While I think this isn't stated very well, from a Canadian perspective I think there must be some truth to it.

Of course, the Republican party will always oppose universal Healthcare. But why does the Democratic party oppose it when the majority of Americans can agree on the specific plan of Medicare for All and much more than the majority of Democrats too?

There must be some reason for the Democrats not to back a generally popular and overwhelmingly popular amongst their base policy that also is generally good for the country and economy, both to reduce inequality and increase economic output, but I just don't see it plainly.

The vast majority of Democrats do support a public option, which is universal healthcare, and that's currently part of the party's platform. Whether to limit or abolish private insurance is where it gets contentious, and where support isn't as strong. While I'm sure the insurance industry is also a factor, the Democrats are more or less following the poll numbers on this.

Why abolish private? I'm reading from HN about being more like EU regarding Healthcare but private here can do what they want and even get paid for treating with public money if they accept the shittier government mandated prices.

Oh, no one means abolishing private healthcare suppliers.

The question is whether you should be able to completely opt out of the public healthcare system and go 100% private. Which IMO you shouldn't be able to - otherwise you get yet more fragmentation and higher costs.

But certainly, most healthcare providers would still be private at least for a good while.

Afaik, American parties are much more about winning elections than ideology. It is not certain that supporting Medicare for All would have increased Joe Biden's chances of winning. Especially since their strategy was to get Republican and right-leaning voters to switch parties. Also, Biden handily defeated Bernie Sanders in the primaries so it is not certain that more progressive policies would have benefited the Democrats in the general election.

Biden only led Sanders in the primary after 2/3 of the field dropped out and endorsed Biden.

You may be right, but we'll never know how Bernie would have done against Trump. Personally, I think he would have won by a much bigger margin.

It seems to be a version of the sunk cost fallacy.

Democrats spent a lot of political capital to pass the ACA, and the thanks they got from voters was being kicked out of the majority for almost a decade. The law was unpopular at first, but now that people have gotten used to it, the ACA finally has majority approval. Today, Democrats are back in the majority and one of the major figures in passing the ACA is serving as POTUS, so he sets the agenda, and the agenda is to fortify the bill which is essentially his legacy.

Meanwhile M4A is championed by an Independent senator who isn't even a Democrat. No way Democrats are going to go with his plan, even if it's supported by a majority of their base.

Politics is weird.

I await the excuses about how Republicans obstructed their way through a utopian healthcare law while Democrats held the House, Senate, and Vice Presidential powers.

It's the same position the Republicans were in a few years back when they controlled all the same and vowed to repeal ACA, which never happened either.

Both parties thoroughly enjoy the talking points and fundraising opportunities.

Certainly they wouldn't support M4A, but it's definitely the Democrats that work to pass laws that increase the cost of healthcare. Prices have been spiraling out of control since the ACA.

As someone who has been purchasing individual insurance since 2003, prices were spiraling out of control long before the ACA. My premium went up every single year outside the first couple years the ACA was in effect where they went down a little bit.

While it was certainly going up pre-ACA, if your costs went down due to the ACA then your case was extremely unusual. Costs are way up since it was enacted:

https://www.healthsystemtracker.org/chart-collection/u-s-spe...

The graph of "how much does healthcare cost over time" on the link that you provided yourself to prove that costs have been "spiraling out of control" has had the same steepness since 1990. If it's spiraling out of control because of the ACA, then it's also spiraling out of control because of the Gulf War. At least now people with pre-existing conditions can be covered. We're not even done dealing with a pandemic that has infected 31 million people. Imagine a world where none of those people could ever get healthcare in the future because Covid-19 is a pre-existing condition.

The ACA forced people into this system with the individual mandate. I gave the insurance industry zero dollars until the ACA forced me to send them almost a thousand dollars a month. Before the ACA you could go to the doctor and just pay out of pocket. If you’re healthy this was a much more cost effective solution.

So not only did the ACA continue the increase in healthcare costs, it forced more people to pay for something they didn’t even need.

It is very easy to win an argument if you change what it is you're arguing in the middle of a discussion. You said that "Prices have been spiraling out of control". I said that the rate of price increases in healthcare in the United States have been relatively constant. Now, your response is that you, the commenter, used to pay nothing, and now you pay a lot more. Did you know that you are not the entire United States? Did you know that your experience is not a representative sample of all citizens of the United States? Did you decide to selectively ignore data that you provided, on your own, to prove a point that is only true for a fraction of people?

I posted data that shows that price is indeed spiraling out of control so it’s not just my personal experience. My situation isn’t that unique. Why do you think they created the individual mandate? To force people who didn’t want or need insurance to pay for it. Zero to non-zero is a huge jump. If I was alone, they wouldn't have needed to create this legislation to artificially capture the market.

The price has been "spiraling out of control" for the past 30 years, at the same rate almost the entire time. Saying that it's the ACA's fault is to lie by omission, because you're blaming the past 10 years on something that's been a trend for 20 years before that.

The fact that you now have to buy insurance is a separate issue from whether the costs have been spiraling out of control, because even if the prices had remained flat since 2009 your personal experience would be that you're spending more than you used to. That's not "cost". If I walk to work, then start driving a car, and then replace that for a truck, I don't say that "gas costs are spiraling out of control." You're conflating two things and think you made a slam dunk case. You didn't. It's embarrassing.

There's a huge difference between $100->$200 and $500->$1,000. People's earnings make it that there's a threshold that gets crossed where insurance becomes unaffordable. It's debatable if that happened before or after the ACA but the raw amount changed post-ACA is much larger than prior periods. People aren't measuring this by rate of change, their measuring it with their bank account.

> If I walk to work, then start driving a car, and then replace that for a truck, I don't say that "gas costs are spiraling out of control." You're conflating two things and think you made a slam dunk case. You didn't. It's embarrassing.

The correct analogy is that you live a block from work so you walk. Then one day the government introduces legislation that makes driving a car mandatory, so you have to buy one to drive the block to work. Your commute costs are definitely spiraling out of control at that point.

> You're conflating two things and think you made a slam dunk case. You didn't. It's embarrassing.

If you have a point to make, make it. You don't need to attack me as well.

You said that "health care costs are spiraling out of control". Your justification for that is that you spend more money on health insurance than you used to back when you used to spend nothing because you got nothing. Making a blanket statement of "healthcare costs" and "out of control" needs to come with the following caveats:

1. They're spiraling out of control for you - 2. Because you used to pay nothing 3. Because you used to get nothing 4. Because you didn't worry about it.

Say all that. The price, for the average consumer, that buys health insurance has been rising for decades. It has not slowed down because of the ACA but it hasn't sped up because of the ACA.

You're making a blanket statement based on your atypical experience of not having health insurance and then making it seem like it affects everyone.