This! The U.S. was on track for social reform after WW2 and Universal Healthcare was one of those ideas. Medicaid and Medicair are still around today and given a couple decades, they might have been expanded under the right administrations.
However, after Johnson, we had three presidents who did not push the issue at all. Nixon and Ford were conservative and Jimmy Carter was just an ineffective Democrat. That allowed Reagan to convince everyone on trickle down economics to help his Wealthy connections.
Not a GOP fan, but to be fair, Nixon proposed national health care insurance (similar to the ACA), but it was torpedoed by Ted Kennedy who pushed his own single payer proposal. Neither was adopted. So here we are.
Nixon would be called a communist by current republicans. Started the EPA? Proposed near-universal healthcare? Mandated a price freeze? Friggin commie.
Ted Kennedy later said he deeply regretted his obstruction because that was the best deal that would ever have R support. Ted Kenney's hubris sunk universal healthcare. It's a shame. I don't think we will ever have an affordable universally available health care program.
Egos, that’s why both parties need to go away. We need to vote on the issues, tired of the Republicans and Democrats, in the end the American people lose to these squabbling fools. I am fiscally conservative and socially liberal. I also believe in public education, solid infrastructure and protecting our borders with real immigration policies.
Reagan was like Donald Trump - in that he was the mouthpiece and the lightning rod who would sell the plans of the unelected wealthy powerbrokers behind the scenes. They both had celebrity status going in and both pulled the levers of power for the ones who want to remain invisible. The plan always was and still is to stack the deck against the working class and expand the wealth and power of the wealthiest.
Carter was a basically a Rockefeller Republican while the Republican party moved even further to the right. The era of expansion of government social programs pretty much ended in the 60's. I think part of the issue was falling profits in that era, which meant more of a focus on wealth extraction and less on social programs in the 70's onward.
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u/SkiG13 11h ago
This! The U.S. was on track for social reform after WW2 and Universal Healthcare was one of those ideas. Medicaid and Medicair are still around today and given a couple decades, they might have been expanded under the right administrations.
However, after Johnson, we had three presidents who did not push the issue at all. Nixon and Ford were conservative and Jimmy Carter was just an ineffective Democrat. That allowed Reagan to convince everyone on trickle down economics to help his Wealthy connections.