other countries. Sure, they are all European countries and thus very similar, but still different countries. In the US, unless you live either way south or way north, you can’t get out of the country for a weekend. If you live towards the middle of Texas, like I do, you can’t even get out of the bloody state without driving for over 4 hours. It leads to a pretty insular existence.
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There is absolutely a huge push in the US to make sure the public becomes apathetic, and there is a huge chunk of the citizens in the US that do not care at all about elections. I’ve been told my entire life that my vote is meaningless, and it shows in off-season turnout. If anything, the concept that there are “safe states” to not vote in is proof that not voting is a popular current in the US, Trump received about as many votes in most states as the number of votes that stayed home for whatever reason.
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This all day long.
The fact that nobody cares about voter suppression means that they are socioeconomically far removed from the type of person who would be suppressed. Nobody at their yoga studio, Starbucks, or Whole Foods got suppressed.
Also, for the “protest votes”, those votes were Hillary Clinton’s to go after, but she didn’t want to go after them.
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I live in a “safe state” and tend to vote against the dominant party. I know the candidates I want aren’t going to win, but I vote anyway because I want people to see this state isn’t as “safe” as they think.
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