I think it's not controversial that employer provided health insurance is a silly mechanism. But animosity prevents significant progress away from the status quo.

It's disingenuous to claim that this is purely because of animosity. It is a calculated decision that some people decided that the status quo is better for them that what could be, and in various ways decide to enforce it.

Otherwise, how could you explain Obama (for all the ills he committed) taking Romney's healthcare plan, and then the entirety of the Republican magically turning against the plan that they themselves generated? It's not animosity, it is certainly calculated.

I am certainly not disingenuous. I don't know why you want to impugn my motives in this discussion.

I think there are a multitude of smaller problems to solve and smaller steps to take that would be utterly uncontroversial to the wider public. But they will not be considered because both sides are pushing for their big thing and locked into combative attitudes.

Same goes for immigration reform for that matter. There's plenty of low grade nonsense to clean up with legislation but the culture of controversy derails trying to find where consensus actually exists and acting on it.

A good positive example would be how criminal justice reform was actually attempted recently.

I don't think your motives are wrong, I have certainly myself refrained from facing reality in exactly such matters because the implications are grave.

Now, the main thing is this:

>But they will not be considered because both sides are pushing for their big thing and locked into combative attitudes.

This is not true, as per what I mentioned before. Obama took a Republican healthcare plan, and it was still gridlocked and framed as extremist.

The truth is that there are real interests in this country that actively don't want problems to be fixed, and that's the reason why there is so much low grade nonsense that gives you the idea that it's because both sides are intransigent, but past experiments show that trying to collaborate with the obstructionist party just leads to the ratchet effect [0].

In effect, there can never be consensus because the purpose of some is simply obstruction and dysfunction, which is made evident by what happened to Romney's healthcare plan. The only solution is to use an electoral breakthrough, pushed by a not-so-moderate message, to create a new fait-accompli and change the political landscape, otherwise you either fall prey to the ratchet effect or to gridlock.

I am not so sure that they like the freedom to do that but they see no other way to provide for themselves and their families. Such realities make it rather difficult to prioritize what is better in the long term over the more immediate need to eat.

While that's true, there's still some number of people who would genuinely rather have freelance and 'gig' jobs for one reason or another if they weren't dependent on the healthcare provided by a 'real' job.

The same goes for people who would attempt being entrepreneurs if all they had to worry about losing was money.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. You can't just wish free healthcare into being. Nothing of value is free.

Here in the UK we pay literally half as much per person for healthcare for similar outcomes, and everyone gets covered with no cost at the point of use, no medical bankruptcy.

No one is talking about a free lunch, they are talking about a better, more efficient way of doing it.

Not sure if UK is having same level of medical break through as US.

Most medical research in the US is, at a minimum, government-subsidized already.

So the budget is going into research instead of something like NHS.

No; the budget is going into insurance companies' budgets and pharma benefits budgets. There's a trillion-dollar industry that exists in the US solely to take money from people needing healthcare. That's where the money is going - look to the thing that doesn't exist elsewhere.

No, but some things are more efficient than other things. We aren't expecting health care to not cost anything.... we already spend more money than anywhere else on health care, and we get less!

We are saying "it is much more efficient and fair to have single payer health care"... it is not a free lunch... it is a cheaper, healthier lunch.

The rest of the developed world has single payer healthcare with results that are generally comparable to those in the US.

This is not true, and keeps getting brought up as if it were.

The rest of the developed world has _universal_ healthcare. In many countries it is provided through single-payer, in some it is through mandatory private insurance, in others it is a mix.

Where the United States stands alone is not the lack of a universal government program, but that we have many millions of people not covered by any health insurance system at all.

Fair enough, I don't necessarily see a problem with a non-single payer universal health insurance system as long as it is affordable for people.

An inefficient system will waste more money. You know that.