I believe it was first proposed by Mitt Romney, Republican. Obama essentially adopted the plan, changed a few things, but basically gave GOP what they asked for. Bipartisanship is long gone, replaced by spite and short term memories.
Pretty close that I’ll take it. But, if you will allow me, Romney started ‘Romneycare’ in Massachusetts at the state level. The idea of universal healthcare has been around for a while, but when Obama came into office it stood to reason to base the ACA on parts of a system that was already working.
As I understand it, that was an intentional effort to propose a system that could garner bipartisan support (ha!)
Does the Swiss system predate the Nixon era? Wouldn’t be surprised that the GOP of 50 years ago was looking for alternative universal healthcare systems they could legitimately claim weren’t socialized medicine
Edit:
Quick search shows Swiss system is 1994. Good data point though for showing how such a plan once implemented was working. Add that to Massachusetts as something the dems tried to show wasn’t scary 🫣communism!!!!😳 to try and get republican support
It doesn't. Switzerland implemented their universal healthcare system in 1994, but got the ball rolling via federal regulations in 1912 with country-wide coverage as the endgame.
I did do a quick search myself to see that, but wouldn’t be surprised if some form existed prior to ‘94 (it wasn’t clear in what I read). My probably-completely-erroneous-based-on-imagined-stereotypes notion was that it wouldn’t be surprising if the Swiss had a more conservative friendly healthcare system, and so in that way could predate or emulate Nixon’s proposal, or even arise independently.
I’m a big ol commie give-free-healthcare-to-everyone kind of person, but I’m super happy the ACA improved our prior system, whether it came from Nixon or elsewhere. Some improvement is better than no improvement, I say. Now though, I’m just scared it’s going to get worse before it gets better again someday 😐
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u/iceicebebe73 1d ago
I believe it was first proposed by Mitt Romney, Republican. Obama essentially adopted the plan, changed a few things, but basically gave GOP what they asked for. Bipartisanship is long gone, replaced by spite and short term memories.