I 'm just boggled at how hopelessly incompetent you have become, collectively.
Imagine, consciously allowing a big part of your population to be without modern medicine.
Incompetent.
Oh, and unbelievably arrogant and bullying, as well. Enjoy your trip on the way to becoming the most recent "Spain" on that list of spent empires.
Will do. Be sure to kiss the Queen's foot and enjoy being a colony of a spent empire.
I get where you're coming from and I suppose that looked promising. The individual state-led model seems like a logical working model in a country like the United States. A similar thing happened in Canada.... 60 years ago. You can say that things were (finally) rolling along in the United States, but what took you so long and should we believe those efforts would have been successful?
Three explanations for that.
1. During WWII, wages and prices were frozen in the U.S. In order to compete for valuable workers, employers started (for the first time) offering "fringe benefits," one of which was health care. After the war, as the only major industrial country that hadn't been extensively damaged by bombing, the U.S. embarked on a golden age the likes of which hadn't been seen since Spain opened up the new world. Full employment (with benefits) was the norm for white people. The few white people who didn't have health care could easily be taken care of by charity. So we didn't have a health care system because we didn't need one. By the time the 30-year boom ended, health care interests (primarily the insurance and medical industries) were well entrenched, and in excellent position to battle any change to their gravy train.
2. Americans are vicious, unfeeling, brutal, racist, sexist, violent, capitalist assholes who don't have health care because they enjoy the suffering of wonderful, kind, caring people who don't have money.
3.
JOOOOOOOOZ!
Take your pick.
Are the cultural or political forces that blocked the US from adopting a universal healthcare program still influential?
Of course. That's why the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, woulda been called the Medical and Insurance Industries Guaranteed Profits Act if truth-in-labelling laws applied to Congress.
Consider: health care had three goals: 1. universal coverage, 2. comparable outcomes with other developed countries, and 3. reduced costs. Obamacare provided #2, mostly because that was already in place. They announced even before it took effect that it would not provide universal coverage, leaving out 5-8% of the population even if it worked perfectly, and what few and lame cost-control measures it had were overwhelmed by incentives to raise costs.
So who benefited? Cherchez l'argent, m'amie!
Oh, I'm sure they will. Partly because of Obamacare. Unfortunately for the party of death, you can't easily take universal healthcare from people.
Having been given a taste, yeah, they insist on even our poor, disfunctional, non-universal health care.
Once people have it they cling to it, like their guns and religion.
And their opioids and fraudulent disability pensions.
