Ironically, I support single payer healthcare (or at least a dramatic restructuring that decouples pricing from employment) specifically because of individualism.

Right now, you need to work at a corporation to get collective bargaining for healthcare prices. This presents a huge disadvantage to people wanting to be contractors, self-employed artists, people wanting to start small businesses, people who only want to work every other year for whatever reason, etc.

Your options are limited because you need to be part of a corporate collective to get reasonable healthcare options.

I support a variant of single payer healthcare too: you pay for your own healthcare out of pocket. All this requires is that wages be high enough and health care costs be controlled. If this sounds impossible, you should consider that it was how our system worked in the USA in living memory.

You then deny that health insurance is a reasonable way to plan for illness?

As currently implemented? Absolutely, it observably isn't. Why do we need middlemen preying on fear, confusion, and preventing any reasonable price discovery from occurring while driving an absolutely absurd inflation rate[1]. Please note those are monthly, not annual numbers, and some months alone hit 5%! Keeping costs down and wages up has plenty of other positive effects too.

[1] https://ycharts.com/indicators/us_health_care_inflation_rate

It's interesting you say that, I've heard that line of argument before but it is quite puzzling.

Are you suggesting that a person on Low income in the US doesn't object to paying more than they have for their own healthcare (i.e. that they wouldn't like that healthcare to be cheaper)

That seems a bit counter-intuitive, as usually people don't like being bankrupt.

Americans believe that only poor people get bankrupt... then they get cancer.

It's hard to swallow an increase on taxes when you're healthy and think you will never get sick.

I can understand (although not agree with) the idea that rich people don't want to subsidise poor people's healthcare, but the argument I was responding to appeared to say that Americans don't mind paying more for their healthcare, which puzzles me.

I'd have thought that lower income Americans would be pretty happy to have a source of cheaper healthcare, even if it wasn't quite as effective as the expensive stuff.

There is a miriad less mortal deseases then cancer, that can broke anyone, especially if its Your kids are suffering...

And you do have a system where you pay more than anyone else for the pleasure of poor people dying. Harshly worded but that is already solved, and somehow I don't see people being happy with it.

I think it's pretty clear that taxes per capita to healthcare being third highest in the world isn't common knowledge.

> America is a deeply individualistic society

Polls say otherwise: http://nymag.com/intelligencer/2018/08/new-poll-majority-of-...

Who benefits from convincing Americans they're individualistic and should remain isolated when negotiating with giant corporations?

All this leads to is less people going in for annual checkups and preventative health care which leads to people becoming catastrophically sick ($40k medical bills) vs. preventing that situation from happening at all if it can be prevented; or catching it early on so it can be mitigated.

It's been a long time since I've worked in retail where I had no employee provided healthcare but back then I'd only go to the doctor if my arm was falling off. Everything else was "this feels weird, I'll wait it out, hopefully it goes away because I don't have $150-200 for a checkup if it turns out to be nothing."

A simple example is dental care. Yearly checkups, cleanings, etc and actively working to prevent major issues leads to far less diseases (blood, etc). But when you don't have decent insurance knowing that you might go in and get told you've got a $400 cavity or need a $1500 root canal out of pocket dissuades a lot of people from even going in. Thankfully I have generally healthy teeth but I hadn't gone to a dentist since my teens (parents insurance) until a few years ago. And once you tell someone that you might be shocked by the number of people who come out of the woodwork to tell you they haven't gone either.

I generally thought I was incredibly healthy and invincible until 28 when out of the blue I got appendicitis, which was $35k. I still had my "only go if my arms falling off" mentality back then but eventually the pain was so unbearable that I drove myself to the ER as I knew something serious was going on. Thankfully I had insurance. That really taught me that there's a lot of things in my body that I have no control over regardless of how healthy and active I am and having a fall back plan to help when catastrophe happens is critical.

A lot of people just don't like doctors. I have good insurance, but I haven't been to a doctor (MD) in probably close to 20 years.

I do get regular dental cleaning and checks though.

Oh believe me, I sat in my car outside for an hour before I even forced myself to go into the ER. I was afraid of doctors, hadn't been in years, and my first foray since then would be taking myself to the ER. I was terrified.

And.. it wasn't bad at all. I'd never had surgery. They knocked me out and I woke up and didn't even know it was over with until I checked my stomach for the scar.

I agree. Unfortunately, Americans are not all multi millionaires or billionaires and almost all Americans are too stupid to realize that they won't be able to afford their own healthcare without a "socialized" government run system. Such stupidity is a hallmark trait of such an individualistic, selfish society in which people cannot think of others or or collective action. Other traits are high levels of depression, anxiety, and drug abuse due to isolation and the complete lack of community. But hey, at least you can watch your neighbor die slowly of cancer he can't afford to get treatment for from afar. That seems to be something Americans enjoy.

I don't think that "individualistic" is a strong enough word. European society, for instance, is also very individualistic, yet doesn't have anywhere near the levels of indoctrination against "socialism".

It seems Americans (generalizing here) have been let to believe that someones gain can only happen at someone else's loss, thinking there can't be a win-win situation.