Human Nature

[Belacqua]

[...] and he didn't work for universal health insurance. 

After 2010 the GOP put a stopper in that as much as they could. He still got ACA passed -- not "universal", but it sure made health care more affordable.

You don't seem willing to give him credit for that; yet you don't criticize Republicans for doing their level best to stopper it.

I should think that someone so apparently concerned about universal health care would welcome even an imperfect step in the right direction. But no.

When the Democrats held the White House, the House, and the Senate, they decided to mandate Mitt Romney's insurance plan for the whole country. This was a great benefit for the insurance industry, and better than nothing for regular people. There is no indication that Obama made any effort to do something better, and of course Hillary Clinton is on record saying that "single payer will never happen." 

Yes, the Republicans don't want single payer either. They also don't want to give you a good system.

So we can blame the Republicans that the Democrats did this. Though the fact that the insurance industry gives millions of dollars to both parties every year may have had something to do with it. 

So in many medical areas the US has the worst results of any developed nation, with overall higher costs. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation analysis, 41% of U.S. adults have medical debt, and 24% consider bankruptcy. Depending on how you analyze the data, there are half a million bankruptcies in the US every year that are caused at least in part by medical costs. 

So our tribal loyalties may allow us to blame the Republicans entirely, while we show our gratitude to Obama for a crappy system that has worse outcomes than any other developed nation. This allows us to keep voting for the Democrats, even though they gave us a crappy system. 

"Not quite as horrible as it might have been" would be a good campaign slogan for the Dems, I think.