As I have gotten older, I’ve come to appreciate the phrase, “I don’t suffer fools gladly,” which means having little patience for people who are foolish, ignorant or incompetent.
To be fair, I’m going to begin with myself.
In my last post, I criticized Democrats for advocating for universal health care but not having a concrete plan for it. I subsequently had to make a correction because as I was doing some research right after I posted that article, I found out that Democrats in the Senate and House have introduced Medicare-for-All bills that do just that (S1506 and HR3069).
I plan to do a deep dive to examine what the bills cover and how it compares to the plan I’ve outlined in The Case for Universal Health Care for an upcoming article.
Nonetheless, I am still critical of Democrats regarding their lack of strategic planning to actually pass the legislation if they regain majorities in both houses of Congress. And I am curious as to why Democrats, while advocating for Medicare-for-All, have not come out publicly and stated unequivocally that they have introduced legislation.
My greatest frustration however is with conservatives who respond to pro Medicare-for-All/UHC Facebook posts by repeating erroneous disinformation, such as UHC is free, it’s socialism, or that health care is better in the U.S. than in countries with UHC.
For example, when someone recently commented that he didn’t agree with the idea of free government health care, I short-temperedly responded, “What makes you think UHC is free? It’s not. Try to get your information from somewhere other than Fox News.”
Or take this interaction, posted on YouTube, between political satirist Davram Stiefler, a member of the “Good Liars,” and a conservative couple who were attending the recent Republican rally in Texas.
Watch: The Good Liars at the RNC – YouTube
Davram Stiefler: “Should health care be a right in this country? Should people get health care?”
Wife: “That’s not a right.”
DS: “Health care not a right in this country?”
W: “Not health insurance. Obviously, we’re going to help. People go to the emergency room. That’s available. Medicare-for-all type thing. Medicaid-for-All. think it is better in the private sector. Anything in the private sector versus the government providing it is higher quality. Competition creates higher quality.”
DS: “But it is just so unavailable to certain people.”
W: “Yeah. We’re self-employed.”
DS: “So, you have to pay like $1,000 a month each probably or something.”
Husband: “We don’t have health insurance.”
DS: “You don’t have insurance?”
H: “It’s too expensive.”
DS: “There’s so much money concentrated in such wealthy people in this country. You really wouldn’t want to increase taxes and have some help with your health care and maybe . . . “
W: “I’d rather have lower taxes and buy my own health care.”
DS: “You don’t have it.”
Here is an example of stupidity on the part of Stiefler as well as the couple he was interviewing.
First, health care is not a right, something that people on the political left often claim. It is an aspect of social responsibility, which we choose to do to benefit ourselves and our society.
And the wife is correct in responding that health insurance is not a right. As conservatives claim, health insurance is a commodity. But unlike a lot of other commodities, competition does not make it more cost effective.
Instead, single-payer, administered by a government agency, is more cost-effective, because there is no profit motive to increase costs, enrich investors at the expense of the health of its members, and no multi-million-dollar salaries for its executives.
As I point out in The Case for Universal Health Care, there is very little competition in the health insurance industry. If there were, health insurance premiums would be lower than they are now, and insurance premiums would not be rising at the rate they do.
On the other hand, health care itself (not health care insurance) is NOT a commodity. It is a life-giving service. When you are having a heart attack, you don’t ask the EMTs to shop around and take you to the hospital that has the lowest charges. And the patent on a new drug is 20 years, which suggests that pharmaceutical companies have no interest in competition.
Stiefler also makes the mistake of suggesting that the wealthiest Americans should be taxed to bankroll universal health care. That idea is repugnant to half of the American people, and if Democrats take that route to fund their Medicare-for-All legislation, I can assure you it will have no chance of passage. That is why I recommend a tax on services and products. Everyone has a stake in the process, there are no freeloaders, and ultimately, the more you spend the more you pay for the program. In that way, the wealthier do indeed contribute more, but it is not a direct tax levied on them.
Finally, if I had been in Stiefler’s shoes, I would have asked the couple what they would do if they had a health problem that resulted in a major medical bill. One of their options would be to declare bankruptcy. According to the website Worldmetrics (Medical Bankruptcies In The U.S. Statistics | 2026 Edition), 66% of bankruptcies in the U.S. are due to medical bills.
The flip side to that is that when people are unable to pay their bills the costs are shifted onto paying customers. In other words, one reason our insurance premiums are so high is that we are paying for someone else’s unpaid treatment. Which interestingly is one of the primary reasons conservatives give for opposing UHC! Conversely, if we had UHC that everyone pays for, this problem wouldn’t arise and therefore, health care costs would decrease.
I understand why conservatives, particularly MAGA Republicans, keep regurgitating the same misinformation and disinformation about UHC. To accept the factual evidence, they would have to confront and question what they believe to be true versus what is actually true. There are a number of psychological mechanisms, such as confirmation bias, which makes it hard to question our beliefs. But until they do, it’s just being stupid.
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