Yes, but this is why a few things have needed to happen for a while:
Health insurance should have been disconnected from employers years ago, just like Tommy Douglas did in Canada, like Harry Truman and LBJ tried to do in the USA, like Anthony Weiner was talking about while the ACA fight was going on.
We have to work on the supply side. Train more doctors, nurses, and lab techs. Open more teaching hospitals–or, you know, “hospitals”–and medical labs. Allow for attrition of the skilled workforce due to burnout, incompetence, and the like, instead of continuing a climate where shortage allows price increases and also bottlenecks encourage monopoly-power corruption (such as doctors who monopolize a specialty in a region and have a sweetheart deal with an overpriced medical lab that also has a monopoly). These sorts of problems are hard to escape in places like the central U.S., where the appropriate specialist may be 500 miles away.
This is not a failure of leftism. Socialized medicine has worked in Spain and Britain. Single-payer has worked in Canada and France.
This is a failure of the right wing of the Democratic Party, the DLC/Clinton/Blue Dog/Obama wing, who decided to be literally conservative of existing agreements between finance companies (“health insurers”) and large employers, and then, bizarrely, tried to impose that paradigm on all employers because it was “normal” and “good” in their little subculture.
The Republicans, dominated by their own silly mix of fanatics (the psycho-paranoid wing of the anti-abortion movement who see all medical care as somehow “anti-life,” the anti-tax maniacs, the deregulation/private sector Pollyannas) have been completely useless and counterproductive, btw.
It’s the right wing, including many ostensibly “center-left” types, who tend to screw it up, sad to say.
It is a liberal strategy. Liberals are tinkerers, they dote on small incremental changes. They think that given enough time and a series of minor adjustments, they can gradually transform a coal-fired Bulgarian steam engine into a solar-powered rainbow extruder.
As a radical, I bite my thumb towards liberals so often I’ve nibbled it down to a nub. But they have a point. Even though health care reform is an idea who’s time is long overdue, entrenched power and money is a daunting obstacle to overcome. This piece of shit is very likely as good as we were going to get.
The Obamatrons made a bet. They bet that the could eat all of that shit, and put all the pain upfront and all the bennies in the background, and still hang on long enough for people to get used to the idea, and begin to see the advantages. The Pubbies bet the opposite, that they could tear it down by screaming at it before it solidified. The fact that they have become increasingly shrill and desperate tells you who they think is winning.
Sooner or later, has to happen. Our present “system” isn’t “leaving money on the table”, its covering the table with money and setting the table on fire.
I already have a sig, but that line is great:
"They think that given enough time and a series of minor adjustments, they can gradually transform a coal-fired Bulgarian steam engine into a solar-powered rainbow extruder.
“As a radical, I bite my thumb towards liberals so often I’ve nibbled it down to a nub.” -luc
Now, now, if it were, “everyone deserves health care even if we have to turn the Gulf into sludge,” or, “everyone deserves health care even if it means no more rock’n’roll ever,” or, “everyone deserves health care even if it means every white man over 30 is also denied voting rights,” even a progressive would balk.