This….

This never occurred to me. Not once. That Americans are against Health Care because they think it actually costs tens of thousands of dollars for a broken arm, hundreds of thousands for a complicated birth, millions for cancer treatment.

Because they’ve never known anything different. The idea that a broken arm is only a couple hundred bucks; a complicated birth a couple thousand; cancer treatment only tens of thousands; all easily covered by existing tax structures.

This explains a lot.  And it’s a good example of what I was talking about in my post on scarcity being used to prop up ableism – always question the idea that a resource is genuinely scarce.  Even if it seems obvious that it is, quite often that’s the result of careful manipulation and misconceptions that you’re not even aware of.  

And never think you’re too smart to be fooled by that kind of thing, it doesn’t work like that.  Similarly, don’t think people who are fooled by something are stupid.  Nobody can have all the information about everything, and nobody has the time and energy to investigate and put together conscious conclusions about every piece of information they’re given.  It doesn’t take being stupid, or even just gullible, to believe something like this.

I currently live in a country without free medical care and still, it’s enormously cheap compared to the USA. An American expat wrote a piece for our English language paper about how she paid more for parking at the hospital than giving birth to her baby that’s pretty interesting:

https://grapevine.is/mag/articles/2016/01/06/healthcare-in-iceland-vs-the-us-weve-got-it-so-good/

always question the idea that a resource is genuinely scarce

The funny part is if you cut the military budget by half and spread it to other expenses, we wouldn’t have any problems getting that extra money.

Military expense is the greatest piece in the pie chart.

This is partially true, but honestly, a lot of the people who are against universal healthcare would still be against universal healthcare even if they knew it wouldn’t cost as much as they think because they’re going to be against anything that uses their tax money to help other people, especially those who are marginalized or at a greater disadvantage than they are. They’re racist and classist and ageist and ableist so they’re always going to assume that the people who need things like welfare and universal healthcare are lazy, or stupid, and completely undeserving of the necessities one needs to live if they can’t (in their minds won’t) work for.

I didn’t understand how Americans didn’t have free health care until I saw what they charged you for it.