Universal Healthcare doesn't particularly threaten corporate interests either. Remember when centrist Obama tried to implement the Heritage foundation approved version and everyone went a little crazy for no obvious reason?

It would be comforting to think that some evil geniuses were holding back universal healthcare for their own benefit, but it's mostly just lingering stupidity and racism that's holding America back on that front. At this point it's clear that the people who stoked that anger and fear over decades no longer have control of how to direct it (if they ever did).

Having health care tied to employment is a corporate interest. Corporations need workers and everyone needs health care, so by making health care come chained to employment it keeps workers stuck in their jobs.

Also the entire HMO and insurance industry that is one of the biggest political donors.

It's mind boggling how some people see eye watering profits and political donations and think that the whole thing is driven by stupidity.

I think it's naive to call politicians stupid. It's clear it's the incentives, particularly the health insurance industry that blocks any effort for universal healthcare; and in the American system it's too easy for one senator to completely stonewall any legislation. For example, it was Joe Lieberman, a senate in Obama's own party, the completely gutted many of the socialized aspects of Obamacare.

It was one politician who blocked a full national health service back in the 70s despite bipartisan support for it - IIRC he used his position as ranking member on the Ways & Means committee to stonewall the whole thing. American political parties are probably some of the weakest in the world, they have almost zero ability to control what their members do or even who their members are.

Health insurance is what holds back universal health care, along with hospitals themselves. Both of them are incentivized to raise costs for consumers.

Is it possible to de-capitalize heathcare? Not in this economy.

Almost afraid to ask, but how is racism holding back health care?

Johnathan Metzl explores it a bit in his book Dying of Whiteness[0]. Here's an example of something he described in an interview[1] about the book and his other work:

>Now I will say that some of the individual stories—I mean, one story that jumps out at me was I was doing interviews about the Affordable Care Act, and I was interviewing very, very medically ill white men who really would have benefited—this is in Tennessee, and in other places in the South where they didn’t expand the Medicaid, they didn’t create the competitive insurance marketplaces—and I said like, “Hey, you guys are dying because you don’t have healthcare. Why don’t you get down with the Affordable Care Act? What’s your reason?”

>And I would say a number of people told me things like, one man told me, “There’s no way I’m supporting a system that would benefit,” as he said, “Mexicans and welfare queens,”—like total racist stereotypes. And so, even though he would have benefited—and his guy, ultimately over the three years of interviews, he passed away because he didn’t have medical care—so he was literally willing to die rather than sign up for a program that he thought was gonna benefit immigrants.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dying_of_Whiteness [1] https://hashtagcauseascene.com/podcast/jonathan-metzl/

Is it clear that the guy really believed that Obamacare would benefit him?

It’s not him being a racist if he genuinely thought that the program would benefit immigrants and not benefit him.

You lost the word “universal” in “universal healthcare” in the comment you’re replying to. There are many ways racism impedes the push for universal healthcare. One is the classic fact that it is a welfare program, and that spurs the comments and thoughts about welfare queens and “young bucks.”

When I hear "welfare queen," I think of a black woman. Because I'm racist (sadly). From that, the racist idea that free services (e.g. universal healthcare) are unduly exploited by black people (or immigrants).

I’m sorry you are a racist.

How does your racism cause you to equate welfare Queen with black woman? I’d have thought that was more connected to the media using it that way.

Reagan pretty much popularized the terms ("welfare queen", "strapping young bucks") with racist intent[1]: those were the images he wished to conjure-up in listener's minds, and not a creation of the media. Just as the word "thug" is currently used by certain personalities/networks today.

1. https://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/11/10/innocent-mistak...

I didn’t say it was a creation of the Media. I said they use it that way. It’s good to trace it back to Reagan.

What is not so clear is why the person I was responding to thinks it’s their racism that causes them to think of those images, and not just that they have been exposed to Reagan’s imagery through the media.

You write as if one's passive racism and one's past exposure to racist sentiments are entirely separate. I think the former largely reflects the latter.

I don’t think they are entirely separate. I do think that exposure to racist sentiments has a very different effect depending on who you are.

So indeed I think your personal racism is not a simple function of exposure.

I’m sorry you personally have been a victim of racism exposure, and have become a passive racist as a consequence. It is a shame that society has done this to you.

No worries, thanks. I have internal work to do.

Not OP, but I assume the argument is something to the tune of: healthcare should be universal to make progress, universal healthcare would disproportionally benefit the poor, the poor are disproportionally of color.

I interpret the events as Obama did pass the Heritage foundation version and it passed because it was more acceptable than any public option let alone universal healthcare.