Summary

A Gallup poll shows 62% of Americans believe the government should ensure universal healthcare coverage—the highest support in over a decade.

While Democratic backing remains strong at 90%, support among Republicans and Independents has also grown since 2020.

Public frustration with the for-profit healthcare system has intensified following the arrest of a suspect in the murder of UnitedHealthcare CEO Brian Thompson, reportedly motivated by anger at the industry.

Recent controversies, including Anthem’s rollback of anesthesia coverage cuts, and debates over Medicare privatization highlight ongoing dissatisfaction with the system.

  • jordanlund@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Here’s the thing… having health coverage doesn’t mean jack crap.

    I’ve told my story before, it got best of’d on reddit and such, but it bears repeating why we need Universal Health Care:

    tl;dr lost my doctors due to an insurance change 4 weeks in to a 6 week open heart surgery recovery…

    In 2018, my company was in the process of being sold. No big deal, above my paygrade, nothing for me to worry about.

    Then I got sick right after Thanksgiving. Really bad heartburn that lasted 5 days. It wasn’t heartburn. I had a heart attack. 12/3/2018 I had open heart surgery, single bypass, and that started a 6 week recovery clock.

    On 1/1/2019, the sale of my company closed and we officially had new owners. I also officially lost all of my doctors because the new employers don’t do Kaiser in Oregon. They do it in WA and CA, but each state has to be negotiated and they never had presence here.

    1/2/2019 I start working with Aetna to find doctors, hospitals, etc. Beyond the cardiologist I need a new pharmacist, podiatrist, diabetes care and a general “doctor” doctor.

    Fortunately, my new employer is a big enough fish, they have their own concierge at Aetna and she gets me into the Legacy Health system.

    On 1/3/2019 I start developing complications, but I don’t know it at the time. It starts with a cough. All the time. Then, when I try to lay down, like to sleep, I’m drowning, literally choking and gagging.

    The concierge and I try to get an appointment, we’re told 2-3 months. For a dude still recovering from open heart surgery? Best they could do is 2 weeks. 1/14/2019.

    I can’t lay down to sleep so I buy a travel neck pillow and sleep sitting up.

    I get to see the new doctor at the “official” end of the 6 week recovery. He doesn’t know me or my history so he wants to run tests.

    I’m sitting at home playing video games and waiting on test results when the call comes… Congestive heart failure. Report to the ER immediately.

    My heart developed an irregular heart beat, which caused fluid build up in my chest. They admitted me and were getting ready to pull fluid off me.

    “What happened to your foot?”

    “I dunno, what happened to my foot? I can’t feel my feet.”

    Remember when I said I was sitting around playing video games, waiting for test results? Yeah, my foot was touching a radiator and I didn’t know it. 3rd degree burns, first four toes. Pinkie was spared.

    So I’m in the hospital a week. I lose 4 liters of water per day. 50 lbs. of water. No wonder I was drowning. Regular bandage changes.

    So now I’m facing two procedures. Electrocardio version to fix my heart, skin grafts to fix my toes.

    This whole time the new insurance covers 80% until I reach the out of pocket maximum of $6,500. Then it will cover 100%.

    The old insurance? ER visit for heart attack, hospital admission, 8 days in the hospital, open heart bypass… $250. $100 for meds and all the oxygen bottles I can carry.

    So we hit the out of pocket maximum almost immediately. My wife had a problem with her foot running through the Seattle airport. The doctor who did her toe amputation was decided to be out of network so that was another $1,100.


    I was never unemployed through all this. I had enough vacation and sick time banked to cover it. Cobra didn’t apply. Continuity of care didn’t apply because the new hospital DID have a cardiac department. Buying my old insurance wasn’t an option, it was far too expensive without employer backing. Income is too high for assistance (thank god) and I took steps to max out my HSA account, which is good because we drained it twice.

    Three 1 week hospital stays (2 for me, 1 for my wife), multiple ER visits, two more major medical procedures… That would be enough to break most people even with good insurance.

    So if you read any of that, let me ask you something… Why does the quality of my health care and my quality of life have to depend on who I work for and what insurance companies they choose to work with?

  • ME5SENGER_24@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    How is it only 62%?! Who actually looks at their medical bill and thinks, “Yep, this is accurate and absolutely worth every penny”? I have health insurance, and I still avoid going to the doctor unless I’m practically dying because I simply can’t afford it.

    And yet, I’m stuck paying nearly $10k a year for insurance—just in case something catastrophic happens—only to still face massive copays, out-of-pocket costs, and coverage denials. It’s completely counterintuitive.

    The system is broken.

    Screw the insurance industry.
    Screw the state of medical care in the U.S.

    Healthcare shouldn’t be a privilege—it’s a human right. Normalize that.

  • crystalmerchant@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Not “coverage”, “affordable coverage”. I don’t want coverage through whatever capitalist exploit insurance company. I want affordable healthcare without lifesucking middlemen

  • squirrelwithnut@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Sounds like 62% of Americans should have voted for the candidate that might have actually made that possible.

    • iMastari@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Bernie Sanders tried but did not get enough votes when he ran for president because the government paying for your healthcare is apparently bad for some reason.

      • Skeezix@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Its bad for profits. And since the government is run by people with a vested interest in profits, it wont change anytime soon. All the oligarchs have to do is convince enough rubes that universal healthcare is bad, and it will never see the light of day.

      • InternetCitizen2@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Its important to make incremental progress. Kamala was a standard dem like Joe. Still they are open to hearing good ideas; compared to Trump.

  • ayyy@sh.itjust.works
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    2 months ago

    And the other 40% rely on the help and care of others every day while blabbering on about being “self-made” which actually just means “selfish asshole”.

    • IhaveCrabs111@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      America just voted to allow Ramaswamy and Elon to cut government by 75%. This will absolutely include healthcare. What will happen to that 75% that was under government? It will go to the private sector obviously. Now they can can become even richer. Holy shit Ramaswamy is like a real life Shooter McGavin

      • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Thats not going to happen.

        The only thing they love more than bitching about government overspending, is benefiting from it. The whole DOGE will have less power in the government than the meme it’s based on, and the people who will run it are looking to line their pockets with your money for the least effort on their part.

  • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Again, there’s that 30-40% Party Of No crowd that is likely the same starve the beast pro-Trump voters we’ve seen in polls time and again. The ones probably going to need those very same services, if they already aren’t using medicare/-aid.

    • Riccosuave@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      That is why universal healthcare risk pools need to start at the state level. The goal needs to be to lock out the subsidization of those who are voting for predatory policies. This accomplishes a few important things.

      • It will systemically punish Republican voters in Republican led states.

      • Over time it will (in theory) massively shift the public consciousness in those areas around how badly they are getting fucked.

      • It removes the necessity of reliance on a federal change in order to begin the process of legislative reform.

      This is obviously not a perfect solution, but I don’t see this happening in any other way. There is roughly a (0%) chance we see universal healthcare implemented at the national level first.

      • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        There are very few states that can handle the cost of state-funded health care, and unfortunately they would be faced with negotiating care from for-profit enterprises that have no care other than maximizing profits.

        It needs to be a “from the ground up” service, which we had at one point - we used to have a lot of state, municipal and county hospitals, but the majority of them got shuttered and replaced with for-profit enterprises - where the state creates facilities owned/operated by the state and can control pricing with no expectation for a profit to be made. That’s how you get care for all at government prices, we can’t keep shoveling money at for-profit businesses.

        • Riccosuave@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          This is an interesting idea, but I don’t see where that is ever going to be effective either given the massive logistical undertaking that would be required in order to deal with states managing non-profit medical facilities. The only option is to somehow circumvent the middle men.

          • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Circumventing the middle man is exactly why for-profit enterprises resist state care with everything they have. The government is a powerful negotiator that can undercut for-profit business because they don’t need to profit from the work being done.

            • Riccosuave@lemmy.world
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              2 months ago

              Yes, but you could say the exact same thing about the creation of single payer state insurance pools could you not? They can force negotiations on medical providers at the state level, and force them to accept state backed insurance if they wish to conduct business in that state. That seems like a way simpler solution than needing to come up with massive amounts of logistical infrastructure that already exists.

              • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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                2 months ago

                Not as effective as the government as a whole. Also singles that state put among others as you said, placing additional adversity between the state and existing or potential employers.

                Look, if it were simple, we could do it. Even if much of the difficulty is artificially created by businesses and other monied interests, it still exists and one state doesn’t exist in a vacuum where businesses wouldn’t have the option to leave. Other states would undermine the attempt for political or financial gain. It’s not simple.

                • Riccosuave@lemmy.world
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                  2 months ago

                  I totally agree that no solution is going to be simple. I think what I envisioned was an inter-state compact where it would make it essentially impossible for medical providers to pull away. If we just use the West Coast as an example, what if Washington, Oregon, and California were to create a public option risk pool that could then be joined by other blue states? That is really the idea that I think is the most sensible, and potentially feasible to implement over time.

        • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
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          2 months ago

          A lot of states are larger, both geographically and economically, than many European countries. What’s stopping those states from doing it?

          • RememberTheApollo_@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            You’re not comparing apples to apples.

            Those EU countries have a hoard of social services available, from pre-school to free/relatively inexpensive higher education, to medical services, unions, pensions and elder care…a lot of services Americans have to pay for on top of any exchange of health care premium for state health care tax. I mean, there’s a huge difference between EU workers’ compensation, housing costs, and benefits work compared to US workers, how companies are taxed and pay into social services, and to make them comparable would require massive change. The US has faced “taxes are evil” propaganda for easily 40 plus years now, and getting the funding to create a care system from both citizens and corporations will require a miracle.

            • the_crotch@sh.itjust.works
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              2 months ago

              If universal healthcare is cheaper than private insurance (and most say it is) why not simply charge the citizens of, for example, California 4/5th of what they’re currently paying? What am I missing here? If they did that in my state it would save me around $100/mo

    • nifty@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      38% probably on Medicare/Medicaid

      lol was gonna say the same based on this headline

  • TheDemonBuer@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    That’s nearly 2/3 of Americans, a pretty strong majority. Those other 38% of Americans can go fuck themselves, right along with the corporate oligarchs they worship.

    • UltraGiGaGigantic@lemmy.ml
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      2 months ago

      Replace First-past-the-post voting with a more representative electoral system and the people will at least have the chance to vote intelligently.

      • ebolapie@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        And how are we going to do that when we gave the keys to the party that banned ranked choice voting in 10 states?

  • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    The midterm campaign should literally just be, “Death to Health Insurance, Public Health Now”.

    No other issues. Campaign on that as a mandate. If we can only change one big thing at a time then we should only promise one big thing.

    • witten@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Historically we can change zero big things at a time. But I agree with you. Our rate of change has got to change. (Mathematics/physics joke goes here.)

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        The Democrats have the infrastructure. Screw the big donors. Run an actual grass roots campaign. It’s not like they can do any worse at this point.

    • FuzzyDog@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Some of Tim Walz’s largest donors are health insurance and professionals. They have financial incentives to keep the status quo. With Democrats like this, who needs Republicans?

      • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        Walz doesn’t have a seat anymore. And what do the Democrats have to lose by actually moving left?

        • FuzzyDog@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I’d say the reason the Democrats won’t move left is because the party elite have a lot of donors they’d piss off by actually supporting serious leftist economic policy.

          Maybe I’m wrong. Hell, I’d love to be wrong. But I’ve sort of lost hope that the democratic party is ever going to deliver.

          • Maggoty@lemmy.world
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            2 months ago

            Yeah I get that. But it would be the kind of move that shakes up losing all of the swing states, the popular vote, and both legislative bodies. Political parties want to get elected and “normal” campaigning isn’t doing it anymore. A few more losses like this and there won’t be a democratic party.

        • FuzzyDog@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Well tbf the reason I’m complaining is that the status quo sucks and isn’t going to get better, even if the Dems sweep next election.

    • taiyang@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      I think part of the problem with that argument is that only a small percentage of Dems want real coverage and the rest want status quo insurance crap- and this coming from someone who did vote.

      I still remember when ACA happened. The smart people who wanted single payer or similar were shunned out the room. If I was a slightly stupider or slightly more vengeful men, I too might have gotten disengaged from the political system.

      • timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works
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        2 months ago

        Except if the dems had solid majorities for years they could be pushed left easily. Look at California. Not as left as Lemmy wants obviously but so much further left than the majority of the country.

        • btaf45@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          Except if the dems had solid majorities for years they could be pushed left easily.

          That is exactly what it will take for major progress. Otherwise it won’t happen.

        • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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          2 months ago

          I see, Democrats needed to win every single election for a decade or more before they could give us healthcare.

          Cool system you have there.

          • timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works
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            2 months ago

            Yeah, that’s kind of how it works.

            Do you think the tea party got their fascist takeover in 2010? No, they worked years and years and kept pushing their party further to the right every single time until it finally happened.

            Imagine that- you have to put in a couple hours of work at most every year or two for so many years to actually get what you want. Oh how absolutely awful that burden is. /s

            • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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              2 months ago

              They got their fascist takeover by being bankrolled by billionaires.

              And guess what? Republicans actually achieve things every single time they win. The moment Republicans have power they push their agenda and they get what they want. Democrats don’t do that. Democrats allow themselves to be stopped by the likes of Lieberman and Manchin every time they get majorities. Why is that, do you think?

              • timbuck2themoon@sh.itjust.works
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                2 months ago

                It’s tragic. But hey- where were the people voting in primaries to oust Liebermann? And Biden and company just passed the biggest climate bill ever. But sure- take your ball and go home. I’m sure things will magically get better by being lazy.

                I think the turning point for being mature is when people realize that politics is not about big changes. Maybe they campaign on them but things don’t happen like that. It takes a long time even if the answer is obvious. Thinking that all of a sudden the US will dismantle the healthcare and health insurance industries in ONE term of Congress when it underpins a ton of the economy (which includes people’s jobs mind you- not just made up crap on the stockmarket) is foolish. It is a leviathan and will take time to eventually get to universal with insurance (ie. public and private) or single payer, etc.

                And FWIW, it’s easier for Republicans to get what they want because all they want to do is break things. Trying to build something takes time. But again, go off.

                • queermunist she/her@lemmy.ml
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                  2 months ago

                  I think the turning point for being mature is when people realize that politics is not about big changes

                  No, that’s the turning point for being cynical. You’ve been beaten down over and over and learned to accept it. Big changes happen all throughout history, literally what are you talking about!?

                  You’re exactly the same as anti abolitionist Republicans in the 1800s that thought slave abolition was too extreme and we needed to incrementally abolish slavery.

                  And FWIW, it’s easier for Republicans to get what they want because all they want to do is break things. Trying to build something takes time. But again, go off.

                  I want to break a lot of fucking things.

                  This is all pointless anyway. Harris lost because of worthless liberal incrementalism! People won’t vote for it!

                  If you want to lose forever, keep doing what you’re doing.

      • btaf45@lemmy.world
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        2 months ago

        I still remember when ACA happened. The smart people who wanted single payer or similar were shunned out the room

        Because neither Obama nor Clinton campaigned in 2008 for single payer. And there was no margin to spare in getting the 60 senate votes needed (although they should have only need 50 no 60), and so Lieberman all by himself was able to kill the Public Option that most people would have used.

  • inclementimmigrant@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Shame that Americans are stupid and voted in racists, fascist, classist grifters that believe healthcare is only for the ultra wealthy and will make sure the next United Healthcare CEO can deny now medical coverage.

  • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
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    2 months ago

    Why though, many of them voted for Trump, next month antivax RFK Jr. will be health minister. Trump has claimed a healthcare plan will be ready “next week” for the past 8 years. People wanted Obamacare gone. So what do you want? Healthcare or no healthcare?

        • Lord Wiggle@lemmy.world
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          2 months ago

          I think that country needs a revolution, after which a completely new constitution needs to be written with a complete new governing system. Getting rid of corruption. Dividing the massive country into smaller countries, with rules and regulations on a smaller scale. Because every state is different. It’s going to cause a lot of death, misery, suffering, but sometimes you need to endure extra pain to get better. Like surgery, it’s painful but without it you will end up with more pain and suffering in the long run. But you need insurance for that so most Americans probably don’t know what I’m talking about.

  • ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml
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    2 months ago

    Also an important statistic left out of the summary: support among Republicans has grown to 32%

    (which is still a hilariously low number, of course)

    edit: I was curious so I checked the data in the source of the article, and I had ChatGPT do the math, and it came up with this: (0.33x0.9) + (0.25 x 0.32) + (0.42x0.65) = 62% support = 33% democrats, 25% republicans, 42% independants. That seems about right, even though the latest presidential elections didn’t indicate that, oof.