Was Universal Healthcare Stopped by Racism?

[thomhartmann]

Was Universal Healthcare Stopped by Racism?

Did Universal Healthcare end because of racism?

Thom Hartmann exposes how Universal Healthcare was stopped at every corner by racist policies that didn't want to see healthcare and other benefits applied to the African Americans.

[dchill]

1. Universal Healthcare was stopped by ...

....rich white conservatives, for whom racism is just one arrow in their quiver of tools.

[virgogal]

2. So you are saying that anyone against

Medicare for all is a racist.

[Caliman73]

3. Doesn't look that way from what I read.

The operative words being "racism ... just one arrow in a quiver of tools"

Racial grievance, greed, fear of government, fear of loss are all tools that can and have been used to stop or severely impact social programs that would help society in general.

It certainly does not mean that ANYONE against the expansion of Medicare is against it for racist reasons. It means that racism was a tactic that was used to make it unpalatable to constituents and decision makers.

[dchill]

5. Thank you.

[dchill]

4. Not saying that at all.

[Collimator]

6. Colbert did a funny little bit on that.

He play-acted a white man desperately in need of medical care who was being offered that care for free, but who refused it because ". . . some undeserving black man is gonna get the same care?! No way!" [And then, I'm dead,] Colbert finished.

You know, there are some forms of unfortunate or just plain ugly behavior that I can understand, even if I don't approve. But turning down a benefit for oneself and one's family just because someone whom you don't like will partake of the same benefit is nothing short of nuts.

[wasupaloopa]

7. I think that racism is the paradigm that some people see the whole world through.

[Bradical79]

8. Yes, though also combined with some old red scare tactics

A huge way the right criticizes such "big government" initiatives is the old racist "welfare queen" type argument. Too many people living off the government dime, and it has always been suggested that most of them are non-white. Even if they don't always communicate these things in blatantly racist terms, it's still behind nearly all of their rhetoric at some level.