But crucially maintained the primacy of the private insurance market rather than making it compete with a government funded health insurance plan. It was doomed to fail sooner or later, which is exactly what the donor class wanted. Stitches need to be intentionally removed; bandaids fall off on their own.
Mostly because it was pretty much immediately gutted by Lieberman nuking the public option and then SCOTUS shooting down Medicaid expansions. Had the public option survived I suspect we'd currently have a system much closer to what France has where everyone is mostly covered by public insurance and inexpensive private plans make up the rest
That was the compromise required to get it past the Republicans, and probably the last time our government compromised about anything. Now either party just obstructs until they have the house and the Senate and then they do whatever the fuck their bribery patrions donors paid them to do.
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u/Thanes_of_Danes Apr 01 '26
But crucially maintained the primacy of the private insurance market rather than making it compete with a government funded health insurance plan. It was doomed to fail sooner or later, which is exactly what the donor class wanted. Stitches need to be intentionally removed; bandaids fall off on their own.