DestroyHimMyRobots

AceTheCookie, my comment was removed because it was not a question, so I'm going to try again to post it as a reply:

The way you worded this is full of subtle despair, and I hope you’re as OK as you can be, whatever that means. People I’ve met who were born with HIV tend not to have the most stable or pleasant family backgrounds and really struggle with the trauma of growing up in that. If that’s your situation, there is help available to you, even if you may not be able to access it right now. If you have a rough background and are seeking therapy in the future, look for a therapist or support group that specializes in childhood trauma, because it wires brains in a very, very particular way.

If you live in the USA and have to pay for medical treatment, I’m sorry your leadership and culture lack the ethics to demand universal healthcare as your human right.

Keep talking and keep being open. You sound lost, but that’s OK, and there are people who care, including strangers here. What happened to you is not fair. It may affect how you experience your world now, but it is not who you are. There are professionals and support systems who can help you. Please don’t hide and become insular as a means of self-protection. Ask for help, and when you don’t get it, keep asking.

Please stick around.

Imagine defending NOT having universal healthcare, which is so much cheaper and far more effective than making bazillionaires out of private insurance companies. It’s not like we don’t have the data for the importance of universal healthcare from the, uh, rest of the entire developed world.

It’s not even a matter of costs. Universal single-payer healthcare would cost Americans drastically less. The U.S. government already spends a quarter MORE than the Canadian government per capita on health care. Factor in the American health insurance companies and it costs DOUBLE what it costs in Canada per capita to provide comparable health care. Americans can’t complain about universal health care costing them more because that’s not the reality.