Health care induced bankruptcy is uniquely American

Like most liberals, I'm sick and tired of Republicans trying to take away the health care that Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi and so many other Democrats in Congress worked so hard to achieve.  The GOP spent years promising its rabid base and donor class that the ACA would be repealed as soon as possible. 

But they couldn't beat the clock.  The ACA became law and once Americans began to enjoy health care that was, ahem, mostly affordable, and without that clause in which you could not be denied care or insurance because of a pre-existing condition -- well, then taking that all away became a harder and harder sell for Republicans to the American people. 

Of course, they are still trying to do this anyway, and have been reduced to fighting every little piece of Obamacare in the courts--the courts that are being populated by right wing extremists thanks to Trump and Mitch McConnell and the Federalist Society. 

But I digress. 

What I wanted to mention here is that we are literally the only country in the civilized world that does not have free universal health care, or even some form of single payer, Medicare for All program. 

Take a look at this map, and ask yourself why health care in our country is a for-profit entity:

Mirarkitty [CC BY-SA 4.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)]

It's us, a tiny country in South America, less than half of Africa, and a few scattered Asian countries. 

And the dirty little secret is that universal health care, the kind being pitched to America by Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren, does not have to cost much.  Yes, your taxes will go up incrementally.  BUT if you could balance that against having little or no insurance premiums, no copays, no hospital expenses, no prescription costs, no threat of being denied life-saving medical care, and most of all--no threat of being bankrupted by medical expenses....Well, this would ease the stress of millions of Americans who live with the very real fear of losing their homes, families and/or their lives every day.  And you'd likely have the added bonus of more money in your pocket. 

This is not hard.  What we have now is hard.  But of course, when you have a U.S. economy driven largely by industries such as health insurance and pharmaceuticals, along with a shark infested banking and loan industry, universal health care would bring with it a lot of pissed off billionaires, CEO's and stockholders--you know, the ones that almost universally support Republican candidates. I don't know how to make them all happy, but maybe they'd be happier in one of those other countries on that map above that are shaded in red.