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Comment by gunian

1 day ago

Any idea why Obamacare didn't follow the European model? Other than the freedom argument

People on HN always talk about European health insurance seems like an easier route than to murder people lol

7 comments

gunian

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umanwizard  1 day ago

First of all there isn’t one “European model”, every country in Europe has its own system.

To answer the substantive point, it’s extremely difficult to pass substantial laws in the US due to the structure of its political system. The mandatory coalition of the president + 60% of the senate + 50% of the House of Representatives is a much higher bar than any other democracy. So laws aren’t written to be optimal policy, they are written to satisfy this extremely high coalition requirement — Obamacare in particular was very fundamentally weakened from some of the more expansive initial proposals to address the concerns of one or two senators and get them on board.

  • gunian  1 day ago

    but people always talk about how insurance is guaranteed in europe something must be working if gunning down a CEO is pro the people wouldn't copying one of the European countries be even more pro the people?

    what makes senators hate something that is pro the people? wouldn't that give them better ratings? I come from a dictatorship so sorry if this is a dumb question

    • hb-robo  1 day ago

      There is an unlimited amount of potential financial gain from American politics, both in lobbying and campaign financing. It is also widely true that the candidate with the most money spent in a campaign is heavily favored to win the election, with the exception of the presidency which is more contested. Now consider that in the 2020s the richest people now have more money than God.

      The short of it is that you can get anyone you want in office, to do anything you want even if it directly opposes their constituency, as long as you spend enough money on them to get them in office, buy their vote, and keep their PR afloat.

      Gilens and Page (2014) found that "average citizens and mass-based interest groups have little or no independent influence" on American government policy: https://www.scienceopen.com/document?vid=e4797592-9d73-4f2b-...

      Worth noting that this paper saw pushback for many years after the fact but measurably, its conclusion has been true since its release.

    • int_19h  3 hours ago

      Simply put, a lot of people in US are genuinely convinced that European-style universal health insurance means that they'll be worse off than they are today. This myth is maintained by agitprop from right-wing sources that tells them about "death panels" and multi-year waiting queues (while conveniently forgetting to mention that all these things also exist in US, with the only difference that you can avoid it if you have enough money).

    • mercutio2  1 day ago

      Murdering people is not pro anything.

      The answer was already given: it was politically infeasible to pass a single payer variant in the US. And it’s not clear it would have been good even if it had been feasible.

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