Many Americans assume that the United States is the best country on earth and that everything we do is good by nature, whether that be bombing 8 different countries that didn't attack us, ripping up the 4th amendment and spying on millions of Americans, massively deregulating wall street, or busting workers unions Americans will still take the position of we are the best country on earth. Many would argue that the things I listed are shitty things we must do to maintain “national security” or the “free market” and I disagree but I think we can have a reasonable debate on those issues, however, there is one issue that you cannot deny, makes the United States not only not number one but not even fucking close. That issue is that the United States is the only modern nation on earth that does not have a single payer, Medicare for all healthcare system.
According to a World Health Organization (WHO) study conducted in 2002 The united states ranks number 37th in the world when it comes to healthcare. So much for being the number 1 country in the world, when your country ranks 37th in being able to take care of its people when they get sick, need surgery, or get hurt how can you tell me with a straight fucking face that we are the best country on Earth? It is beyond absurd that in the richest country ever we cannot have a healthcare system that does better than 37th but we can afford massive tax cuts for the top 1% and endless war. You might say well that’s an old study and since then we got Obamacare. Well get ready for this, in 2014 the Commonwealth Fund did a survey and found that among the countries surveyed the US ranks LAST in quality of care but is the most EXPENSIVE SYSTEM of those surveyed. Still not convinced? Ok then here is another fact for you, in 2009 the American Journal of Public Health concluded that 45,000 people a year die because they don’t have access to basic healthcare. Even if you took all other single payer nations and combined them their death toll from people not having access to basic healthcare that number would be a big, fat fucking goose egg, that’s right 0 people. So, to recap, we have a study ranking us at 37, an updated study putting us last among modern nations and the most expensive, and a study showing that 45,000 people die every year while in every other single payer country that number is 0.
Now you may ask well there has to be criticism of a single payer system, right? And there is but it is completely bullshit. The number one attack on single payer health care is that it will cost the tax payers 32 trillion dollars over the next ten years this is in fact true, but they don’t give the full context when they make this claim. In a great article written in July of 2017 by the Washington Post’s Paul Waldman he states,” In 2016 we spent $3.4 trillion on health care. That spending is projected to rise an average of 5.6% per year over the next decade. If you do the math that means between 2018 and 2027 we’ll spend $49 trillion on health care in America. That’s the current system”. So that means if we switch to a single payer system the tax payers will get 7 trillion dollars back. Also another bullshit attack that knuckle draggers like Ben Shapiro and Steven Crowder make is that if the US switched to single payer we would have tremendous waiting lines and that we would have to “ration care” is also bullshit, because in the US we have waiting lines just the only difference between us and other modern nations is that they ration care based on need, meaning if you need a heart transplant you will get the care you need pretty fast vs if you wanted something like a fucking nose job. In the US we ration care based on how rich you are.
as the rich can buy the best plans and get treated right away while the middle class and poor are either inadequately covered or not covered at all.
My hope in writing this is to maybe convince someone that watches to much cable news where this issue is never fairly covered and because of that they think that America is number 1 that it is just not true, but it can be. If progressives come together around this issue as their main issue we can defeat the Republicans and the corporate Democrats that are currently wrecking the country and there is no question we can have the best healthcare system in the world.