gbaji wrote:
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Nationalized healthcare was supposed to be a part of the New Deal.
And the public overwhelmingly rejected it.
idiggory, King of Bards wrote:
To make a statement that a majority, or minority, or whatever, of the population "supported" or "opposed" the New Deal is a joke.
That's not what I said. I said that the public overwhelmingly rejected Nationalized Healthcare. You know "part of the New Deal"?
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So no, the majority of US citizens did not disapprove of the New Deal.
Crazy re-telling of history aside, I didn't say that. I said they rejected Nationalized Health care. It was considered too far. Hell, the biggest objection to a lot of FDR's programs was that they were socialist. This was moreso. To what degree you think "the people" did or didn't have a direct voice in that, it was one of the parts of FDR's agenda that never got implemented.
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They barely understood what it was, nor did they care.
Really? So humans were just brutal barbarians who couldn't think until when? Your generation? You're kidding, right?
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Next, your understanding of health care history and insurance access is a joke.
You saying so doesn't make it so. I'm not the one suggesting that the people weren't smart enough or didn't care enough about politics just 80 years ago. And I'm not the one suggesting that when the people tried to push for things they wanted, that they were beaten down militarily by the US government (or some other military?). You're kidding yourself if you think that today we live in a time of enlightenment where "the people" are so much smarter than they used to be and so much more able to influence their political outcomes than they were in the past. I suspect that you are just more deluded (if anything).
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But protip: The distinction between emergency care plans and comprehensive care plans wasn't firmly established until the late 50s. Before then, emergency and comprehensive plans were the same thing, because of the way American culture dealt with the medical establishment.
Um... Unless you're making a far more obtuse point than it appears, this is not true at all. Comprehensive health care plans were about providing a whole suite of health care from a single pool. They appeared most in company towns (like mining communities), where workers and their families all lived in the same area and it made sense for them all to pool their money to hire doctors to provide care for everyone. It was rare outside of that situation.
I'm honestly not sure what your point about emergency care is. Those are different issues.
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You didn't bring your kid to the doctor for a cold.
You don't bring your kid to the doctor for a cold today either. But to the point that you might seek medical care for your child if his cold becomes bad enough, you would take him to a doctor, just as you might roll into an urgent care today. The only difference is how much you are charged and who pays for it. Back then, you'd take your kid to the local doctor, he'd give him some medicine, give you some advice, etc, and then bill you for his time. Now, you get pretty much the same service, but instead of a full bill (which might be the equivalent of $20 in today's money), you'd make a co-pay (more like $5 or $10), and the rest would be paid for by your insurance. And by "the rest" I mean an amount likely to be several hundred dollars.
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It had nothing to do with whether or not you could afford it, you just didn't.
Wow. Just wow. You honestly think so? No one ever brought their kids to a doctor when they were sick, or had a flu, or sprained an ankle, or got the mumps, or measles, or any of a number of relatively minor ailments? You have a really warped idea of medical care in the early to mid 20th century.
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As time went on, the combination of heightened awareness to medical progress, combined with medical scares from the Cold War, led to a significant cultural shift that caused people to begin seeing doctors for more "basic" things.
You're kidding! You can't honestly believe this. I'm expecting someone to come popping in with a TV camera telling me this is all a joke at this point. People can and did seek out and obtain medical care for a whole variety of things. Everything from a cold, a fever, or stomach pain, to full blown infections, broken limbs, etc. And sometimes the doctors even made house calls! What a freaking amazing thing!!!
How sad must the health care you want be that you have to pretend that there wasn't anything prior to its arrival on the scene? I mean, there are some legitimate points to make about socialized medicine, but trying to pretend that regular people never sought or received medical care (even for "minor" things) prior to the implementation of early forms of socialized medicine is just insane. Of course they did! They had to. If your kid was sick, you didn't know if it was a minor cold, or a major illness that might take his life. If he didn't get better quickly, you'd take him to the doctor. Just like you would today. Nothing has changed (except more availability of over the counter medicines has made it less likely that an average "I'm sick" might end out with a doctor visit than it used to).
Have you ever spoken to anyone over the age of like 50? Talk to your parents or grandparents about what health care was like in the 40s and 50s. It's not anything like what you are describing. It was not the dark ages or anything. Quite the opposite. Health care was much more available and affordable to the average citizen back then than it is today. The medicines have gotten better but the care was just as good if not better then, and absolutely more affordable. People, average people, absolutely did just go to the doctor for checkups and for care.
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That cultural shift created the environment in which a distinction between emergency and comprehensive plans mattered, which opened that area of the discussion up. Before than it was a non-issue, because it was irrelevant.
You're dreaming. Assuming by "emergency" you mean what they used to call "major medical", then there was no such thing as "comprehensive coverage" for most people. They were absolutely very different things. I'm honestly amazed that you seem to think your vision of the US during this time period is correct. Where the hell did you get these ideas? Certainly not from actually talking to anyone who lived during that time period.