This is how empires fall. As people with different political views no longer depend on each other economically, they drift more and more into opposite directions, until they do not want to share the same government anymore.
Seems pretty debunked given the last decade of geopolitical changes and current war.
The issue is that the senate can be filibustered with 5% of the US population's backing. A majority vote requires 8%. A fillibuster-proof majority requires 12%.
This implies that it would not take many geographically mobile liberals to end the Republican party forever.
Ironically, the Republican party invented this technique back when they were what we would currently call a liberal party. It worked great. Read up on carpetbaggers.
Making it centrally-funded won't magically warp new doctors from hyperspace. It will simply shift the pressure from prices to waiting times.
The working solution would be to reduce the bureaucracy and make it easier to open new practices, ban anticompetitive behavior by hospitals and address the residency spot bottleneck. But nope, nobody is suggesting that. We keep fighting about the most fair way to split 3 beds between 10 people.
Well, that one of the problems and the AMA is very effective as a labor organization.
single payer alone is close to 70% now.
medicare itself is very very popular in that age group.
People are easily scared and those that already have good care are afraid of losing it. Look at death panels.
but the general idea of healthcare as a fundamental right and a national system of health are very popular.
Thats only when you don't get into the details of the implementation, and things like the need to pay for it with something like a European style VAT tax. When you dig in to the details in the polls, support plummets.
This isn't a critique of the idea, just noting the on the details almost no Americans actually support doing what it would take to implement.
> Look at death panels.
All healthcare systems have some kind of rationing, in America generally people who don't have employer provided healthcare and are neither especially poor or old get care rationed. This isn't ideal, I agree.
yeah I'm not surprised.
the problem again is the 'haves' (who also tend to vote a lot more) are the ones who see themselves as losing and gaining a tax.
if it's employer paid for and you don't even know the true value it's hard to see it as comp
I haven’t seen polling that shows that.
Well older people tend to vote more, but there are a lot of lower income folks who vote reliably.
I think part of the issue is that proponents of single payer in the US present it as something that can be paid for by further taxing “the rich” alone, and that’s clearly not true. No other country pays for social welfare that way, and it’s trivial to find that out. Being dishonest about how it might be funded undermines the project politically. No one is trying to sell the idea that VAT + healthcare is a better overall deal. Which it may or may not be, depending on the implementation. Nevertheless proponents are lying about how it can be paid for.