Follow the money: the current system makes more sense for private insurers, pharma, and large healthcare providers who all benefit from things staying as they are.

But it’s not just about corporations. The US also built its system around employer-based insurance back in World War II, and now healthcare is tied to your job. That creates risk: leaving your job can mean losing coverage, which naturally makes people more cautious and dependent on poor employment. This also makes people more cautious about starting up a business so the economy becomes controlled in the hands of a few - and so more oligarchic

There’s also a cultural angle. In the US, “freedom” is often seen as freedom from government involvement, even if that sometimes means less practical freedom (like being unable to change jobs easily), and the individual spending more on insurance than they would on taxes.

So it’s not one single reason - it’s money, history, and mindset all reinforcing each other.

Rigidity and social control also show up in other countries with strategies like high housing costs.

Because the economy would take a significant hit

Capitalism, severely lowered expectations, mainstream news media controlled by the billionaire class pumping out capitalist propaganda. People continuing to believe the Democratic Party wants to enact universal healthcare when all elected Dems really care about is staying in power, doing the bare minimum, and raking in the cash from their billionaire donors. People continuing to vote for Democrats based on that belief when they could be using their votes to vote in anti-capitalist candidates from the real left (Green Party, PSL, etc).

When Democrats are in charge of all of the levers of power, they say: “Darn there are all these rules we have to follow and the Republicans are obstructing us and won’t budge. Oh well, better luck next time 🤷‍♂️” while behind closed doors they’re listening to the health insurance and pharmaceutical lobbies who offer them money and perks and special treatment and job offers in the industry once they’re out of office.

There isn’t an organized group for it, but there are organized groups against it.

The two attempts to do so, in 1993 and 2009, saw little organized political activity in favor of creating a single payer system while there was organized political resistance against it.

If politicians lose their seats trying to support a single payer system, they won’t be around after the next election.

In the USA, there is little corruption officially; that’s only because bribery is legal. Billionaires, Corporations, Banks and even other nations like Saudi Arabia can “contribute” huge amounts of money without even revealing who they are.

Insurers, drug manufacturers and other interested parties “donate” many millions of dollars through these Super PACs and shell companies to keep things as they like them.

The voters are too busy juggling low-wage jobs to compete with the multi-generational wealth accumulators; on top of this, they pay more taxes in more ways than any other generation before.

Our representatives won’t bite the hand that feeds them willingly, and are legally protected to continue doing so.

People’s standard of living and life spans are shrinking as a result. See Citizens United, Super PACs, Panama Papers and Pandora Papers for more details.

There’s so much, unions squashed, down to 10% of workforce and those are mostly police and government ironically. Check out Patriot Act if you wonder why there’s so little organizing. The FED haha it never ends

Because the politicians who could allow it are bribed by health insurance lobbyists to not allow it. There’s a lot of money at stake for a relative few people, and they’ll do anything to not risk it.

We do demand it, they don’t give a fuck. Even with insurance you can’t get help. Can’t even leave this place without being rich. Land of the free my ass.

“why isn’t the crumbling fascist imperial regime providing me healthcare?” is a question that answers itself OP

The only opinion that matters for the government is the opinion of the 1%.

Medicare for all and legal pot both have had an around 70% approval rate for about a decade now. The government simply doesnt care because those things do not make the right people rich. Studies have shown the US gov doesn’t respond to its voters, it responds to its financiers. It honest to god never mattered what we thought.

I watched a video today that said just the bureaucratic overhead of healthcare in the US accounts for 10% of our GDP. So it’s probably mostly just bribe money from the insurance companies keeping our elected representatives from doing anything in our interest.

The US government fundamentally doesn’t give a crap about your wellbeing. In fact if you die at 56 instead of 76 the government can cheap out of approximately 16 years of paying you a retirement.

Because people who have a job with benefits feel like they’ve worked their way up the chain to earn those benefits. People who work but don’t have benefits just don’t work hard enough. And let’s not even talk about those who don’t work.

We need to divorce healthcare from employment.

Seriously? Because that’s money flowing in the “wrong” direction, that is away from billionaires’ pockets.

because they gotta spend a literal trillion a year to kill brown people worldwide instead.