03-13-2017, 08:33 AM
(03-13-2017, 07:08 AM)Odin Wrote:(03-13-2017, 06:55 AM)SomeGuy Wrote: Nobody has said the present system is working great, they've just pointed out that, like college textbooks, the prices have gone to ludicrous levels because almost nobody is expected to pay for them themselves.
On the flip side, various universal healthcare systems (single payer in Canada, whatever the term is for the German system is, and the regulated private system is Switzerland) work just fine, but conservatives either always have some excuse about why they supposedly can't work here, or spout complete bull about they are supposedly collapsing and failing. There are a shit-ton of different healthcare systems out there to use as a basis to fix the US healthcare system, but conservatives ignore them all because they are ideologically inconvenient and threaten the profits of a bunch of powerful people.
And, as I stated at the beginning of this thread, I have no real issue with most of those systems (trying to implement an NHS-style system here I would be skeptical of, as it would most likely end up looking like the VA). They don't work perfectly, there are issues involved with all of them, but looking at them isn't a bad place to start.
But lets be honest, if it was just the "conservatives", the issue would have been addressed years ago. It's all of the upper-middle class types and aging union workers with Cadillac plans, the major corporations and their bureaucracies, the lawyers, and all the others who benefit from the existing system who provide the electoral and financial power to block reform. Prices have gotten to the point where some of them are starting to hurt, which is why it has become an electoral issue again, but not enough of them for a real political consensus to move forward. We'll see how it plays out.