- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- upliftingnews@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- worldnews@lemmy.ml
- upliftingnews@lemmy.world
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70% of US voters want universal healthcare; 90% of Democrats and 50% of Independents.
Only Republican voters disagree, with something like 30% supporting. (all of these numbers are approximations there are many Gallup polls over the years).
I’m not a mathematician, but it appears to my untrained eye that 2/3 of Americans want Universal Healthcare. That’s a very solid majority.
Why can’t Ds and Rs manage to provide what the US voters want? Allow Republicans or anyone else to “opt out” of the system.
That’s a rhetorical question. bOtH pArTiEs aren’t interested in what their voters want.
Somehow, Israel can be financed for DECADES without the same level of voter approval.
50% of voters support Israel= billions of dollars every year
70% of voters support universal healthcare= no universal healthcare.
Kinda weird, ain’t it?
Profit based health insurance is not only immoral, it’s fucking infuriating.
I’m not a mathematician, but it appears to my untrained eye that 2/3 of Americans want Universal Healthcare
What does that look like in implementation?
Medicare For All is generally unpopular among senior citizens. Medicare buy in is more appealing, but does little to curb price gouging in provision of care. State ownership/management of care facilities is easily subjected to scandals that cost political advocate their jobs (the VA being a classic modern example).
So what’s the plan?
The US working class would have to mobilize serious strike action across the country to win universal healthcare. The capitalists don’t want their private property (companies, businesses) within the field of healthcare socialized. The working class can do it though. When organized and led by a revolutionary program and leadership, the working class can start to call the shots. All workers need to ditch the capitalist parties (dems and republicans) and support class independent parties and mobilize their power outside of the bourgeois political system.
The US working class would have to mobilize serious strike action across the country to win universal healthcare.
Best we offer you is a “No Kings” protest/strike for just one day.
mobilize serious strike action
Ain’t that illegal in most sates of the Land of the F®ee?
There is no united front among the working class in the west. It’s because working class people who earn a middle income have been brainwashed to think they are “middle class” and thus think they are a separate group from the lower income workers. Like there are even white collar office workers who barely scrape by who think they are middle class and better than a plumber for example just because they don’t do manual labor and work at a big name corpo.
The working class is fractured simply by how the media and the politicians have been using the term middle class. The real middle class is the bourgeoisie. The rich and wealthy who aren’t part of the ruling class. If people don’t realize this they will never mobilize against their masters.
Public support fractures if the questions are broken down into more detail. People have unfounded fears of new “death panels”, and founded fears of the government screwing up implementation (Canada has crazy wait times for many medical services - it’s an outlier among developed countries, but demonstrates the screw-up opportunity). People support new services if they are funded magically, but aren’t willing to support tax raises, even though the tax increases would be less than the savings from not paying for private health insurance.
The complexity - and partisan politicians being more than willing to weaponize confusion over details to divide us against each other - is the barrier.
I’m not an economist, but I bet if we cut the military budget to match that of ANY OTHER developed nation we could manage the healthcare costs.
We don’t require 8x the military budget of anywhere else on Earth
Want a compromise? Sure, let’s restrict our budget to the combined top competing THREE NATIONS.
(on checking a couple sources, the math even checks out, and we’d STILL have the most powerful military in the world)
It’s not that complex. One old-fashioned fireside chat will do it, it’s pretty obvious. We have DECADES of universal healthcare data and results, it’s not some new, radical, alien thing.
Just provide Americans with real data. Presidents don’t HAVE to be babbling idiots, there’s another way!
Public opinion has “near-zero” impact on U.S. law
Your source is absolutely biased and wrong… we all know that public opinion has ZERO impact, this is madness!
Trump must have bribed these ivory-tower hipsters. I loathe them, with their soul patches and asses sticking out of their jeans and jaunty sideways baseball caps. Revolting
It’s never been more evident either.
What’s stopping individual states from doing it? Blue states like California and New York are bigger than some European countries that have it.
bOtH pArTiEs aren’t interested in what their voters want.
The health insurance lobby fights it and also employers don’t want it because then people can quit without worrying about losing their health care.
I doubt this. Most employees are low hourly salary, whether at Walmart or a local restaurant: they don’t offer healthcare so universal healthcare is a free benefit they don’t have to pay.
Even for professional jobs, I don’t see how this can be true. I can see how much my employer pays for my healthcare and I’m sure they’d prefer not to pay it, or be able to match more competitive pay packages
If they can hold your healthcare over you, you will do a lot more to make sure you don’t get fired, giving them more power over you. I guess they all assume that is more valuable than what they currently pay for health insurance.
I should move to Mexico.
Please don’t, we are already gentrified enough
Mexico is hardly gentrified. There are some areas where there are a lot of immigrants, but the population is about 130 million, and less than 1% are foreign born. That’s significantly lower than both USA and Canada.
You obviously haven’t been to mexico city or any of the other tourist destinations in mexico. Its really bad, there are far too many “nomads” pricing out the locals.
I’ve been to Mexico City. It’s absolutely huge. There are probably neighbourhoods where “nomads” are pricing out the locals, but the vast majority of the city isn’t affected. What’s driving up rents in Mexico City is that it’s Mexico City. Most of the people moving there are Mexican.
As for other tourist destinations, yes in tourist destinations there are tourists! Wow. But, there’s a lot of places in Mexico that aren’t tourist destinations, or are destinations only for Mexican tourists. There are entire cities with millions of inhabitants where you’re very unlikely to ever see an American / nomad.
My brother in christ there are right now people moving into any city with working infrastructure here in México no matter the state: Tijuana, Hermosillo, Mexicali, Monterrey, Leon, Mochis, Mexicali, etc
It’s not exclusive to México City, they will move any place where rent is ‘cheap’. They have been outpriced by the US and will look for any place where they can live.
They are not going to show up in any population stats because they don’t even bother changing their residency status and even then being less than 1% doesn’t excuse their gentrification.
Wow, I’m impressed, you actually managed to mention one city that isn’t either in the far north or on the beach. (And it’s not Mexicali, even though you mentioned it twice). It’s almost like you’ve actually visited Mexico before!
This made me think about it. Seriously. If I could get about $2k for gas I could get to TJ.
I would cease to exist were I that far from Trader Joe’s.
TJ is short for Toe Job, a kinky sexual practice done by foot fetishist.
Take that, USA…
Dentures
Shoes
Somebody better put up a big fuckoff wall between the US and Mexico to keep the Americans out.
She built a wall and made Americans pay for it! God damn socialists! /s
Maybe Trump was playing 1000D chess by making the US even more of a failed country and this was his plan to get Mexico to pay for the wall
I think i have seen this storyline in a tv show before.
Since coming to power in 2024, Sheinbaum has sought to undo decades of damage caused by neoliberal policies, building on the work of the previous socialist government. She has pledged to build 1.8m new homes to tackle a housing shortage while strengthening tenants’ rights.
Last year she announced plans to shorten the work week from 48 hours to 40 hours, while increasing the minimum wage by 13%, continuing a policy of regular hikes championed by her predecessor and mentor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador since 2018.
“For years it was said that the minimum wage couldn’t go up,” she told a conference in December, “that it would cause inflation, that there would no longer be investment in the country, foreign investment.”
Despite that, following a cumulative minimum wage increase of 154% since 2018, “we are at a record level of foreign investment,” she added.
Since coming to power in 2024, Sheinbaum has sought to undo decades of damage caused by neoliberal policies, building on the work of the previous socialist government. She has pledged to build 1.8m new homes to tackle a housing shortage while strengthening tenants’ rights.
Meanwhile, when she was governing CDMX, she worked with Airbnb and it helped to gentrify even more sections for the city. There have been people forced out of homes they have lived in for decades due to this pressure.
Last year she announced plans to shorten the work week from 48 hours to 40 hours, while increasing the minimum wage by 13%, continuing a policy of regular hikes championed by her predecessor and mentor Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador since 2018.
The people actually demanded this to be immediate, but they preferred to listen to business owners and are just reducing it 2 hours for each year, culminating to 40 hours in 2030.
They didn’t change anything related to how many days we need to work each week, so employers will try to squeeze these hours into 6-day workweeks anyway. She argued that this was not part of the historical demand for a 40 hour work-week.
Oh yeah and they EXTENDED the limit for extra-hours.
“For years it was said that the minimum wage couldn’t go up,” she told a conference in December, “that it would cause inflation, that there would no longer be investment in the country, foreign investment.”
Despite that, following a cumulative minimum wage increase of 154% since 2018, “we are at a record level of foreign investment,” she added.
Well that’s true, but at the same time the cost for food has nearly doubled
How did she work with AirBnB? Your link does not explain your claim. About the work week it’s still better, though not desirable for you the way it was passed as a law. The last point about doubling food prices is just false and shows your true colors. Food is more expensive of course because inflation is growing, and grows probably faster than the last few years, but doubled on food? Sure, pal.
El Gobierno capitalino informa que estableció una alianza con la Organización de las Naciones Unidas para la Educación, la Ciencia y la Cultura (UNESCO) y la compañía Airbnb para convertir a la Ciudad de México en la Capital del Turismo Creativo en América Latina y en un destino global para nómadas digitales.
Gobierno capitalino was headed by Claudia
And yeah, some basic foods doubled even tripled their prices. You don’t even live here so I don’t care what you think I still have to pay for it
As I said yesterday, it didn’t explain anything, it just says that. Moreover, anyone could say she worked with UNESCO to pump CDMX as an attractive pole for digital nomads, too. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a bad situation with apartments skyrocketing prices, but that’s hardly something owed to her.
And yeah, some products become expensive sometimes, but you said food doubled prices. As in 100% inflation in food, which is nuts.
I do live here.
Are you for real? Un pinche kilo de tomate cuesta casi 80 pesos aca en el norte
anyone could say she worked with UNESCO to pump CDMX
Si claro cualquiera que trabajara con ella diria eso porque era la jefa de gobierno de la CDMX asi que claramente tenia control sobre esto
Hazme el chingado favor literalmente ella firmo: https://www.laizquierdadiario.mx/Claudia-Sheinbaum-AirBnB-y-la-ciudad-mercancia
No vives en realidad aqui? No sabes español? O de plano no sabes investigar nada?
Antier compré jitomate. 60 pesos el kilo en Walmart y hasta en el tianguis. 54 en el Chedrahui, en “martimiércoles” quizá hasta más barato, pero ese es mi punto. Sigues usando un caso particular para la comida en general. Si quieres ser serio, anda a ver cuánto se ha inflado la canasta básica. Como ves, sé de primera mano de qué hablas. No te gusta Sheinbaum, está bien. No es excelente, pero tampoco mames con tu “comida está al doble”. Por mi parte, el asunto de la vivienda lo pudo haber manejado mejor y hasta donde sé, una iniciativa de ley está en curso para regular esto.
Random, but why is she called “socialist”? Is she going to ban capitalism (stock markets, public companies, private properties, bonds, etc.)? Or are we simply calling her socialist because she’s closer to European capitalism (balanced) rather than US capitalism?
Her party is democratic socialist, center left, not socialism, left.
I can’t find anything about her calling herself a socialist, but she’s definitely to the left of most European politicians. Of course she’s working from a less development and more rightwing starting point so her policies seem like common sense to Europeans, but equating her with folks like the SPD based on that would be wrong. You don’t really get this kind of anti-neoliberal, overt social democracy from mainstream European parties anymore.
The morena Party she is from is could be defined as a “social democrat party” The state provides some social programs like healthcare, scholarships, help for single mothers, subsidized public transportation, and monetary help for the elderly.
I magine to people in highly capitalist countries these policies would be seen as socialism, but it feels more like a hybrid system. Most of the markets are capitalist with some light government regulation and some basic needs are socialized. I always find it weird how people draw these black and white distinctions today. I’d argue most governments of the world have hybrid systems in their economic management, even America with their welfare programs.
There is a very long tradition of gradualist reformist socialism, that goes all the way back to the 2nd International.
Those Europeans you speak of call themselves socialist too, but they still with the capitalistic system and control the redistribution mechanisms bolted on.
Pretty sure she is socialist in the “when the government does things” sense, not the “will end capitalism” sense.
It makes a certain kind of sense to me. Making capitalism serve social goals is obviously a mix of philosophies but if capitalism is serving socialistic ends, isn’t socialism prioritized?
The essence of socialism, to me, is serving the social good as top priority. Not centrally managing the economy. Capitalism can be a “how” with socialism as the “why.”
Im really confused.
Is she going to ban capitalism (stock markets, public companies, private properties, bonds, etc.)?
This is communism.
Socialist think that goverment funds should be used to help its people. You know… Society. Schools, healthcare, public infra. Things like that. Socialism does not mean banning private schools and hospitals, or that nobody could not own any land.
I think you misunderstood my “property” word in the context of socialism. Both in communism and socialism, owning properties for means of production, labor, etc. is generally restricted, but the difference here is that in socialism you can (generally) own your own housing. Yes, this includes banning private hospitals and private schools for profit
No it does not mean banning anything.
Goverment sets certain stantard of public healthcare and education, but if you want something outside of it, or for some reason, like long wait time for surgery etc. you can go to private sector.
…
EDIT: I was born in Soviet union and then grew up in social democracy. I’ve always found these conversations with Americans ridiculous. You don’t understand what you’re talking about, because you clearly mix different systems (ie. Social democracy instead of socialism as a state)
Socialist is not a bad word. Only in the US it’s a bad word, because socialism means billionaires need to earn less, and the billionaires won’t allow that.
I never said it’s a bad word, but as someone from the east, socialist sounds a bit over-the-top for just healthcare, socialism (social policies) is part of any well balanced capitalism system for me.
Here in Europe elements like healthcare still fall under socialism.
Im not sure how the Mexican government operates, but typically it’s not all-or-nothing. Just because a socialist gets elected doesn’t mean they suddenly have the power to completely overturn a country and kick capitalism out. Such changes would require overwhelming majorities.
However, socialists would strive to implement those elements of their idealogies they can.
Agreed. But the context of the area needs to be accounted for. Socialist ideas compared to the old status quo.
I wish European capitalism was anywhere near what you seem to think. It’s just less worse… for now.
Than the PPE and its ilk.
Being a socialist doesn’t mean you have to ban capitalism the moment you get power. Or at all. There are many ways to be socialist and do socialist policy.
Or at all
Socialism is defined by opposition to capitalism, if you don’t support eventually moving beyond Capitalism, you’re definitionally a liberal.
A socialist does support moves beyond capitalism, but in a representative democracy they wouldn’t have the power to do that outright. So it goes in small steps, starting with checks and regulations to prevent capitalism from going rampant (like it is in the US).
You’re not wrong but some render their opposition to capitalism by reducing the scope of the capitalist system. Something liberals tend not to do. Are all reformists committed to bringing it down to zero? Maybe, maybe not. I probably wouldn’t call a self-proclaimed socislist who spends their life reducing the capitalist part of their state a lib if they are okay with say 10% of the economy remaining capitalist.
I love how nowadays words don’t have meanings anymore. Thank you, USA!
Mexico already has a constitutionally guaranteed right to healthcare:
Every person has the right to health protection. The law shall determine the bases and terms to access health services and shall establish the competence of the Federation and the Local Governments in regard to sanitation according to the item XVI in Article 73 of this Constitution.
In practice, this has meant a bare minimum level of health care is theoretically available to everyone, but most working people have private insurance on top of that, or see private doctors. For the poorest people it has often been very difficult to get the care they need, even if it’s theoretically available and constitutionally guaranteed. It’s also different from American / Canadian / European hospitals in that family is expected to play a major role doing things that in richer countries are done by nurses or orderlies.
IMO, universal healthcare only really works if the middle class / upper middle class and the poor are all in the same system. If the people can pay more and get better care, they’ll do it, and the system used by the poor will be underfunded. You can’t do much about the truly rich. They’ll always just fly to other countries. If this is just filling the gaps between the various reasons people can use the state system, it’s not going to help that much, even if that kind of fix is necessary.
Any public service only works when there’s no privatization or outsourcing.
Public services, by definition, run at a loss; it’s not possible to profit from them monetarily. All benefits are intangible and derived from their social impact.
More innovation, more wealth production, higher productivity, less crime, better quality of life…The moment you start privatizing, they stop working, as the only ways to increase profits from a public service are by lowering salaries and giving worse service.
When a public utility or something is sold off, then yes, as soon as the privatization happens the service has to get shittier.
But, I don’t think it’s true that the moment there’s a private alternative the public version stops working. I think it’s often just that the public version starts to decay because it doesn’t get the investment it needs.
For example, if you sell the postal service to a private company, it’s going to get either more expensive, or not work as well, or both.
But, if you allow a private parcel delivery service to compete with the post office, for a while you can have both working fairly well. The private service might offer much faster delivery that you can track, while the post office offers slower delivery for a much lower price. For a while the two services can coexist, and people can choose which one they want based on their needs. But, over time you’ll get underinvestment in the public postal option. People will demand that it be run as a business and won’t take into account that it acts as a public service and does things that are unprofitable but good for society.
Yes but if taxes are paying for the system then preventing tax exemption and building a competitive standard of care system heavily disincentivizes use of the private system.
If the private system is allowed to exist, it will always exist. Someone will find something that isn’t done quite as efficiently as the public medical system and charge privately for doing it. Anywhere the private system exists will be better than the public system by definition. Nobody would pay to use the private system if they could get their needs met for free in the public system.
Because of that, if there is a private system, some people will use it. Those same people will vote to try to limit the taxes they pay for the public system, because they’re not using that system. People who can pay for the private system are going to be the richer people, and so their decisions about where their tax money goes has more of an impact. So, eventually, the public system starts to crumble. When that happens, more people use the private system, and the problem gets worse.
Nobody would pay to use the private system if they could get their needs met for free in the public system.
They might, if they thought there was an advantage to it. Like being seen more quickly, or getting a discount for something else.
Sorry if I wasn’t clear, I meant to say that if the public system and private system were equal but you had to pay for the private system, nobody would use it. Sure, if the private system is faster then people will use it even if the public system is free.
In places that allow a mix of private and public, the private system basically finds some flaw in the public system and allows people to pay to bypass that flaw. Things like wait times are one of the main issues. But, it’s sometimes something like certain expensive tests being hard to get in the public system (CAT scans or something). In the public system they might only order those when they’re obviously needed. The private system can let you have one whenever you want, so if your doctor says “well… it could help, but it doesn’t meet the threshold the public system sets” some people will pay for it out of pocket. Or it can be more privacy, or more luxurious hospital rooms. Even if the treatment is otherwise identical, some people will pay for that.
Just a reminder that her predecessor removed this universal access when it was called “Seguro Popular” to create the INSABI that was later renamed “IMSS-Bienestar” and was ultimately integrated into the regular IMSS due to them cutting funds for it in 2025 (she was in charge at this point).
In any case, this barely helps anyone because even if we have ‘universal healthcare’ its quality is going down every year. There are no drugs (medicines) and not enough medical professionals to cover the demand and that has been a reality of anyone visiting an IMSS clinic.
As usual, be critical of any head of state.
FREE Healthcare in Mexico???
How will mom cross the US-Mexico line to buy a month of lifesaving medication for 1/10th the price now???
Same as always
<3
It is my belief that every society benefits from free healthcare.
I have mixed feelings on this. If the entire world had access to free healthcare, chances are research and development would grind to a halt unless they also funded research and development. Taxpayers would need to be willing to pay a company hundreds of millions of dollars if they discovered a useful product.
…it can work in theory, but I’m not sure if it would work in a democracy. The average voter would demand that money be spent on more immediately useful services. If it did work, however, we would save the billions of dollars pharmaceutical companies spend on lawyers and marketing.
I also believe in free education, which includes research facilities.
You could fund the facilities, but how many people would be willing to get a doctorate in biological chemistry if the only available jobs were relatively low paying civil servants?
Most of the researchers in the pharmaceutical industry were employed as minimum wage workers during their six years in college. We would have to completely overhaul the incentive structure if we expected colleges to replace the for profit industry.
biological chemistry
fun fact: I have had a years-long interest into biochemistry since i was 12, and i want to study biology because of it, but i can’t; because i don’t have the time/money, because i need to get a job now to earn money, instead of spending another 6 years in school.
Normal countries don’t underpay the civil servants doing R&D.
As opposed to now, where companies copyright and patent their medications and sell them ultimately to…taxpayers who pay them billions of dollars a year in just out of pocket costs, let alone the scheme that is the American private insurance/healthcare system.
If taxpayers had to fund drug companies or research institutions for R&D without the insane middleman that is the private healthcare/insurance system, it would cost a fraction of what it does now.
On top of that, this assumes that people won’t do research for the good of society vs becoming filthy rich, which is a false assumption driven by Capitalist propaganda. Remember that the ultra wealthy CEOs and executives of these drug companies aren’t the ones doing any of the actual work or research. That is all done by scientists and engineers, who make a decent living, but none of them are incredibly rich from it, classic Capitalist exploitation at work.
Often times these drug companies (and the private equity firms that own them) don’t even primarily do R&D, they just purchase the patents and IP rights to drugs that are already on the market, and once they do that, they jack up the price often by hundreds of percent to increase their cashflow.
That cost gets sent to the insurance companies, which of course, they pass on to consumers, raising our healthcare prices year after year.
I want medical researchers, scientists, and engineers to make a good living, a very good living, their work literally saves and improves hundreds of millions of people’s lives worldwide. But you don’t need a CEO or executives, or private equity firms owning that space and making insane amounts of money, you just literally don’t.
There are millions of very smart and passionate people around the world who want to do this kind of work because they enjoy it, and they want to make a difference. Providing an open and rigorous academic and scientific structure to study and practice this is all you need. That already exists today, many medical breakthroughs came from publicially funded research institutes, which is the way it should be.
…it can work in theory, but I’m not sure if it would work in a democracy.
And yet many democracies have UHC… and publicly-funded research.
Penicillin was invented in a public university lab. We used to have a strong public research in the health sector worldwide.
Then neo-liberalism managed to convince politic leaders to progressively shut down public research and subsidize more and more the private sector.This is not unique to the US. Your taxes pay for R&D, then your insurance (or your wallet…) pays to get the drugs you subsidized. And the private sector does not need ginormous margins to stimulate private R&D spendings.
If the entire world had access to free healthcare, chances are research and development would grind to a halt unless they also funded research and development. Taxpayers would need to be willing to pay a company hundreds of millions of dollars if they discovered a useful product.
I don’t see why it would. A company would still invest in research if they thought they had a chance to sell it to the healthcare system, for example. It wouldn’t be the first nor last time something like that happened, and the latter case isn’t too different from how it works already.
Consider insulin, for example. Research into it and drugs for treatment of diabetes doesn’t happen exclusively in the US.
Wow, like youre not even considering billionaire pedophiles.
Won’t someone please think of the billionaires?
And the children its way easier to fuck if they all rely on grants from you for cancer treatment?
Bonus; no fatties once they start chemo!
Can someone tell, is the president actually socialist or more just sain person who want to improve things? Like central-leftist, compared to far left wing socialist
Morena (Sheinbaum and AMLO’s party) is left to centre-left, much like PSOE.
centrist and that’s taking it too far, she is promoting fracking right now
I’d say she is a social democrat.
… but to most Americans that is far left and thus labelled socialism because America is a very right wing country. Even the ‘left’ in America is basically a right wing party in most other western democracies.
This is what I was guessing. Coming from Finland i think even our right wing parties are socialist when looked from US
Must be nice to have politicians who are trying to improve the lives of the people.
If only, if only
-the woodpecker sighs.
Man, it must be nice living in a country that cares about its people. In America, its just the few, the proud, the
Marinesrich.
