to wonder why any American's are against Obamacare?

[lowfatiscrap12]

Please, if you're an American, or if you're not American, tell me.
It's driving me insane.
What's wrong with proper healthcare for everyone?
I've got a few American's on Facebook, who happen to live in trailers, so not wealthy people, and you'd imagine they'd be more supportive of Obamacare than anyone.
I don't get it.
What's the problem?
Why would anyone want to keep the current system where one illness can bankrupt a family?

It's just their mindset isn't it? They think universal healthcare = socialist, socialist = communist and therefore BAD don't you know? Also, they're media is massively anti Obamacare and it's hard to get a balanced exchange of views. Watch Sick by Michael Moore if even to see what they think the NHS is like- scary, and enough to make any Brit grateful for what we have, regardless of it's imperfections

Yes I just heard someone on the radio saying "welcome to communism". I don't get it at all...

I am so grateful to live in the UK. Listening to Mitt Romney makes me feel a bit sick.

I struggle to understand the mind set too.

Their logic is insane.... You hear them wittering in and it's amusing and then you remember they're being serious. Apparently one of the biggest causes of bankruptcy in the US is healthcare costs. We went on holiday with my mum to Florida and she had to spend a night in a hospital because of a burst ovarian cyst. Of course it was swanky as feck, she could choose her dinner from a wee menu and a waiter brought it up to her in bed. She didn't have to wait for scans and had her own room. But we got the bill through a few weeks after returning home. Ten grand it cost. For ONE NIGHT, some painkillers and observation. Plus the hospital bill lady was chasing us around the hospital like a poor taste keystone cop comedy.

I do not know that many Americans but of those I do, I know loathe Obama.

I spoke to my american friend recently (her family are probably what you would classify as upper working class) and asked her.

She said that most people who work have medical insurance which, whilst it may not cover really big illnesses fully (as you say they can wipe out a family financially) they cover most people really well for everything they need. She has lived and worked in the UK and thinks the standard of care provided on these schemes is, from her experience, generally higher than the NHS.

She says that there is some state provision at a very basic level for those who are not insured. I got the impression from what she said it is almost like the US public thing "naice" people have cover and those who don't are mostly "undeserving poor" and why should everybody else pay for them.

Must stress that is not my view but it is what I was told.

I have an aunt who lives in America, and I asked her the same question! Her answer was really interesting, and hadn't occurred to me before.

Basically what she said was that if you are reasonably well off, or have a good health package through your employment, American health care is the best in the world - the sky is the limit on the specialists you can see, the medications you can be given, the facilities are amazing. But if you have socialised medicine, then the quality is reduced so that adequate care can be provided to all, regardless of income, much like in the NHS - cost/benefit analysis becomes a factor in your care.

So basically those with the privilege don't want to sacrifice it to provide for the less privileged.

don't most Americans want it, but just not paid for by their tax dollars?

what happens when people stop working? Do they still get covered? Not many people do jobs for life anymore, so there can't be many people working for the same employer for decades?

m.guardian.co.uk/society/2012/jun/05/why-working-class-people-vote-conservative?cat=society&type=article

I do get that a lot of Americans think the NHS is shite - with waiting lists and shared wards and no menu choice vs private US hospitals that are more like hotels with doctors thrown in.
What I don't get is why most Americans don't realise that they are only 1 redundancy or serious illness away from being refused all but emergency treatment/bankruptcy...
Imagine the stress if your child had been diagnosed with a serious illness and you had lost your job at the same time. In the UK that would be a nightmare. In the US it would be hell on earth.

but TitWillow, wont the wealthy still be able to pay for private healthcare like we have BUPA?

what happens to old people in the US when they get ill? Who pays?

lowfat no, their insurance comes with their job. So lose your job, lose your healthcare. Plus if you have dependents with existing illnesses, once they turn 18 they can be turfed out of the family plan. For an 18 year old with a chronic health condition it would be pretty difficult to get a "good" job with a good healthcare plan....
Plus even most "good" healthcare plans are "co-pay" so the insurance picks up most of the bill (the $000's) but you are still left with a % (which hopefully stays within the $00's).
A friend who had a straightforward birth over there had a bill of $8,000. They kept offering her an epidural and one of the reasons she refused was it would have added $000's to the cost!

omg wimblehorse, that's so fucked up!

I was born in the US but have lived in the UK since 1995. I don't understand why everyone hates Obama's healthcare either. I think there should be universal healthcare, and a lot of my friends do - but then I see that we have emigrated.

My family was poor. We couldn't afford to go to the doctor or the dentist - I finally saw a dentist at age 11 & even though we didn't eat sugary food, etc I still had cavities that needed treatment and two rows of teeth (my baby teeth didn't fall out by themselves) that my mother begged the dentist to pull out while I was numbed up for the cavity work. Thank goodness I didn't need glasses back then!

When I was 19 I suddenly started bleeding copiously. I had no idea what to do, because I couldn't afford treatment. Long story short, I was diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis at age 19. I didn't drink or smoke, I didn't engage in any risky behaviour to get this serious condition. Yet, when I try and explain all this to my family I get the "oh, you want Socialism?" comments.... and lots of ranting about how they don't want to pay for smokers' problems, or alcoholics' problems or people like me, presumably.

And yes, lots of Americans hate the NHS or what they think the NHS is, because naturally they've never travelled to the UK or actually experienced the NHS. I always sing its praises, how I have a good quaility of life here, and was constantly ill in the US because I could not afford to see a doctor, or gasp a specialist, about my medical condition. The prescription I take costs 10 times as much in the US, for example. I suspect my life expectancy, had I stayed in the US, would have been seriously shortened.

I don't understand it, but then, there are many reasons I chose to leave! I guess if I understood hating "Obamacare" I'd still live there....

Why should healthcare be provided for by taxes with limited choice for the individual? Why is it different to Food or Housing for example? In the UK we can of course add on private healthcare, but having already paid for the NHS through the higher taxes it's not as possible to shop around given the extra costs. I'm sure everyone would have a lot healthier diet if the government gave us all our daily bread and wine paid for out of taxes rather leaving us the money to decide how to buy. So that's the argument of why not universal healthcare.

But Obamacare is not universal healthcare, it's forcing people to buy insurance, and forces restrictions on the type of medical insurance you can buy too, so it's not universal care funded by taxes, it's forcing you to buy health insurance and not giving you choice.

My US cousin was just posting anti-Obama care stuff on her FB page. I would be interested to know what my British (but living in the USA for 40yrs) Auntie thinks of it, I might e-mail her in a bit and pick her brains.

The NHS isn't that bad IME (and pretty damn good if you're pushy).

People in America don't trust the government, particularly not the national government. It'd be like having a Europe-wide health service here. No-one would think it was being run properly, and people from comparitively wealthy nations would be resentful at having to subsidise medicine for people in the poorer ones.

I don't think it will function like the NHS, it will be illegal to NOT buy health insurance even if you can't afford it. BUT insurers will no longer be able to refuse health insurance on the grounds of pre-existing conditions.

I think it's badly thought out.

I don't get it at all. What I find most confusing of all is all the people in the US who whilst anti healthcare also want to ban abortion and investigate miscarriages and still births as possible homicides because "life is sacred".

Life until it is born anyway......