Until Americans feel better about the quality of care offered at Veterans Affairs hospitals, this won't happen.
A relatively-recent YouGov poll[1] says that 59% of US veterans would not feel comfortable with members of their family being treated by the VA. However, Fox News is probably a better source for the relevant public sentiment about this[2].
If the left in the US wants to expand government-run healthcare, they need to tackle this credibility problem. I don't know why Democrats (esp. ones like Rep Moulton) don't make this a bigger deal and why in the Obama era, they kept voting down bills[3][4][5] to reform the VA. Yes, there is a trade-off around maintaining the ironclad protections for federal employees' jobs, but that is a trade that seems to make less and less sense. It leaves an organised constituency unhappy with them while the message, "we aren't willing to reform a government agency in the name of providing better health care, even to a highly electorally-photogenic group".
Medicare, on the other hand, is extremely popular, and has been forever. And, wouldn't you know it, folks who have health care covered by the military/VA seem to think the health care system is working well for them, too.
While, we are at it, Indian Health Service is also a US government health care provider. Since its now July, the documentary "Don't get sick after June"[1] is a bit more timely. I do question people's logic that if the government is so poor at providing health care to Veterans and Native Americans, how they can scale it and get it right for everyone. It doesn't matter how other governments have done it as we are talking about the USA.
There are a million people killed every year by mosquito-borne diseases, mostly in poor countries with weak governance, and you are complaining about US politics?
The things the U.S. government "actually does" (or at least, is supposed to actually do) are those things listed in the Constitution of the United States, and nothing else.
Part of my (now deleted, due to heavily downvoted) argument was with the issue that if we rely on corporations to take on more and more responsibilities of governments, we’re also giving away a major part of power.
Governments are supposed to be controlled democratically, but if we rely on corporations – especially ones like Google, where the two founders retain absolute control over the company – we’re replacing them piece by piece with autocratic entities.
Google is currently doing a lot of good stuff, and so are many other companies, but this is a question that may become an issue in the long term; often once the founders are out, their less idealistic children run the company far worse, and try to gain as much profit as possible.
You wouldn’t want a Google that’s run like Comcast with the power Google has.
There is a large segment of the US population that has the opposite thesis; i.e. that if we give more responsibility to government, we are giving a way a major part of power.
Do you feel just as strongly about charitable donations from Warren Buffet? Bill Gates? Mark Zuckerburg? Jeff Bezos?
Well, that part of the population has an interesting perspective then.
And it’s not about charitable donations, it’s about giving away responsibilities of governments to entities that are controlled autocratically.
Google is controlled by its two founders, and once they’re dead, their children will have none of the idealism, but all the power.
A major part of the social contract of modern society is that for everything, there’s either a market with many roughly equally sized companies, or, if there’s only one or two options, those options are under control of the people, elected.
With Google, Amazon, etc we’re getting a situation similar to the US ISP and media landscape, with a handful of companies controlling major parts of the economy, and our society relying on these companies without having democratic control over them.
