I fell into a rabbit hole looking at Clinton's Secretary of Labor & Robert Reich late last night (after seeing a "There Is No Labor Shortage"[1] submission), & some of his background & stuff. He has some really good glances at what happened, shows up again and again to be a plainspoke teller of history & what's happened. I quite enjoyed his hour long interview 3 years ago with Frontliner, where, across range of topics, he more or less ends up recapping the last 30 years of American history, explaining hows & whys of how the various political forces are where they are and why (cw: includes a lot of (negative) discussion of Trump).
He gets asked pretty early in about healthcare[1], and has a great great story about what happened, what the opportunity was, how Obama tried to get some bipartisan support, tried to get buy in from various parties, but in spite of the fig leafs ended up doing it totally solo. And Reich talks about how compromised, how convoluted ACA was because it tried to cater to non-party folk. He doesn't go deep in, but he strongly talks about how much better the whole effort would have been, how much more it would have helped actual Americans if we had simply expanded Medicare to be Medicare for all. Great video, good section.
Overall the core message of this video shows a real & dangerous disconnect with what Americans want from government versus what we get. Medicare has long been a program that has done enormously well for America, has made living possible for many & been enormously cost effective.
He gets asked pretty early in about healthcare[1], and has a great great story about what happened, what the opportunity was, how Obama tried to get some bipartisan support, tried to get buy in from various parties, but in spite of the fig leafs ended up doing it totally solo. And Reich talks about how compromised, how convoluted ACA was because it tried to cater to non-party folk. He doesn't go deep in, but he strongly talks about how much better the whole effort would have been, how much more it would have helped actual Americans if we had simply expanded Medicare to be Medicare for all. Great video, good section.
Overall the core message of this video shows a real & dangerous disconnect with what Americans want from government versus what we get. Medicare has long been a program that has done enormously well for America, has made living possible for many & been enormously cost effective.
[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34576178 https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/jan/15/there-...
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bgkBrFoOOo#t=10m45s