@hightor,
hightor wrote:
As I've tried to explain to you before, "Medicare for All" is simply one proposed version of universal health coverage in the USA. Rejecting it specifically doesn't indicate opposition to the concept, only to the particular "brand" which has been tied to the unsuccessful campaigns of Sanders and Warren. Given the experience the country (the world, actually) is going through, the need for universal coverage has never been more obvious, and I suspect you'll see a pathway to it implemented by the Biden administration. They'll pretty much have to, as so many USAmericans are either ill-served by their present plan or lacking coverage entirely.
The fundamental issue is economic. People/corporations with the power to sell pharmaceuticals, medical supplies, and care want to keep their income at a certain level of the global 'class structure,' if you want to call it that.
If competition was allowed to enter markets at lower prices, it would compromise that power because some existing health-care demand would shift to less expensive providers.
So until those with power to control drug production, medical education/licensing, insurance, and all the other auxilliary businesses that milk high health care costs for profit decide they are open to allowing regulations that let more affordable competitors into their markets, they will block government and/or market shifts that would allow it.
As long as there are people proposing to solve the problem by using taxes to transfer more money from tax-payers to health care as a way of including more people in care, that creates an impetus to avoid lowering costs, i.e. because more customers paid for by government/insurance mean more revenues, while lowering costs to expand care to cover the same people means less money per unit care.
You might say that taking care of more people at lower costs would bring in as much or more revenue overall, but that would also mean more work and, what's probably worse, is more liability since there are plenty of people who see healthcare as an opportunity to file lawsuits and make money that way.
