USA really too different from English-speaking world to have similar policies?

The BBQ Pit
1

In this thread, brazil84 & curlcoat keep insisting that socialized medicine as practiced in Canada, or as in Australia, or New Zealand, or Germany, or the United Kingdom, wouldn’t work in the United States of America, or might not work, because the USA is too different.

We have an underclass, brazil84 says. As if other countries with similar cultural backgrounds don’t have any such thing. Um, what?

“Canada is not the United States,” curlcoat says. Of course not, if they were the same, we couldn’t contrast them!

But hey, the UK, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, & Germany all have similar cultural heritage, with (Anglophone except for Germany) dominant cultures dealing with racial minorities & lots of immigration at various points mucking that up. And they have similar political issues, being federal systems. And they all make some form of UHC work.

OK, explain it to me. How can Germany afford UHC, with all the Turks & other Ausländer intruding upon it; & Canada, a tiny country with dangerously liberal immigration laws, afford it; & the USA, with a fantabulously wealthy high-tech sector & some of the vastest stretches of sustainably arable land in the world, not afford it?

I’m starting a Pit thread so you can give it to me straight: No more passive-aggressive “just my opinion.” Explain to me what’s so fucking impossible, with clear comparisons to these countries as they actually are, not the superficial monolithic ideas of them you probably carry in your head.

Can you do it?

2

The spending we’ve been doing on the Iraq war shows just how laughable the arguement is that we can’t afford universal health coverage. We can afford practically anything we want to afford.

3

What I love is when someone starts screaming about how horrible UHC is, and then in a different thread starts screaming about how allowing each state to regulate something (like say, environmental regulations, air traffic, etc.) would be an absolute disaster because it would create this patchwork system, where each state makes up its own rules and regulations, causing mass confusion, driving up costs, and potentially causing people to leave the industry because they couldn’t afford to deal with all the complex regulations such a setup would entail. Their “nightmare” scenario is exactly what we have in terms of healthcare in the US at the moment.

4

Well, y’see, it’s because we’re a tiny country, with dangerously liberal immigration laws. The thing is, we don’t let you immigrate with your guns.

Tiny country, check. Liberal immigration laws, check. Want to shoot a bunch of people? Well, we have some paperwork for you.

Please try a few weeks of U.S. emergency room care without handguns. Run the numbers, get back to us.

5

A minor point, I know, but the UK isn’t a federal system.

6

If we had UHC, American workers wouldn’t be enslaved to employers who provide health care, it would never work!

7

I don’t know about the rest of those countries, but the Canada I knew even 10 years ago and the Canada my husband was born in doesn’t have hundreds of thousands of people laying around expecting the government to take care of them. The Canadians I know take care of themselves, live responsible lives and all that.

The US probably has more people sitting around on the dole than there are people living in Canada. The US is a country where those “without” expect those “with” to give them things simply because they want them, because they have this idea that they “deserve” these things. Without earning them in any way.

The Canadian government doesn’t have a history of (that I know of) paying for $500 toilet seats, useless wars and all the other crap the US wastes taxpayer money on. The Canadian government doesn’t have a history of lack of success in running nationwide health insurance plans like the US does with Medicaid and Medicare.

Using other countries as examples of whether or not national insurance would work cannot ignore the differences between those countries and the US. It’s like saying that very little insulation in a home’s walls will work everywhere because it works here where the temperature range is 40 degrees to 80 degrees.

8

Fool, would you trade slavery to your employer for slavery to your elected representative government ?! That is to say, slavery to… um… yourself, I think. DO YOU WANT TO BE YOUR SLAVE ?

9

Oh, it’s those welfare queens that are the problem!

  1. The USA abolished general welfare in the 1990’s.

  2. Anybody still that way is presumably on SSI or Medicaid already.

  3. The UK has a much more liberal use of the dole, & OH GOOD GOD YOU THINK AMERICANS ARE THE ONLY PEOPLE LIKE THAT? Or even the worst? It’s Briton dossers who scare me, & I’m a socialist!

See this thread on a British board on this subject.
_

But what’s really perverse about US opposition to social welfare programs is that somehow those of us who live in right-to-work states & lack proper labor organization are accused by one aspect of the right of bringing our lack of health insurance on ourselves—while another aspect denounces labor unions (who exist at this point to negotiate affordable health care) as the ruination of America. You’ve always had group coverage? Then you benefit from labor unions & New Deal pro-union laws. You benefit from some serious initiation of force by some proletarian radicals generations ago as well a real socialist US president getting on their side, and your state governments since then keeping up the fight. Some of us aren’t so lucky.

10

Well, you know what? You’re right. It’s our own damn fault for being too Southern, too genteel, to gentle, too easygoin’, too respectful. We suffer because we accept sufferin’ as our lot. We just po’folks. How that jibes with our ostensible overweening sense of entitlement I jus’ don’ know.

11

You sound exactly like a politically similarly minded Australian or English person.

12

See, I’ll tell you the real difference. I already know.

It’s not racism. There’s plenty of racism in those countries I mentioned.

It’s not federalism as such. Canada made it work with its very divided system. The UK has four health administrations across four countries.

No, at this point it’s a fluke of history. We’re the last First World nation to take this step, so we take a perverse pride in not doing it. It’s a bit like when I was a (slightly mad) teenager & didn’t get my driver’s license for random reasons, & then decided I didn’t want to drive anyway & refused to get my license for years. It’s idiot pride.

It’s a generation of fucking Ayn Rand & fucking Ronald Reagan telling us that government is the problem, & us taking that nonsense in uncritically, even though in other ways we really want the government—not just the policing agencies & such; but the violent, scary parts that could throw you in a dark hole & rape you for 20 years, the cops, the prison system, & the army, the parts that really are scary—to save us.

It is, at root, because of the Cold War. No, really. That the USA had to be the Arsenal of Democracy, & thus needed to be propagandized & radicalized against Marxist-Leninists wherever they arose. So we were indoctrinated to hate & fear communism, enough to go to the other side of the world into alien environments & kill people we knew nothing about sight unseen to stop it.

That gave Objectivism a fertile ground to grow in, unique in the world.

And it ended up changing the US mainstream. Back in the 1950’s, the US establishment was very much for central planning. I think it was the Canadian humourists Nicol & Whalley who said that the USA & USSR were going to pass each other economically in 20 years. And it would have made sense, as the USA naturally developed toward socialism (per Marx’s predictions for evolution of a capitalist society), & the USSR’s post-revolutionary attempt at socialism fell into ruin (being badly built & corrupt).

But in the end, our evolution as an industrial society was brought down by our earnest mix of work ethic, individualism, & committed anti-communism. So we proudly hang onto a sort of imperfectly modern system, an 18th Century constitution & a 19th Century economy, huffing & puffing along wastefully in our unfinished vehicle.

It’s sad.

13

The United States has a much bigger underclass (per capita) than does Canada or the United Kingdom. Which is illustrated by the fact that the US murder rate is triple that of Canada.

No doubt liberals will argue that this is a result of the more liberal gun laws in the US, but that’s clearly silly when you look at things on a state-by-state basis.

And yes, before you ask, race plays a role.

I laid out my position on this issue in this thread

Interestingly, you left out one wealthy industrialized nation with strong English cultural heritage.

Comon, the United States is roughly 30% black and hispanic. Canada is nowhere near that.

14

Wait, we shouldn’t have UHC because we have gun crimes?

Shouldn’t we** have** UHC because we have gun crimes? I mean, if it were all knife crimes, or whatever the British thug class use, rocks or railroad ties or whatever, maybe not. But guns can leave stray bullets.

Oh, wait, all people in poor neighborhoods are “underclass”, so they’re asking for it. They not worth savin’ 'cos they got no class, amirite?
:rolleyes:

15

South Africa?

I’m not sure what your point is. Do you contend that our 30% non-white population somehow makes us more like S. Africa than like Canada?

Oh, lord, we are just a tiny minority of white settlers, only 70% (ahem, 80%) of the population here in deepest darkest Africa!

16

The Brits use beermugs. 'S’true, you could look it up! :smiley:

17

We’re not wealthy or that industrialized. Maybe he meant Ireland?

18

I really don’t know what he meant.

19

http://scarygoround.com/shop-tshirts.php#areyoucrazy

20

This is really really insulting. The USA is 12% black, 15% Hispanic, there’s some overlap between those, it’s still 80% white & 4% Asian, some of the Hispanics are quite well off & not remotely underclass, & a good deal of the blacks are working class, not underclass.

I find it interesting that you used 30% both for “Black & Hispanic” & for “underclass.” Are you equating underclass with “minority”? 'Cos where I come from, the poor families that run afoul of the law a lot are as likely to be white as black. (Hey, I’m from the Ozarks. There are some black guys in organized crime, but the really creepy cases on the news are typically white guys.)