the American public, and they think it would be scary to have health care be non-profit and available to all, because gosh, that would be socialism or communism or something.

That is my take on why its a struggle. Brainwashed sheep.

Insurance companies.

They want to be able to drop people when they want, deny coverage when they want and more or less run roughshod over whoever happens to be there regardless.

They do not want to be regulated. That's why this was so difficult.

Most healthy (young) people don't think that a major illness and/or accident can happen to them and would rather pay to go to a concert, buy videogames, etc. than pay for health insurance coverage. A lot of people have bought into the right's lies about having some kind of universal health care system to where they believe that they will lose the insurance they already have (though it wouldn't really be a loss IMHO in most circumstances) or that they really will be subject to things like "death panels" or that they will somehow no longer have any control over their health care (must not be paying attention to what Republicans have been up to as of late, though).

Most people don't think very far beyond themselves, so there is a coalition of the young, the foolish, the healthy, those who still have good employer-based coverage, and the greedy, who will oppose any plan.

I want single-payer so bad I could taste it, but the minute we start to talk about a funding mechanism is the minute people start turning against us.

I believe the biggest problem with enacting healthcare reform, especially a move to single-payer, is how it has been misrepresented by the GOP.

In the lead-up to ACA, there was no end of Republican politicians, pundits, spokes-babblers, etc. appearing on TV news outlets, stating that people who live in countries with universal healthcare are:

a) receiving inferior care to those in the US
b) are completely dissatisfied with UHC and want it abolished
c) sometimes wait eighteen months or more to get an appointment with a GP
d) have to wait for a gov't bureaucrat to 'approve' a doctor's treatment before it can be implemented
e) are awash in gov't forms and paperwork required before getting medical treatment
f) cannot see a doctor in their area, but are often sent far afield to a doctor who has been gov't approved for them to see

The list is endless - and all of it is lies.

Needless to say, not a single MSM type ever challenged these lies, nor asked for factual backup for what was being stated.

I've heard some ridiculous things from people who believe this BS ("They said it on TV, so it must be true!&quot My personal favorite: "I could die from an infection because my doctor wouldn't be able to prescribe an antibiotic until the government said it was okay, which would probably take months."

I don't doubt that if the universal healthcare systems that exist in every other industrialized nation (ours being the glaring exception) were presented as they really are, along with the facts as to how well they work, the vast majority of the nation would be behind it one hundred percent.