This isn’t any exaggeration: it has been demonstrated using statistical analysis
Multivariate analysis indicates that economic elites and organized groups representing business interests have substantial independent impacts on U.S. government policy, while average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence. The results provide substantial support for theories of Economic-Elite Domination and for theories of Biased Pluralism, but not for theories of Majoritarian Electoral Democracy or Majoritarian Pluralism.
This is literally all there is to it, along with indentured servitude by tying insurance to employment on top of it. This country's fucked up healthcare system keeps the billionaires happy and the people stuck appeasing them.
Medicare for all and legal pot both have had an around 70% approval rate for about a decade now. The government simply doesnt care because those things do not make the right people rich. Studies have shown the US gov doesn't respond to its voters, it responds to its financiers. It honest to god never mattered what we thought.
Congress represents capitalists and works for them, not the working classes. Any plan that cannot address the class conflict and the nature of the capitalist state instruments to uphold their class interests is doomed to fail.
All of the working class has part of the responsibility for the lack of organization, not just the organizations, it's a two way relationship. PSL is trying a lot so that even myself that isn't from the USA knows them, perhaps you not knowing that acronym is a fault in your own part.
I know of the Working Families Party and that party has had some success either winning their own election or running as Democrats.
A major job of a political party is to organize. If a party can't organize while other ones can, maybe I shouldn't support the party which can't organize.
All of the working class has part of the responsibility for the lack of organization
The time I tried applying they ghosted me for over a month, then I finally got an interview, and they ghosted me after that indefinitely. Later the same chapter defended a cop arresting a protestor against a rearrest which upset a lot of smaller leftist orgs (keep in mind this is the same general area the Prarieland protest occurred), and now the national organization is promoting anti-datacenter protests with literally no context which I'm not sure how that's supposed to help their popularity. Also their opsec is terrible as well, I mentioned that I have technical skills during the interview but they didn't seem interested in that.
Because the politicians who could allow it are bribed by health insurance lobbyists to not allow it. There's a lot of money at stake for a relative few people, and they'll do anything to not risk it.
Capitalists control the political system of the US. Its not a democracy, it's a capitalist dictatorship.
What health-care systems it used to have, were only to quell decades of worker struggles fighting for equivalent health care systems the USSR was putting in place in the 1920s.
Like most of these kinds of problems, the answer can be boiled down to a simple commonality: The people who stand to lose the most from things changing for the better are the same people who have the most power to influence the outcomes. The only thing that can counter that is a strong labor movement.
Now, there is a more complicated question to be asked about why US labor movements have been less successful than their European counterparts, but that I don’t have an easy answer for.
The second thing is actually pretty easy to answer. The same people from the first part of your answer have also been using their outsized power and influence to erode the power and influence of unions over time. Many actions taken by European unions would be considered illegal in America and met with violent state oppression. While Europe has maintained many of their labor rights from the turn of the 20th century, America's labor rights have been rolled back to almost before the new deal. Most unions barely have the right to strike, and even when they can that power is exceptionally limited. Basically any effective labor action in the US would require people to accept that they are breaking the law, and will likely die, sustain life altering injury, or go to jail for it. Since most Americans that would benefit from strong unions are living in oppressive poverty to begin with they either see the risks of illegal labor action as too large, or have been propagandized against it.
I feel the unionds themselves kinda lost their way in the 80's and only recovered in the millenium. Rather than pushing to lower worktime and expanding their ranks they focused more on exclusivity and bookoo overtime.
Yeah, but why did it turn out differently like that? Europe surely had its own class of capitalists and other entrenched interests. They could have pushed for similar suppression measures.
Maybe it had something to do with the difference in fallout from WWII? Idk. I’m not super well read on this subject in particular, so I don’t know enough to do anything but speculate.
People can demand it, but that isn't how we could ever get it. The privatized healthcare system makes too much money and the left in the US Empire is only recently beginning to recover from the Red Scare and systematic dismantling by the state in the 20th century.
Now that the Red Scare is largely over, the United States is being dismantled by a compromised president controlled by Russia in the 21st century.
Born too early to see the US being dismantled by Russia, born too late to see the US being dismantled by Russia, born just in time to see the US being dismantled by Russia.
I am ignorant of modern geopolitics. Have no pity for me. I will go learn.
This isn't true, though. Trump just isn't quite as hawkish on Russia as many liberals would like, but if he was actually compromised he would be lifting sanctions and wouldn't be attacking Russian allies like Iran and Venezuela.
I am a leftist in thought, inspiration, and action, and my short term goals include the woodchipping of the entire Heritage Foundation, bunch of absolute ghouls they are;
but I have recently been humbled and realized I know *jack shit* about geopolitics and international history. That’s what I’m reading. Books, theory, education.
In the USA, there is little corruption officially; that's only because bribery is legal. Billionaires, Corporations, Banks and even other nations like Saudi Arabia can "contribute" huge amounts of money without even revealing who they are.
Insurers, drug manufacturers and other interested parties "donate" many millions of dollars through these Super PACs and shell companies to keep things as they like them.
The voters are too busy juggling low-wage jobs to compete with the multi-generational wealth accumulators; on top of this, they pay more taxes in more ways than any other generation before.
Our representatives won't bite the hand that feeds them willingly, and are legally protected to continue doing so.
People's standard of living and life spans are shrinking as a result. See Citizens United, Super PACs, Panama Papers and Pandora Papers for more details.
There's so much, unions squashed, down to 10% of workforce and those are mostly police and government ironically. Check out Patriot Act if you wonder why there's so little organizing. The FED haha it never ends
Follow the money: the current system makes more sense for private insurers, pharma, and large healthcare providers who all benefit from things staying as they are.
But it’s not just about corporations. The US also built its system around employer-based insurance back in World War II, and now healthcare is tied to your job. That creates risk: leaving your job can mean losing coverage, which naturally makes people more cautious and dependent on poor employment. This also makes people more cautious about starting up a business so the economy becomes controlled in the hands of a few - and so more oligarchic
There’s also a cultural angle. In the US, “freedom” is often seen as freedom from government involvement, even if that sometimes means less practical freedom (like being unable to change jobs easily), and the individual spending more on insurance than they would on taxes.
So it’s not one single reason - it’s money, history, and mindset all reinforcing each other.
Rigidity and social control also show up in other countries with strategies like high housing costs.
Regulatory capture. The government is funded by the medical insurance companies. The people haven't demanded it because they've been told it's not an option. It's impossible, too expensive, a fantasy.
It wasn't universal at the time, covering only the poorest workers, but Germany was the first country to establish a social health care system in 1883.
It didn't work very well during the war, but it was technically still there.
Since the war, they gradually expanded it achieving universal coverage sometime in the 1980s.
Capitalism, severely lowered expectations, mainstream news media controlled by the billionaire class pumping out capitalist propaganda. People continuing to believe the Democratic Party wants to enact universal healthcare when all elected Dems really care about is staying in power, doing the bare minimum, and raking in the cash from their billionaire donors. People continuing to vote for Democrats based on that belief when they could be using their votes to vote in anti-capitalist candidates from the real left (Green Party, PSL, etc).
When Democrats are in charge of all of the levers of power, they say: “Darn there are all these rules we have to follow and the Republicans are obstructing us and won’t budge. Oh well, better luck next time 🤷♂️” while behind closed doors they’re listening to the health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies who offer them money and perks and special treatment and job offers in the industry once they’re out of office.
The powerful have convinced the masses that paying a single dime extra in taxes is just about the worst thing you could be forced to do, including whatever happened on that Island. So the common people are unable to reconcile that everyone paying higher taxes will make healthcare better for everyone. Normal people get to stay sick, poor, and rely on GoFundMe or die prematurely while the powerful laugh and count their money. It’s a fucking GRIFT.
It would take a lot of pressure off of people to grind themselves down for profits as well as demonstrate that a government can actually take care of people, two precedents the capitalist class absolutely refuses to set.
We do demand it, they don't give a fuck. Even with insurance you can't get help. Can't even leave this place without being rich. Land of the free my ass.
I watched a video today that said just the bureaucratic overhead of healthcare in the US accounts for 10% of our GDP. So it's probably mostly just bribe money from the insurance companies keeping our elected representatives from doing anything in our interest.
For people to demand anything you'll need a democracy.
For people to want universal healthcare they need to understand that socializing the health cost is a benefit for the population.
Add the words together and you get social democracy.
In most countries this is what lead to universal healthcare. In most countries the social democracy parties were founded by labour unions.
Despite USA being first with labour unions, they never really succeeded, because they were violently struck down early on.
Anyway, it's that simple: Join a union, let the union establish a political party, let the party make universal healthcare.
I know that seems very uphill, but it doesn't actually have to take centuries to do.
When the first unions were formed in Europe, the workers also expected it to be a multigenerational battle, and yet decided to try it in the vague hope that it might eventually benefit their grandchildren. However they were so successful that they achieved the goal within their own lifetime.
You're also missing the vital context that it was the soviet union being right next door, with their massive expansions in social safety nets, that forced western countries into capitulating to worker demands. It also misses that these safety nets in western countries are funded by imperialism, creating a domestic working class with class interests aligned with imperialism, rather than against it.
Because our sclerotic legislature and campaign finance systems ensure that every single function of “democratic” society is fully and totally captured by the interests of capital
Because people who have a job with benefits feel like they’ve worked their way up the chain to earn those benefits. People who work but don’t have benefits just don’t work hard enough. And let’s not even talk about those who don’t work.
Isreal, sorry not sorry. America sends isreal 300 billion every year as a donation... The get paid $600 to have a kid and get $1'800 for every child they have. We dont have free health car because they do... Just think about that for a minute.
There isn't an organized group for it, but there are organized groups against it.
The two attempts to do so, in 1993 and 2009, saw little organized political activity in favor of creating a single payer system while there was organized political resistance against it.
If politicians lose their seats trying to support a single payer system, they won't be around after the next election.
In order to understand that, it helps to look why we never got it to begin with. Do you think this system where we all suffer so a few can be rich was the first thing that came to mind, and then civilization evolved to be better so we got universal health care? No, people cooperated first, and then when communications technology started forming more centralization, started building a pathway to universal healthcare.
But this is America! It's a settler colonial empire! So of course it was the former slaves who were building cooperatives, and organized labor building a pathway to universal healthcare, and white racists with all the money and power to turn those systems of cooperative support into siphons for them to suck us dry from.
If you dare to struggle, you dare to win! If you dare not struggle, then damn it, you don't deserve to win! Fred Hampton
That is the problem, americans are weak, pacified and subservient.
Bad enough that they already resign in their 'normal' pathetic conditions (no healthcare, student debt,..)
Even the current regime can't motivat them.
Near fascist, and still nothing happens.
No strikes, big riots, etc...
They have their little walks with their edgy signs, complain on social media about the bad orange man or go to their lame No Kings meetings.
There the fake-left Uniparty politician promises to make it all better.
You have to stay nicely between the lines, violence is bad and has no place in a democracy, simply wait a few years and vote for me next time. Trust me!
And they do.
Are you paying attention? We’ve broken the record for the largest protests in American history like 3 times in a row since trump came in, and we’re likely going to break it again on the 28th
The US government fundamentally doesn't give a crap about your wellbeing. In fact if you die at 56 instead of 76 the government can cheap out of approximately 16 years of paying you a retirement.
The people essentially have been demanding it. As several others have mentioned in this thread, 70-80% of the public supports universal healthcare in some form. For the nitty-gritty, basically 50 years ago and earlier, extremely wealthy people realised that their preferred policies weren't especially popular with the general public. They identified that their main issue was that what they had was money, not people. So they embarked on a decades long quest to give money the same (or greater) political power as individuals, culminating in the Citizen's United Supreme Court case. I bring this up because it essentially means that the People demanding it doesn't matter, because while there may be a couple hundred million people asking for it, there's a couple hundred billion dollars asking to never do it. It's gotten so bad that there's a kind of perverse, Stockholm Syndrome effect starting to happen to. In 2016 there was a big dust-up during the Democratic Primary where the Culinary Union in Las Vegas/Nevada didn't want to endorse Bernie Sanders, the most pro-Union candidate in decades, essentially because medicare-for-all would remove health insurance as a bargaining chip
Too many people with too much power are making too much money, so they all work together to keep the cash cow going. It’s become pretty clear that’s what the US has reduced itself to at this point. It’s kinda nakedly obvious this whole thing is a giant fucking Ponzi scheme at this point - I’m fairly certain I’m never getting the social security I’ve payed into for my whole career.
Because conservatives do not want tax dollars going to people in outgroups.
Because most Americans lack an understanding of statistics. You cannot use the logic that it’s cheaper to pay on aggregate for services through tax dollars, nor that the evidence shows that the monetary losses of a socialistic system are less than the gain. They don’t understand.
The US system mostly works for a lot of people. There's not a lot of people willing to risk things getting worse for them so 10-15% of people get something better.
There's also massive doctor shortage issues that will only get worse with healthcare reform. Even if cost wasn't an issue, there wouldn't really be access.
the democrats have had the opportunity to remove the super majority requirement from 2021 to 2023; again from 2007 to 2011; and again from 1987 to 1995, yet they chose not to.
To be clear, the guys who voted against it in 2010 were literal 70 year old boomers who were raised in McCarthyism and scared of communism. Like actually cited that "it's too communist" as a reason to vote against it.
The only opinion that matters for the government is the opinion of the 1%.
This isn’t any exaggeration: it has been demonstrated using statistical analysis
Yep
A video about it- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfQij4aQq1k
Seriously? Because that's money flowing in the "wrong" direction, that is away from billionaires' pockets.
This is literally all there is to it, along with indentured servitude by tying insurance to employment on top of it. This country's fucked up healthcare system keeps the billionaires happy and the people stuck appeasing them.
Medicare for all and legal pot both have had an around 70% approval rate for about a decade now. The government simply doesnt care because those things do not make the right people rich. Studies have shown the US gov doesn't respond to its voters, it responds to its financiers. It honest to god never mattered what we thought.
A plan to fix this - https://represent.us/
A video about it- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfQij4aQq1k
Congress represents capitalists and works for them, not the working classes. Any plan that cannot address the class conflict and the nature of the capitalist state instruments to uphold their class interests is doomed to fail.
There is no current organization of the working class to counter capitalist demands. Without organization, the working class will be kept powerless.
Sure, that's what orgs like PSL are doing.
Given that I don't know what the acronym is, they aren't doing a great job.
All of the working class has part of the responsibility for the lack of organization, not just the organizations, it's a two way relationship. PSL is trying a lot so that even myself that isn't from the USA knows them, perhaps you not knowing that acronym is a fault in your own part.
I know of the Working Families Party and that party has had some success either winning their own election or running as Democrats.
A major job of a political party is to organize. If a party can't organize while other ones can, maybe I shouldn't support the party which can't organize.
The time I tried applying they ghosted me for over a month, then I finally got an interview, and they ghosted me after that indefinitely. Later the same chapter defended a cop arresting a protestor against a rearrest which upset a lot of smaller leftist orgs (keep in mind this is the same general area the Prarieland protest occurred), and now the national organization is promoting anti-datacenter protests with literally no context which I'm not sure how that's supposed to help their popularity. Also their opsec is terrible as well, I mentioned that I have technical skills during the interview but they didn't seem interested in that.
The Party for Socialism and Liberation. They are doing a good job, but party building takes time and effort.
"why isn't the crumbling fascist imperial regime providing me healthcare?" is a question that answers itself OP
Because the politicians who could allow it are bribed by health insurance lobbyists to not allow it. There's a lot of money at stake for a relative few people, and they'll do anything to not risk it.
Capitalists control the political system of the US. Its not a democracy, it's a capitalist dictatorship.
What health-care systems it used to have, were only to quell decades of worker struggles fighting for equivalent health care systems the USSR was putting in place in the 1920s.
That article and those linked within are a goldmine. Thank you for sharing.
No probs!
Like most of these kinds of problems, the answer can be boiled down to a simple commonality: The people who stand to lose the most from things changing for the better are the same people who have the most power to influence the outcomes. The only thing that can counter that is a strong labor movement.
Now, there is a more complicated question to be asked about why US labor movements have been less successful than their European counterparts, but that I don’t have an easy answer for.
The second thing is actually pretty easy to answer. The same people from the first part of your answer have also been using their outsized power and influence to erode the power and influence of unions over time. Many actions taken by European unions would be considered illegal in America and met with violent state oppression. While Europe has maintained many of their labor rights from the turn of the 20th century, America's labor rights have been rolled back to almost before the new deal. Most unions barely have the right to strike, and even when they can that power is exceptionally limited. Basically any effective labor action in the US would require people to accept that they are breaking the law, and will likely die, sustain life altering injury, or go to jail for it. Since most Americans that would benefit from strong unions are living in oppressive poverty to begin with they either see the risks of illegal labor action as too large, or have been propagandized against it.
I feel the unionds themselves kinda lost their way in the 80's and only recovered in the millenium. Rather than pushing to lower worktime and expanding their ranks they focused more on exclusivity and bookoo overtime.
Yeah, but why did it turn out differently like that? Europe surely had its own class of capitalists and other entrenched interests. They could have pushed for similar suppression measures.
Maybe it had something to do with the difference in fallout from WWII? Idk. I’m not super well read on this subject in particular, so I don’t know enough to do anything but speculate.
People can demand it, but that isn't how we could ever get it. The privatized healthcare system makes too much money and the left in the US Empire is only recently beginning to recover from the Red Scare and systematic dismantling by the state in the 20th century.
Now that the Red Scare is largely over, the United States is being dismantled by a compromised president controlled by Russia in the 21st century.Born too early to see the US being dismantled by Russia, born too late to see the US being dismantled by Russia, born just in time to see the US being dismantled by Russia.I am ignorant of modern geopolitics. Have no pity for me. I will go learn.
This isn't true, though. Trump just isn't quite as hawkish on Russia as many liberals would like, but if he was actually compromised he would be lifting sanctions and wouldn't be attacking Russian allies like Iran and Venezuela.
It never ended and won’t be over until capitalism is dead. What do you think the bullshit about a “Uyghur genocide” was for?
House votes to denounce ‘horrors’ of socialism ahead of Mamdani-Trump meeting
I can see that I’m not as well-read on the state of affairs as everyone else, and also I just noticed that I’m on .ml.
My apologies. I’ll remove myself from this instance until I am less ignorant about the world I live in.
You should stay on this instance to learn. Lots of learning material.
I’m still here, just not participating.
I'm really glad. Feel free to ask questions, a lot of really knowledgeable people are willing to point you in the right direction.
I am a leftist in thought, inspiration, and action, and my short term goals include the woodchipping of the entire Heritage Foundation, bunch of absolute ghouls they are;
but I have recently been humbled and realized I know *jack shit* about geopolitics and international history. That’s what I’m reading. Books, theory, education.
In the USA, there is little corruption officially; that's only because bribery is legal. Billionaires, Corporations, Banks and even other nations like Saudi Arabia can "contribute" huge amounts of money without even revealing who they are.
Insurers, drug manufacturers and other interested parties "donate" many millions of dollars through these Super PACs and shell companies to keep things as they like them.
The voters are too busy juggling low-wage jobs to compete with the multi-generational wealth accumulators; on top of this, they pay more taxes in more ways than any other generation before.
Our representatives won't bite the hand that feeds them willingly, and are legally protected to continue doing so.
People's standard of living and life spans are shrinking as a result. See Citizens United, Super PACs, Panama Papers and Pandora Papers for more details.
There's so much, unions squashed, down to 10% of workforce and those are mostly police and government ironically. Check out Patriot Act if you wonder why there's so little organizing. The FED haha it never ends
It's actually cheaper to do single payer healthcare, but because profit rules all the empire does this.
I feel like we Marxists have explained why hundreds of times in dozens of ways already.
Follow the money: the current system makes more sense for private insurers, pharma, and large healthcare providers who all benefit from things staying as they are.
But it’s not just about corporations. The US also built its system around employer-based insurance back in World War II, and now healthcare is tied to your job. That creates risk: leaving your job can mean losing coverage, which naturally makes people more cautious and dependent on poor employment. This also makes people more cautious about starting up a business so the economy becomes controlled in the hands of a few - and so more oligarchic
There’s also a cultural angle. In the US, “freedom” is often seen as freedom from government involvement, even if that sometimes means less practical freedom (like being unable to change jobs easily), and the individual spending more on insurance than they would on taxes.
So it’s not one single reason - it’s money, history, and mindset all reinforcing each other.
Rigidity and social control also show up in other countries with strategies like high housing costs.
Regulatory capture. The government is funded by the medical insurance companies. The people haven't demanded it because they've been told it's not an option. It's impossible, too expensive, a fantasy.
Because of decades of lobbying by the for-profit healthcare industry.
Why didn't nazi Germany have universal healthcare?
What kept people from demanding it?
.... because they did have it?
It wasn't universal at the time, covering only the poorest workers, but Germany was the first country to establish a social health care system in 1883. It didn't work very well during the war, but it was technically still there. Since the war, they gradually expanded it achieving universal coverage sometime in the 1980s.
I don't think they had it for the Jews..
or Romani..
or gays..
or the disabled..
or communists.
Capitalism, severely lowered expectations, mainstream news media controlled by the billionaire class pumping out capitalist propaganda. People continuing to believe the Democratic Party wants to enact universal healthcare when all elected Dems really care about is staying in power, doing the bare minimum, and raking in the cash from their billionaire donors. People continuing to vote for Democrats based on that belief when they could be using their votes to vote in anti-capitalist candidates from the real left (Green Party, PSL, etc).
When Democrats are in charge of all of the levers of power, they say: “Darn there are all these rules we have to follow and the Republicans are obstructing us and won’t budge. Oh well, better luck next time 🤷♂️” while behind closed doors they’re listening to the health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies who offer them money and perks and special treatment and job offers in the industry once they’re out of office.
Helps keep people enlisting when the only way they can have their basic needs met is to sign up with the evil empire.
The powerful have convinced the masses that paying a single dime extra in taxes is just about the worst thing you could be forced to do, including whatever happened on that Island. So the common people are unable to reconcile that everyone paying higher taxes will make healthcare better for everyone. Normal people get to stay sick, poor, and rely on GoFundMe or die prematurely while the powerful laugh and count their money. It’s a fucking GRIFT.
It would take a lot of pressure off of people to grind themselves down for profits as well as demonstrate that a government can actually take care of people, two precedents the capitalist class absolutely refuses to set.
the Hospital Corporation of America makes $70b+ a year
We do demand it, they don't give a fuck. Even with insurance you can't get help. Can't even leave this place without being rich. Land of the free my ass.
The companies make too much money, and the same companies dictate policy to the government.
The USA is not a democracy.
I watched a video today that said just the bureaucratic overhead of healthcare in the US accounts for 10% of our GDP. So it's probably mostly just bribe money from the insurance companies keeping our elected representatives from doing anything in our interest.
For people to demand anything you'll need a democracy. For people to want universal healthcare they need to understand that socializing the health cost is a benefit for the population.
Add the words together and you get social democracy.
In most countries this is what lead to universal healthcare. In most countries the social democracy parties were founded by labour unions.
Despite USA being first with labour unions, they never really succeeded, because they were violently struck down early on.
Anyway, it's that simple: Join a union, let the union establish a political party, let the party make universal healthcare. I know that seems very uphill, but it doesn't actually have to take centuries to do.
When the first unions were formed in Europe, the workers also expected it to be a multigenerational battle, and yet decided to try it in the vague hope that it might eventually benefit their grandchildren. However they were so successful that they achieved the goal within their own lifetime.
You're also missing the vital context that it was the soviet union being right next door, with their massive expansions in social safety nets, that forced western countries into capitulating to worker demands. It also misses that these safety nets in western countries are funded by imperialism, creating a domestic working class with class interests aligned with imperialism, rather than against it.
The US the first with Labour Unions?
Because our sclerotic legislature and campaign finance systems ensure that every single function of “democratic” society is fully and totally captured by the interests of capital
Because people who have a job with benefits feel like they’ve worked their way up the chain to earn those benefits. People who work but don’t have benefits just don’t work hard enough. And let’s not even talk about those who don’t work.
We need to divorce healthcare from employment.
Isreal, sorry not sorry. America sends isreal 300 billion every year as a donation... The get paid $600 to have a kid and get $1'800 for every child they have. We dont have free health car because they do... Just think about that for a minute.
There isn't an organized group for it, but there are organized groups against it.
The two attempts to do so, in 1993 and 2009, saw little organized political activity in favor of creating a single payer system while there was organized political resistance against it.
If politicians lose their seats trying to support a single payer system, they won't be around after the next election.
In order to understand that, it helps to look why we never got it to begin with. Do you think this system where we all suffer so a few can be rich was the first thing that came to mind, and then civilization evolved to be better so we got universal health care? No, people cooperated first, and then when communications technology started forming more centralization, started building a pathway to universal healthcare.
But this is America! It's a settler colonial empire! So of course it was the former slaves who were building cooperatives, and organized labor building a pathway to universal healthcare, and white racists with all the money and power to turn those systems of cooperative support into siphons for them to suck us dry from.
because that's not profitable enough for capitalism and the oligarchs
If you dare to struggle, you dare to win! If you dare not struggle, then damn it, you don't deserve to win! Fred Hampton
That is the problem, americans are weak, pacified and subservient.
Bad enough that they already resign in their 'normal' pathetic conditions (no healthcare, student debt,..)
Even the current regime can't motivat them.
Near fascist, and still nothing happens.
No strikes, big riots, etc...
They have their little walks with their edgy signs, complain on social media about the bad orange man or go to their lame No Kings meetings.
There the fake-left Uniparty politician promises to make it all better.
You have to stay nicely between the lines, violence is bad and has no place in a democracy, simply wait a few years and vote for me next time. Trust me!
And they do.
Are you paying attention? We’ve broken the record for the largest protests in American history like 3 times in a row since trump came in, and we’re likely going to break it again on the 28th
And so?
The cult of the line goes up
The US government fundamentally doesn't give a crap about your wellbeing. In fact if you die at 56 instead of 76 the government can cheap out of approximately 16 years of paying you a retirement.
Republicans
The people essentially have been demanding it. As several others have mentioned in this thread, 70-80% of the public supports universal healthcare in some form. For the nitty-gritty, basically 50 years ago and earlier, extremely wealthy people realised that their preferred policies weren't especially popular with the general public. They identified that their main issue was that what they had was money, not people. So they embarked on a decades long quest to give money the same (or greater) political power as individuals, culminating in the Citizen's United Supreme Court case. I bring this up because it essentially means that the People demanding it doesn't matter, because while there may be a couple hundred million people asking for it, there's a couple hundred billion dollars asking to never do it. It's gotten so bad that there's a kind of perverse, Stockholm Syndrome effect starting to happen to. In 2016 there was a big dust-up during the Democratic Primary where the Culinary Union in Las Vegas/Nevada didn't want to endorse Bernie Sanders, the most pro-Union candidate in decades, essentially because medicare-for-all would remove health insurance as a bargaining chip
Yep
A video about it- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfQij4aQq1k A plan to fix it - https://represent.us/
Too many people with too much power are making too much money, so they all work together to keep the cash cow going. It’s become pretty clear that’s what the US has reduced itself to at this point. It’s kinda nakedly obvious this whole thing is a giant fucking Ponzi scheme at this point - I’m fairly certain I’m never getting the social security I’ve payed into for my whole career.
More corrupt and less democratic than the countries that have got it probably
Cause that's "commumism."
Ask the shareholders and 1%.
The US system mostly works for a lot of people. There's not a lot of people willing to risk things getting worse for them so 10-15% of people get something better.
There's also massive doctor shortage issues that will only get worse with healthcare reform. Even if cost wasn't an issue, there wouldn't really be access.
So we need free education to fix the doctor and nurse shortages before universal healthcare?
Because the economy would take a significant hit
Because the Dems would need a supermajority in both Houses. They had one in 2010 and still had to worry about defectors.
Look at the record, the GOP is going to fight anything that actually helps people.
The GOP has convinced a large percentage of the voters that they will lose everything if the 'socialists' take over.
The dems aren't interested in dismantling the private healthcare industry. It's too profitable and their donors need it.
Even while I was still a clueless lib, when I saw insurance companies sponsoring the DNC, I knew we'd never get publicly-funded healthcare.
Yep, great point! Gotta connect class interests.
the democrats have had the opportunity to remove the super majority requirement from 2021 to 2023; again from 2007 to 2011; and again from 1987 to 1995, yet they chose not to.
It's not red v blue. It's people vs $s.
A plan - https://represent.us/
Watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TfQij4aQq1k
agreed and my comment was a response to the assertion that democrats would vote on healthcare.
To be clear, the guys who voted against it in 2010 were literal 70 year old boomers who were raised in McCarthyism and scared of communism. Like actually cited that "it's too communist" as a reason to vote against it.
Everybody has to want it, including majority of politicians in power.