I want to know why I’m wrong- because this question has been eating at me for years- and I secretly blame the Democrats for all of the health insurance problems.

Why can’t California and New York bind together in an interstate compact, and create medicare for all of their citizens?

California and New York have GDP’s above most other countries in the world. In general, democrats hold majorities. Tell me why I shouldn’t blame the democrats for:

  1. Doing Obama care half assed, when something like 80% people wanted a public option.

  2. Not just doing it themselves. For instance even NYC by itself has a GDP above Denmark, and NYC is filled to the brim with the super rich.

  • Kestrel@lemm.eeEnglish
    33·
    22 hours ago

    Massachusetts also has a version of universal health care for those near the poverty line and requires companies with 10 (I think it’s 10) or more people to provide insurance. And requires everyone to have health insurance and helps them get it.

    There are also bills currently live regarding true universal care for all. However, it’s extremely expensive and complicated to pay for, and I can’t imagine it will happen just yet. Maybe we can make some progress towards it though. The topic comes up frequently and has a massive amount of public support, so maybe some day.

    But even the version we have now is at risk because it’s partially subsidized by federal funds and Trump is currently going after blue states and withdrawing funding. Even though blue states already get less federal money back because they subsidize red states.

    Obamacare didn’t introduce true universal healthcare because insurance companies and republican politicians have been blocking, weakening, and trying to repeal it ever since it was introduced. You can see the same trend happening now with the efforts to wreck Medicaid going on. And then onward to social security and Medicare.

    It’s important to remember that even when Democrats have control of say the house and the presidency, a republican majority senate can block everything still. And simple majorities are not always enough - sometimes 2/3 majorities are required to pass bills.

    Are democrats perfect? Have they always done everything they could to make things better for people? Of course not. Mistakes have been made. There’s always room for improvement. Republican leaders and politicians are all about what big companies want though, and they distract people from this by pitting them against each other. White vs black/brown, democrat vs republican, American born vs immigrant/refugee, straight vs gay/trans, man vs woman. And all the while they continue to raise CEO salaries and rake in profits while not even paying people a living wage. There are some interesting graphs out there showing the increasing disparity of the 1%’s income compared to the rest of us. We shouldn’t be wasting our time hating each other, we should be uniting to rein in the big corporations. We are becoming the United Corporations of America, and we are the serfs providing cheap labor.