[jorblumesea]

> Why Americans continue to willingly subject themselves to these torturous systems

They've been told socialized medicine is evil communist plot to steal their hard earned money. Many Americans have not been outside of the states and have no concept of what life in other countries might be like. There's a good percentage of Americans that are completely ignorant of how the rest of the world does things, and also dismiss this as inferior. They've been told their entire life that the US is the greatest country, so, why would we do it any other way?

[nwallin]

All of the people I know who are strongly opposed to government run healthcare are veterans. They are people who have spent 4-20 years of their life with government run healthcare.

One guy I knew went to the doctor complaining about blood in his poop. Was prescribed pepto bismal. Went back a few months later. Same thing. Went back a few months later, same thing. This pattern repeated for a little bit over a year. Eventually, he got a colonoscopy. Stage 4 colon cancer. He passed away a few months later.

A friend of mine went to the doctor with a fucked up ankle. Swollen to the size of a grapefruit. They wrapped it and gave him 800mg Motrin. Week later, same thing. Repeat x4. During the last trip, the doctor was giving him the scrip for another bottle of Motrin, when another (higher ranked) doctor recognized him and ordered the junior doctor to do an x ray. The junior doctor protested but did it anyway because it's the military. Fractured ankle. By this point it was mostly healed, so too late to put a cast on it. Fortunately it hadn't healed wrong, so it didn't need to be rebroken.

Vet communities are full of stories like this. And veterans, people who have had government healthcare for years to decades, are the population group most opposed to government run healthcare.

This doesn't necessarily mean government run healthcare is bad; the military is disfunctional in many ways. But your assertion that opposition to government run healthcare is based in ignorance is absolutely, completely false.

[jorblumesea]

> But your assertion that opposition to government run healthcare is based in ignorance is absolutely, completely false.

Socialized medicine is in no way equivalent to the VA system or the issues of the DoD and VA. So if you're using that as an example to disprove ignorance, to me that just proves how ignorant people are. Pointing to the VA as an argument against universal socialized medicine is such an absurd take that I'm not sure how to respond.

If anything, your comment proves my point. Americans are completely ignorant on the basics of the topic to the point where they compare a poorly designed military system as some kind of argument against socialized medicine. The incentives of the VA are so radically different from any national healthcare system. I appreciate the debate.

[nwallin]

Can you elaborate on why Tricare and the VA aren't government run healthcare? I define government run healthcare as healthcare that is run by the government.

The fact that it's poorly run is actually the point. Few Americans want to replace their experience at the doctor's office with the experience from the government run Post Office or DMV. The point is that many Americans have relatively little faith in the government to design a good system, and association with government run systems correlates strongly with lack of faith in the government to operate smoothly.

Note that my position, not that it really ought to matter, is as a proponent of universal basic income. Cut everybody in the country a check for $1500 a month, keep the ACA requirements that everyone buys health insurance and that insurance companies can't reject coverage on preexisting conditions, and let the market solve the problem. The problem is that healthcare is too expensive, not that it's bad. The government, for everything it sucks at, is really good at sending a check every month.

[jorblumesea]

> Can you elaborate on why Tricare and the VA aren't government run healthcare

They are in the technical sense that the US govt "runs it". They are not socialized medicine as every Western country has implemented. They hardly have the scale, participation or political pull.

> I define government run healthcare as healthcare that is run by the government.

This is a bit naive, because the VA and DoD have a strong vested interests in short term solutions to keep soldiers going and back on the field. Also, many of the VA's problems stem from the fact that only a small % of Americans actually use the VA and care about its performance. So politically, it's hardly something that anyone focuses on, despite many promises to the contrary.

> experience from the government run Post Office

The post office is actually really efficient and is an example of a very well run government service. They're on par with any private company, easily, in both price and service. If anything, cuts to the post office have hurt it more than any operational problems or mismanagement.

> The point is that many Americans have relatively little faith in the government to design a good system

This is because many Americans actively vote against their best interest and elect politicians whose sole purpose is to hamstring the government from doing anything effectively. It's the classic conservative self fulfilling prophecy: cripple the government, point to the fact that the "government doesn't work", then privatize and reap the rewards. It's just a political game to make rich voters richer.