(regarding the republican failure to reform healthcare)
Dick,
Are you speaking truthfully, with bias, with wishful thinking, or propagandizing (fictionalizing)?
1 – they (mainstream republicans) thought they could replace it in name only.
2 – the right libertarians and conservatives that were elected to repeal it completely put together enough votes to block it.
3 – Now it will fail economically, and they will allow it to fail, and the right and the mainstream republicans will say ‘told you so’ – and they will solidify the movement of the middle class to the republican party permanently.
4 – The left will (as they intended originally) to propose full nationalization upon failure.
5 – The right will propose a tiered program (extending the two tiered system we have today: medicare and private.)
6 – the uninformed (unaligned) voter will provide marginal voting power to one party or another depending upon the timing.
7 – the outcome then is random, dependent upon the economic mood of the country.
My opinion remains, and has been, to keep and expand the subsidy (medicare, medicaid) system for the poor, cover catastrophic health problems fully (for the lower middle and middl) and leave market plans available for the upper middle and upper classes. This three tiered system allows the governments (states) to negotiate price controls for the poor, the middle class to obtain insurance at reasonable prices by eliminating the high cost outliers, and the upper classes to fund research and development as they always have.
This is, I am fairly certain, the optimum system that preserves the benefits of the market on one hand, the control of prices across that market on the other, and the ability to create demand for innovative (risky, expensive) services that respond to market demands.
Cheers.