Tweet is from around February 2022; I’m not visiting that cesspool to find the exact date.
this post was submitted on 09 Oct 2024
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What about the premiums though? Say the insurance premiums for x amount of coverage are 100 dollars. Doesn't matter if I'm a billionaire or if I'm homeless. The premium stays the same.
In a single payer universal healthcare system however, the premium would be a percentage of my income (collected via taxes). Suddenly, the 100 dollars becomes hundreds of thousands of dollars. Therefore, from my perspective, I am "paying for someone else's healthcare". This is the technicality that I'm talking about.
Now of course, fuck my perspective because fuck billionaires. This however, is out of scope of the discussion.
You also have to consider that the healthcare is worth a lot more money to the billionaire than the homeless guy. Just like the roads and the protection of the armed forces worth more money to him. I’m sure the billionaire is a fan of price discrimination too, conveniently enough!
Sure! The homeless guy is very likely uninsured. They might die in the streets because of this. The billionaire on the other hand would get higher quality healthcare. What would not be happening though, is the billionaire paying for the homeless guy's healthcare.
Now of course, a consequence of that is the homeless man dying. Ethically, this is an incredibly shitty system. THAT'S why we need single payer universal healthcare. However, a consequence of that would be the rich paying for the poor people's healthcare.
Yeah I didn’t comment on the “person A paying for person B” technicality because that’s always part of the deal. It happens with private insurance too. If the lowest paid worker at a company is healthy, and the billionaire CEO has a multitude of health problems, then if they’re using the same company insurance the poor person is paying for the rich person. It doesn’t matter that they’re paying the same premiums — the healthy poor person is getting less out than they paid in, and the sick rich person is getting more out than they paid in.