4 ms·

They're not when it comes to health care. There is a clear majority in favour of universal health care benefits in the electorate on either side of the politica

They're not when it comes to health care. There is a clear majority in favour of universal health care benefits in the electorate on either side of the political duopoly. Most representatives are just not listening to their constituents.

Spooky23 5y ago
Not at the federal level. Because the federal system has a strong bias towards states as opposed to people, you need to change the minds of people in the resource extraction states.
gruez 5y ago
>There is a clear majority in favour of universal health care benefits in the electorate on either side of the political duopoly. Most representatives are just not listening to their constituents. Is there? One obvious question would be how such polls are worded. I'm sure you can get 60% of americans to agree on "universal healthcare", but only 25% agree with universal healthcare proposal A, and 35% agree with universal healthcare proposal B. In the end there isn't enough support for a specific proposal, because it means different things to different people. We saw that with brexit, where the majority voted "leave", but they all had different ideas of what "leave" meant, and none of the concrete proposals had anywhere near 50% approval rating.
- cogman10 5y ago
  We saw this in the 2020 democrat presidential primary. The KEY issue was M4A or not. Ultimately, the more progressive plans (Sanders and Warren) lost out to the more conservative approach of a single payer option. IDK why this happened, though. WTF "loves" their insurance provider? Why Biden got the nod is somewhat beyond me. My best guess is that most of the democrats in the primaries figured he was less scary than a socialist for middle of the road voters.
  - kelnos 5y ago
    > WTF "loves" their insurance provider? I think this boils down to propaganda. Americans have been taught that the "competitive" private insurance system gives them "choice", even though in reality they have maybe one or three plans from their employer that they can choose from, assuming they are working for an employer that gives them health benefits. The ACA marketplace does seem to give people choice, though decent, low-deductible plans are pretty expensive and are likely out of reach for most people who get their insurance that way. The other rationalization -- which I am somewhat sympathetic toward -- is that people don't trust the government to do a good job providing health coverage. They believe it will be riddled with red tape and inefficiencies and bureaucracy, and will cost much more than the private insurance system. And that's even before we get to the "death panels" FUD and other invented nonsense.
    - cogman10 5y ago
      > They believe it will be riddled with red tape and inefficiencies and bureaucracy, and will cost much more than the private insurance system. This is really something that I wish more Americans could just experience. I've had the fortune (mis?) to experience England's NHS system. England isn't particularly known for running a bureaucracy free government :D. Yet, the NHS feels like a dream compared to the US healthcare system. I pretty much just filled out a card saying where I lived and that was it. Really bizarre for a non-UK or EU citizen. After that, no bill, no nothing. IDK if I even needed to fill out the card TBH. Doctors appointments were just like you'd do with a regular doctor in the US. Simply schedule and show up. A friend needed surgery while there and again, pretty much the same thing, showed up to the emergency room and got seen almost immediately. All in all, wasn't really any worse than what I'd get in any US hospital. We see so much paperwork in the US because there are (at least) 3 parties involved in every medical bill. You, your insurance, and the hospital. Single payer cuts your involvement to 0 which kills pretty much all your paperwork. It also vastly simplifies hospital billing. It's the technical equivalent to supporting 100s of standards and then dropping down to a single standard. Even if that standard is garbage, eliminates the need to support the 99 standards (even if some are better). Costwise, it can't help but be less. The fact is, there's a lot of duplicate jobs in each insurance agency as well as some jobs that simply won't exist (no need for accuracy tables, for example).

Spooky23 5y ago

Not at the federal level. Because the federal system has a strong bias towards states as opposed to people, you need to change the minds of people in the resource extraction states.

gruez 5y ago

>There is a clear majority in favour of universal health care benefits in the electorate on either side of the political duopoly. Most representatives are just not listening to their constituents. Is there? One obvious question would be how such polls are worded. I'm sure you can get 60% of americans to agree on "universal healthcare", but only 25% agree with universal healthcare proposal A, and 35% agree with universal healthcare proposal B. In the end there isn't enough support for a specific proposal, because it means different things to different people. We saw that with brexit, where the majority voted "leave", but they all had different ideas of what "leave" meant, and none of the concrete proposals had anywhere near 50% approval rating.

cogman10 5y ago
We saw this in the 2020 democrat presidential primary. The KEY issue was M4A or not. Ultimately, the more progressive plans (Sanders and Warren) lost out to the more conservative approach of a single payer option. IDK why this happened, though. WTF "loves" their insurance provider? Why Biden got the nod is somewhat beyond me. My best guess is that most of the democrats in the primaries figured he was less scary than a socialist for middle of the road voters.
- kelnos 5y ago
  > WTF "loves" their insurance provider? I think this boils down to propaganda. Americans have been taught that the "competitive" private insurance system gives them "choice", even though in reality they have maybe one or three plans from their employer that they can choose from, assuming they are working for an employer that gives them health benefits. The ACA marketplace does seem to give people choice, though decent, low-deductible plans are pretty expensive and are likely out of reach for most people who get their insurance that way. The other rationalization -- which I am somewhat sympathetic toward -- is that people don't trust the government to do a good job providing health coverage. They believe it will be riddled with red tape and inefficiencies and bureaucracy, and will cost much more than the private insurance system. And that's even before we get to the "death panels" FUD and other invented nonsense.
  - cogman10 5y ago
    > They believe it will be riddled with red tape and inefficiencies and bureaucracy, and will cost much more than the private insurance system. This is really something that I wish more Americans could just experience. I've had the fortune (mis?) to experience England's NHS system. England isn't particularly known for running a bureaucracy free government :D. Yet, the NHS feels like a dream compared to the US healthcare system. I pretty much just filled out a card saying where I lived and that was it. Really bizarre for a non-UK or EU citizen. After that, no bill, no nothing. IDK if I even needed to fill out the card TBH. Doctors appointments were just like you'd do with a regular doctor in the US. Simply schedule and show up. A friend needed surgery while there and again, pretty much the same thing, showed up to the emergency room and got seen almost immediately. All in all, wasn't really any worse than what I'd get in any US hospital. We see so much paperwork in the US because there are (at least) 3 parties involved in every medical bill. You, your insurance, and the hospital. Single payer cuts your involvement to 0 which kills pretty much all your paperwork. It also vastly simplifies hospital billing. It's the technical equivalent to supporting 100s of standards and then dropping down to a single standard. Even if that standard is garbage, eliminates the need to support the 99 standards (even if some are better). Costwise, it can't help but be less. The fact is, there's a lot of duplicate jobs in each insurance agency as well as some jobs that simply won't exist (no need for accuracy tables, for example).